Let's Eat

As you know, cooking is one of my favorite of things. I love eating great food and making great food. I realized this summer that I do of a lot of cooking in the summer. During the school year, not so much.

I am tired after school and chores, so we eat out a lot! Randomly, I saw a link on Pinterest of a picture of something that looked good to eat. I clicked on the link a discovered Once a Month Mom (OAMM). She has recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinners for a whole month. She makes everything so easy. The grocery list are posted, along with the recipes, and step by step instructions for making all of these meals at once. Supposedly, it takes about 12 hours one day a month.

I wasn't ready to jump in with both feet. Luckily, OAMM offers "mini menus".  A 10-day and a 5-day menu. OAMM posts the menus at the beginning of the month. The idea is that you make note of the items you are going to need, buy them throughout the month when they go on sale, and cook at the end of the month for the next month.

I chose the 5-day mini menu for July. I already had all (yes, all) of the ingredients. I broke mine up into two meals a day for 3 days. I added a vegetable soup because I had extra hamburger. It was challenging just cooking two meals at once the first day. (Of course, I didn't do any prepping the night before, like OAMM recommends). The next two days were pretty easy. We actually ended up with 8 meals. The creamy chicken casserole was enough for 2 8x8 pans. I also had 2 containers of soup.I also baked two loaves of banana bread and froze them, as well.

Hopefully, this will be a "win-win" for us. We can still eat great homemade food without much work at night. I am hoping I can do it on Sunday afternoons once a month. I didn't take any pictures of the freezer meals but check them out on any of the links above. They all taste great. (Yep, I tasted them).

In the meantime, here are some pictures of the yummy and new foods we tried this summer.

Squash Pie: really sweet pie that is topped with cool whip: CSA recipe

Avacodo chocolate cake: Pinterest

Meat Pie "All You Magazine"

London Broil with rosemary and spinach and feta

"Flat Out" pizza with fresh veggies My FAVE!

Grilled Eggplant stacks: Pinterest

Stuffed Scallop Squash "allrecipes.com"

Pork Tenderlion with stuffed scallop squash

Zuppa Toscana with Kale "allrecipes.com"

Until next time..

XOXOXOXO