I must be crazy

April 2, 2012 at 1:25 PM (Cooking/ Food, Erin, Plan Ahead Cooking)
Tags: Cooking, Food, Once a Month Cooking

Seriously, I must be crazy.

I tried my first Once a Month cooking adventure. I got the recipes, instructions and shopping list from http://onceamonthmom.com/. I tried the traditional menu from March 2012. This is a great website which is extremely detailed, informative and well laid out.

So I had purchased all of the groceries and I have NEVER had such a full shopping cart. I was buying meats and spices I have never heard of. When I walked up to checkout, the guy said “Whoa, that’s a lot of food!”. The one thing I didn’t get was ham loaf. What in the world is Ham Loaf?! So that’s one recipe I couldn’t cook due to lack of ham loaf. 🙂

So I got up early and tried to do a couple other chores because I knew I was going to devote most of my day to cooking. I had no idea how intense it would be. One of the reasons it was so arduous is that I didn’t have time to do the prep work the night before. This would have included browning the ground beef and turkey and also chopping  a lot of the vegetables. This would have made the day much easier, but I just couldn’t get to it.

I pulled out all of the recipes and most of the ingredients and my kitchen counter was already covered, even before I started cooking. I ended up spending a total of 8 hours in the kitchen (not including clean up) and I didn’t even get to make 3 of the recipes. I’m hoping to make them in the next few days. So it definitely was a lot of prep work and cooking, but it certainly didn’t help that I have 2 young kids to take care of too.

My husband was home and doing a lot of the kid work, but he also had other things to do and we have 3 hyper dogs to entertain so it’s still a lot of work for both of us. From my last 2 months of pursuits (movies and exercising) you might remember that I barely get 2 minutes without some sort of interruption at my house. Case in point:

About an hour into cooking, my 2 year old comes up to me, holding his finger high in the air, and says “Mommy, what’s this?”. Well, of course it was poop. I know, I know. You’re probably thinking, why would it have to be poop? But in my house, it’s always poop. It’s just ridiculous. I said, ‘did you touch a dog?’ and he said ‘I pet Summer’. Summer the dog had rolled in poop and then strolled into the house like it was allowed. So, I had to stop the whole cooking operation, wash the 2 year old and then wash, not one, but 3 dogs. I figured while I’m doing it, I might as well wash all 3.

So then….I sent the 2 year old up to play in his room for a bit and when I called him to come down, all I hear is “I can’t get out of the crib”. Well, the crib is for his 2 month old brother so he’s not supposed to be in it in the first place. I went upstairs fully expecting to just lift him out and then scurry back down to resume my kitchen craziness. Well, he had other plans. Not only had he literally taken every single book, toy, stuffed animal, pillow, etc in his room and thrown them on the floor, but he had also pulled a bunch of stuff off of the walls. We had thought “how cute would it be to put their names on the walls with metal letters?” But apparently, the toddler wanted to redecorate and pulled them all off, including a lot of the nails. So I got to spend 30 minutes cleaning up toys and crawling around looking for nails in a very high pile carpet. Back to the kitchen.

So I’m making good progress, feeling pretty accomplished, when I take my calzones out of the oven and set them a little too close to the bags of soup which are cooling. The pan burns right through one of them and Corn and Chicken Chowder is pouring all over my kitchen. I managed to salvage a decent amount of it though and learned my lesson.

This is a long post because it was a long day. Here is how my kitchen looked partway through the day:

Crazy Cooking

Notice the Pack N Play with baby!

And this is how I got through the rest of the day:

Many times throughout the afternoon I thought “I am NEVER doing this again”. But after the kitchen was cleaned up and I realized I had 16 nights of cook free dinners, I might change my mind. It’s tough though. Thanksgiving has got nothing on this cooking day.

-Erin