Last Thursday and Friday M and I went with my parents to visit my sis Rachel and her husband Charlie in Georgia. On Monday Rachel started a new school year as a sixth-grade teacher....at 35 1/2 weeks pregnant. Whew. So Mom and I spent the day on Friday giving her about the best gift that you can give a pregnant girl who plans to work until the day she goes into labor - a freezer full of meals.
We had so much fun! We made our plans and grocery list before we went so that we could take some of the ingredients with us. Then we went shopping together to buy the meat and veggies after we got there. Madeline took a marathon three hour nap, and during that time we were able to prepare 20 separate dinners for her to put in her freezer - each with leftovers! It's amazing how much you can get done when you all work together. And how much fun it is!
Mom cut up chicken for what seemed like hours
Packaging up some chili in freezer bags
Tomato sauce for the lasagna
Here are the fruits of our labor: 3 dinners of chili, 3 of poppy seed chicken casserole, 3 of chicken pot pie, a large lasagna, extra tomato sauce with meat, stuffed pasta shells (with our extra ricotta mixture from the lasagna), a whole pork tenderloin, and 2 large bags of extra cooked and diced chicken.
It was so efficient to cook this way, that I am considering starting to do this for myself once a month. The dinner hour would be so much less stressful if I could just pull something out of the freezer more often.
Later in the day we went swimming at a relative's pool. I can't resist sharing some cute baby swim suit pictures. I just love those little chubby legs. :)
Madeline has a beach ball, and so does Rachel. :)
I will leave you with a final pic my cool baby "driving" at the grocery store. She LOVES mommy's sunglasses.
3 comments:
I would totally do this once a month too... if my mom would come help me!! Hee.
wow--- that's a lot of dinners going on! looks great! your sister looks beautiful pregnant!
What an amazing gift! To do it with your mom and make it fun, well, that's even better!
I did once a month cooking once - it was great, but it's so rare to have a day to do all that prep work that it's never happened again.
I love the dual beach balls picture.
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