My favorite gift.

The day after Christmas my best friend Kristy, her husband Greg and their two boys Luke and Peter came to stay with us.  The visit was a little crazy, good crazy, but how could it not have been, we had 10 people staying in our one and a half bedroom, one bathroom, 1000sq ft house.  There were people sleeping everywhere.  I will do anything to spend time with the Campbell's and would have them back in a second.

Kristy and I have amazingly odd connections.  (We think they are normal, they are odd to other people, hehe.)  She lives four hours from me, yet I know what she does each day of the week and if she isn't home I can most likely tell you where she is.  We talk daily and not just once or twice, I would say an average of five to seven times a day.  Usually they are not long talks, but quick check-ins, had a minute in the car, I just had to tell you something, calls.  Anyway, moving on.  I was so excited to give Kristy her Christmas gift, it was so perfect for her, I had bought it atleast a month prior to Christmas and had even considered buying it for myself it was so perfect.  So they were here and it was time to exchange gifts, I handed her the gift and she handed me mine.  I held mine, it felt, well oddly familiar.  I began to open, she began to open, we started laughing, almost to the point of crying.  We had gotten eachother the same gift.

I am having so much fun cooking and baking things out of this cookbook.  We are very healthy eaters, but this cookbook allows you to make foods even healthier with added fruits and vegetables (the greatest part the kids don't even know it).  Applesauce Muffins w/Butternut Squash, Pancakes w/Sweet Potatoes, Mac and Cheese w/ Cauliflower and many, ,many more.

Breadmaking

One of my goals of our version of compacting was to bake bread weekly. Well I made bread on the 11th of January, so technically not in the first 7 days of January, but it was in the first FULL week of the month :) Also, I decided to get better at planning when I was going to make bread, so a week or two wouldn't go by with my continually saying "oh, I can't do bread today, we are too busy". I went through the next two weeks and picked a day (or two) that would be available for baking bread. Then I wrote it in my handy-dandy planner, Family.Time.Mine. This planner has been the best thing for me. A little over a year ago my sister (AKA "E") brought it home for me, saying that she saw it and it just looked like me, she was right. I bought a new one a few months ago. I love it.

Ok, back to the bread making. I am completely old-fashioned when it comes to breadmaking. I have no fancy gadget, no Bosch or Kitchen-Aid. My supplies were literally, a stainless steel bowl, measuring cups and spoons, a wooden spoon, 2 bread pans, my countertop (hehe) and the ingredients for the bread. Start to finish was about 3 1/2 hours, most of that was spent letting the bread rise and letting it bake.

Everyone in the family enjoyed the homemade bread, in about 12 hours the first loaf was GONE. Nick was full of compliments when he came home from work to a home smelling of freshly baked bread. I did fall a little behind on laundry on Friday, but hey I made two loaves of bread.

The dough, rising.

Obviously I need a little help in splitting the dough into two equal parts ;)

Warm, homemade bread, plus butter = very happy children

seven hours.

done. finished. whew. it fit.

I thought when the process was over I would be thinking, I will NEVER do this again. But I wasn't, actually I was thinking, yeah, I could do this once a month. The day was nice, Téa was my side-kick, played with her baby and the potty on the kitchen floor, had her first experience with Playdough and took two naps (which is odd for her), Dillon napped, nursed and hung out, either in his saucer or the Ergo, and the boys were in heaven, I let them play in the dirt and ride bikes all day long. And guess what, I finished, I made twenty dinners in one day, I started at 11am and ended at 6pm. So seven hours, not bad, since I was caring for four children and cooking 20 meals. On a normal night one dinner takes me close to an hour, so hey I am up 14 hours already!

All the produce cut up, this was the first step!

YAY! One down, 19 to go.

And I am done!

I wanted to tell everyone that I do not have an extra freezer or even a really big freezer. I have a normal size freezer and I had some stuff already in it, some frozen juice, two loaves of bread, frozen chicken breasts, Eggo waffles and a few other things. My freezer is filled to the brim, but in about 30 days it will be ready to be filled again.

Meal planning squared.

Meal planning to the next level or crazy as my step-dad said. Tomorrow I am embarking on a new journey, an in-home, labor intensive journey. I will be assembling twenty freezer meals, yes TWENTY. For a long while I have wanted to take meal planning to the next level, but never did and it was for good reason. Our family is primarily vegetarian and all the freezer meal menus were for meat-eating families. So I bugged and bugged and poked and prodded the ladies at Saving Dinner and viola, TWENTY VEGETARIAN DINNERS, complete with start to finish instructions, shopping lists and recipes. Hooray!

So today I went to three stores to get all that I needed, such are the joys of living in a small area, not one store has everything you need. The kids were wonderfully behaved, they toughed through almost two hours at Fred Meyer. Then I did the next two store while everyone was asleep. I am wiped out and the preparing hasn't even begun. Cool thing... I got everything I need for about $125.

Well I am off to bed. Please say a prayer for well-behaved children tomorrow, so I can complete this task without wanting to rip out my hair, haha.