It's FREEZER FRIENDS Time!

It’s time to start thinking of getting a freezer friends group together. My freezer is pretty empty right now and I can’t wait to start doubling and quadrupling my garden made tomato sauces, eggplant Parmesans and stuffed cabbages and who knows what else this first year of gardening will grant me. Anyone who lives in my area who would like to be put into a freezer friends group just email me with “Freezer Friends” in the subject line. I like to get the groups together by Sept 1st.

If you do not live in my area then consider starting your own group. It’s so rewarding to have meals ready to go in your freezer and it’s so fun to try new recipes.

For those of you who don’t know what the heck I’m talking about I'll describe how we do Freezer Friends in a nutshell. Each group consists of 4 or 5 friends (I've found that any more than that is just too much quantity to fit into the pots most people have). Each friend is responsible for making one meal a month and multiplying it by the number of friends in their group. The meals are to be divided into meals for each friend's family and frozen. The due date is generally the last day of the month when the friends arrange a time and place to exchange their meals. So really, you have an entire month to complete your assigned meal. You cook it and freeze it at your convenience sometime during the month as long as it is done by the exchange date.

The rules are simple:

1) BIGGEST MOST IMPORTANT RULE: make healthful meals made from scratch (NO canned soup as an ingredient or other such prefabricated processed things like processed cheese-like products) - If anyone ever has doubts I will always advise.

2) meals are due the last day of the month unless the group makes other arrangements

3) family size should be taken into consideration when proportioning out the meals and make enough for a whole meal for the family

4) email your group the meal you plan to make as soon as possible so that the group doesn't end up with 5 chillis in one month

5) try to provide a whole meal so if your dish is a pasta sauce, also provide a box of pasta

6) email or include a copy of your recipe with your meal and the thawing / reheating instructions

7) freeze meals that are freezable

I think I've covered it all.

Now I like to mix up the groups and there are usually 4-5 groups organized so we can mix up the groups throughout the winter so the schedule is this:
Group 1, September, October and November.

Break for December, no exchange.

Group 2, (new members in your group), January, February, March

Group 3, (new members again), April, May and if members agree to June they may exchange in June

July 2010 Menu - Renewed Enthusiasm for Healthy Cooking

We just returned from visiting family in Savannah, GA. Somehow my brother-in-law’s girlfriend effortlessly threw together fresh ingredients to make several dinners that were delicious. She told us how her parents raised her and her siblings on whole organic foods and by some miracle she grew up without much of a sweet tooth at all. She craves healthful foods naturally. Our kids were not quite the angels on our trip that we would have liked (imagine that). To be honest, we have slipped down into such a junk food pit that I believe their junk intake may contribute to some of the negative behavior we witnessed (go ahead and laugh but I have heard of links between behavior and diet before). So anyway, I am feeling super motivated to cut out the junk we have been eating along with all the excuses we were using to buy it (treat for the pool, road trip, summer excursion, got a coupon, etc.). During our 26 hours spent in the car last week I went through magazines and got some healthy meal plans together for the remainder of July. I am hoping that I will find the time to report back with my reviews of how these new recipes worked out. Among my recipe finds are some chewy energy bars and healthy dessert ideas. I expect to get some resistance from the kids for a while during their junk detox but I’m motivated to stick to it and get them eating healthier. Afterall, it’s my job!

April 2010 Menu

March 2010 Menu

The “Monica Closet”

A couple months ago I was watching Mother Angelica on EWTN while ironing. I don’t recall the exact point of her message (not good I know) but she talked about how most of the viewers probably have drawers in their home that they aren’t even sure what is inside them but yet they are full. Her point had something to do with not sharing our abundances or the meaning of a true sacrifice versus giving of our abundance or something really meaningful like that (which I didn’t quite retain) but it made me think of my “Monica Closet.” If you don’t know what a “Monica Closet” is, well, it’s a reference to Monica’s catch-all closet on the show, "Friends". Yep that’s right. I just referenced Mother Angelica’s show and Friends back to back. Anyhoo, thanks to the help of a couple very generous friends, (one who painted and one who sat my 2 year old), I finally tackled my Monica Closet. When I have been asked whether I have such a closet I usually say, “Ahhh, there’s this spot in my basement but no, not really.” Lies lies lies! My laundry area of my basement has been such a dark secret. It’s been my dumping ground and it’d held junk that I couldn’t part with but knew that I should and who knows what else. Basically, it’s the spot of my house that I go to other people’s home to “fix.” Things finally got cleaned out, the walls were scrubbed and it is painted a bright white. No more Monica Closet. No more, “don’t look in there!” moments. No more feeling like I am holding onto material things unnecessarily. No more living with a dark secret. It feels good spiritually and intellectually.

Now I know I should have taken true “before” pictures with my big mess in it and I would have except I just um forgot, eh hem. Here is a picture taken while I was in the midst of emptying the room and an after picture (with a chaise lounge in it that my step-mom is coming to pick up soon). I ran out of tiles to finish the black and white floor, but hope to get to that soon. It was difficult to get a good picture of such a long room but if you are so interested perhaps you can get the jist.

February 2010 Menu

Anyone who ever visits here probably wondered if I was ever coming back. Yes I love doing this little blog. I will be back. The Holiday Season and my 3 little ones tugged at my time. Admittedly I did not enter this past holy season prepared as I would have liked. This doesn’t happen every year for me. This year will be better. I will be done with the gifting ideas by Halloween so I can truly enjoy the season. While I was gone I put together this Februrary menu with all new recipes which I am excited about. Being a bit lazy with it, however, in putting it together, I basically sat down with my latest copy of CL magazine, (heard they were nitpickedty about copyright rules on blogs and such but I know you can figure it out), and used all their recipes because everything looked so yummy.