How it worked was a week before the party, Amy sent us an email with different shopping lists divided up. We each picked a list to buy. It also had a few items that needed to be prepped ahead of the cooking day. Here’s what my list looked like:SHOPPING LIST E
- PREP ITEM - 32 medium sliced green peppers
- 64 oz white vinegar
- 4 bottles (16 oz each) zesty Italian dressing
- 8 limes
- 7 jars (4.5 oz each) or 28 oz of minced garlic
- 1 bottle (12 oz) of ketchup
- 64 freezer bags
- 8 cans pinto beans, rinsed and drained
- 8 cans black beans, drained
- I also decided to pre-label all the bags to save us some time on the morning of
These 2 guys were adorable together and were so great throughout the morning. 
Again, each group of ladies tackled one meal at a time. We simply found the indreitent on the massive table of food and dumped it into a gallon freezer bag. Once all the bags for that meal were done, we sealed them and put one meal in each lady's laundry basket.Here was our list of the 10 meals that we prepped (can you tell we're big chicken fans?):
Taco Chili
Black Bean Chicken
Meatballs
Coconut Lime Chicken
White Chicken Chili
Chicken cacciatore
Creamy Italian Chicken
Italian Buffalo Chicken
Crock Pot Aloha Chicken
Crock Pot Philly Cheese Chicken
All in all, it took us only about an hour and half for everything. And even better, the total was $89.52 for all of it! Definitely worth doing a little of our own prep work to get our cost down.
Amy has a full run down of the meals with links to the recipes. I can’t wait to make this a monthly (or bi-monthly) tradition!
Here is the gist of it. I contacted Wendi to schedule a party. I picked 8 meals from her awesome menu and let the first 2 girls who RSVP’d pick the other two. Wendi did ALL the shopping and prep work (like chopping up the veggies and browning meat). She brought it to my house and we helped her unload everything.
Then we all got to work labeling bags. Everyone took a stack of gallon freezer bags and labeled them with the name of the meal and the cooking directions. It was easier for one person to label all the bags for one meal.
Then a group of 2-3 ladies was put in charge of each meal. They would read the recipe and dump in the ingredients into each bag.
Once all the ingredients were in the bags, they closed them up and put one bag in each lady’s laundry basket or box they brought. Then that group moved onto the next recipe.
No, we didn’t drink those. :) One of the ingredients for a chicken meal.
It was super fun and in less than 2 hours, we each had 10 meals that were ready to go into the freezer for our families. For someone who doesn’t love to cook, I love this! 
Source: 
My review: I bought 7 of these tubs from Wal-Mart. 3 for kids and 4 for some of my school/home files. I bought several large packs of file folders (yes this took my entire “home” budget for several months.) For my kid’s boxes, I made folders with the labels:
While I’ve made it known that cooking is not my forte, it has been nice to finally feel well enough to make something for my family. Here’s a few recipes that we’ve enjoyed the last month:
My Review: I love Chipotle so I can’t say this was better than Chipotle. It doesn’t have quite the kick that they get into their salads. But this was really good! I love cilantro so this was right up my alley. William ate it with chips like a salsa and I just ate mine right out of the bowl like a salad. Definitely worth keeping this pin.
My review: yummy! It’s definitely a little sweet and I only used about half the brown sugar. Next time, I’d use only about 1/3. But served over rice, William definitely approved. And as you can tell by my pictures, I threw in a few extra veggies into mine.
It’s Monday. How the heck did that happen? How do days drag by so slowly sometimes, but yet the weeks fly? I have one measly little thing to show you that was inspired by Pinterest this week. I’m speaking at Mom2Mom tomorrow, so this week has been filled with prepping for that a a little crafting which I’ll show in my next post.
I’m not a huge celebrator of Valentine’s Day. I suspect I will love it more as Owen reaches the age where we can make adorable valentines inspired from Pinterest, but this year I’m kind of. . .ehh about it. But when Sam comes over, I’m always trying to keep the two 2 year olds from killing each other and ripping apart my house, so we did this cheap and easy project.
My review: I mean, how easy is squeezing a toilet paper tube and dipping it in some paint? Cute and effective. 
Welcome to pinned it, did it Monday (it’s still Monday for a couple more hours here) where I share a few of the things that have inspired me from pinterest this week.
L asked for a sock monkey hat for her daughter and I had been itching to try this cute pattern:
My review: I love this gal’s patterns. They are easy to follow and always produce nice results. I made a mistake that I realized towards the end and had to rip a bunch out, so the hat took about twice as long as it should have. But that was totally my fault. Love how cute it is and hope it fits the recipient!
I had seen this pin floating around Pinterest for awhile. It’s a site dedicated to making healthier and “real” versions of a bunch of kid’s processed foods. Now, let me preface that I probably have frozen corn dogs in my freezer somewhere and do not feel the least bit guilty for giving them to my boys. But I decided to dip my toe into the water of healthier cooking. haha
right after frying:
My Review: I’ll admit to not being a huge corn dog fan. But I must say, these were pretty darn good! I have no idea how she got her batter to look so nice and smooth. I cut the batter recipe in half and it made 5 corn dogs. It was pretty quick, and after frying I just heated them in the oven for about 10 minutes to get the hot dog nice and hot. William definitely approved! I think I’ll be checking out some of her other recipes!
Since starting my “diet”, I’ve been eating lots of chicken and using my George Forman a lot! This was a cleaning tip I found. The tip reads: “Right after using the grill, unplug it and place a wet double-sheet of paper towel between the lid and the surface. The leftover heat causes the towel to steam and clean the grill. Wiping it dry with another paper towel is all that’s needed.”
Posts
