Ambition found...

Last Saturday, Caitlin, Tiffany and I spent the day cooking. ALL day. Cooking… Not our favorite thing to do, but we did it in the interest of making our daily lives easier.

And we are hoping that is so, because cooking that much in one day is tiring!

Caitlin and I were thinking along the same lines, about a month ago…Maybe we should combine forces and resources and cook a boatload of food so all we had to do was pull something out of the freezer in the morning, and dinner was taken care of. Tiffany jumped right on board.

Of course, this is not a novel idea. In fact, there are lots of websites out there with menus, recipes and shopping lists…Which is great, but usually they are compiled of too many things we don’t want to eat.

So we made our own list. And considering that I hate to make a weekly menu, this was a bit overwhelming for me. I hate to decide what we are going to eat ahead of time, because I always feel uncertain that I will actually WANT to eat it on such and such a day.

Flexibility gone awry. This is a stupid obstacle to put up, but I always get caught up in it. And the other obstacle is choosing meals for other people…How will I know what THEY want on any given day??

I cast aside my stupidity, and came up with a plan. Figured out the shopping list, reviewed procedures; then pre-cooked 18 lbs. of ground beef, and 35 lbs. of chicken, assembled the other ingredients on the table and reminded the girls to bring extra pots, and their big Costco cold bags.

On Saturday, we worked from 10am to 5:30pm and each of us put 12 recipes in the freezer, which should work out to at least 18 meals with leftovers.

It’s like having a gold mine in your freezer!

My preparations were adequate, though I messed up my math on quantities of a couple things, and my procedures plan could have been more efficient. Though a lot of work, it is much more fun to cook together than it is alone – so I think we may be doing this again.

Now we just have to make ourselves dig into that gold mine. My Dutch Girl economic mindset is such that I save the fancy soaps and good towels; and I fear that the day isn’t bad enough to access the pre-made dinner in my freezer. What if tomorrow is a worse day and I’ve used them all up???

Yes -- I struggle with optimism. Pessimism seems so much more responsible.

Anyway, I am hopeful that our gold mines will hold us until the next cooking day a month from now…Because, honestly, I need a little time to forget how much work it was -- and to enjoy the benefits.

 The Gold Mine: