Now that the weekend is over, I wanted to report back on how well (or not) our cooking sessions have worked.
First, the plan was to do some chopping and prep work on Friday – I managed to get to Costco and the grocery store, and not much prep work was done except getting the beans soaking overnight.
Saturday, Dad and I worked during Daughter Person’s nap (2 hours), and we were able to chop quite a bit of veggies and cooking the beans. Then, we worked after she went to sleep for about 3 hours. We put aside 25 meals: 15 Ginger Beef, 4 Black Bean and Vegetable Chili, 3 Vegetable Chili, and 3 Wild Rice and Nut Bake. (I also made 2 batches of Basic Red Sauce in there, but those aren’t meals…)
Sunday, we were at a birthday party during naptime, so we didn’t start until Daughter Person went to bed, and Dad was tired, so we put up shop at about 9:30. We got 23 meals/sides put aside: 4 meals Beef Barley Soup, 3 of Penne with Rosemary Chicken, 16 of Rice Pilaf.
Dad is not working on Monday and Daughter Person is at daycare, and he’s supposed to be making the Chicken Curry and the Port BBQ Chicken during the day since those need cooked and cooled before they can go in the freezer bags. Once that’s done, that’ll leave us with 6 recipes to finish. Which is good since I’m working on Daughter Person’s birthday cake as well (2 years!) for Tuesday night.
We’re going to shoot for the Baked Ziti (and another batch of Red Sauce), Swiss Chicken, and 3 cheese spinach soup tonight. And if we’re doing well, we can get the pork tenderloin with pears and provencal flank steak. Maybe getting the corn muffins too, since they’re just throw stuff in the mixer (and hope the mixer is big enough).
One of the lessons we’ve learned this time around is that the Dream Dinners recipes are *huge* and our biggest mixing bowl is *not* big enough to hold a triple batch. That makes it a little more difficult to mix since we have to break them down into 3 separate mixes.
Also, Onion Goggles are apparently pretty awesome. Dad bought a pair, and he chopped all the onions with them – while I had to leave the room since even my eyes were tearing and I wasn’t chopping the onions. They don’t fit my face very well, and Dad wanted to try them, so while I’ve put them on, I haven’t tested them yet.