In general, I don't cook. I bake. I'll make a loaf of bread every day if I have someone to share it with. I bake cookies in batches of 12 dozen. But I don't like to cook. This weekend, though, I went shopping and got stuff together to make dinner. Lots of dinner.
It all started with this post I saw on Pinterest. It's a woman who did a whole pile of prep work in one two-hour period, and froze everything for a bunch of slow-cooked meals. I love my Crock Pot. I love it so much that I have two of them, actually. I can have a good meal that's ready when I get home from work, and it doesn't heat up the whole kitchen like the oven will. I used a couple of her recipes, and then went through my three slow-cooker cookbooks and grabbed some more. In all, I made 9 different meals, which broke down into 17 batches that are now taking up the bottom of my deep freeze.
It was a LOT of food: 18 chicken breasts, 4 lb stewing beef, 2 lb kielbasa, 8 italian sausages, 9 onions, peppers, carrots, celery, potatoes, spices, soups... that shopping trip included more food than I normally buy over the course of a full month! But I worked it out, and with leftovers, I should have enough for 20-30 meals, maybe more, depending on whether I make rice or pasta or potatoes to go along with the main dish. So I'm thinking it'll work out well.
Even following the recipes, though, I ended up with some extra food, mostly because of the way it was packaged. So last night, I made up alfredo noodles with grilled chicken and grilled orange peppers, and tonight was meatballs and bowtie pasta with tomato sauce. I've got to say, I'm looking forward to just microwaving or slow-cooking my meals for a few weeks...
Also, it took three showers, a gajillion hand washings, and multiple scrubbings with my stainless-steel smell-remover thingy to get the scent of 9 chopped onions out of my hands. Just saying.
Anyways, my point here is, I'm going to try all these recipes now, and the ones that I really like, I'll be repeating at the end of October, so that when NaNo rolls around, I don't have to worry about cooking. I can just use my time to write. Yay!
1 comment:
Lemons. Lemons will take out the onion smell. I keep a lemon salt scrub by my sink for when I work with strong smelling foods.
If the husbeast would allow a crock pot in the house I would do a lot of these things, but as it stands we are a crock pot free home.
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