Nesting kicks in

Well with that good news and a modicrum of hope, there was space today for nesting to kick in big time. Still don't have the nursery together; Carl and I both need to do that and he was trapped in his workaholic hell for most of the day. But I did manage to make a plan for food to feed us all (or at least, a plan for some food to feed us all) post-partum. Let's hear it for freezers (and my mum has offered space in hers, as we only have the one fridge now).

The trick is to start picking freezable recipes now and doubling or tripling them up, I think. And the really tricky part is we don't know what Noah will and won't eat in his breast milk, so there needs to be a good range of recipes.

With Emily I actually spent a couple of weekends on it, but I also had less time as the kitchen floor was being replaced, etc. I also had a number of pasta-heavy dishes which weren't a bad idea and yes I have read how pasta isn't as terrible as white bread because of the exact flour, but we still have moved away from that. So today I thought "well, what's reasonable to get done in a hot week like the one coming up, and also can fit into this week's food budget." (Monday is a holiday, which helps.)

So this is my plan. I bought a pork roast, stewing beef, and two chickens. I also hydrated some beans, or at least they are soaking now. I bought many of the other ingredients although some we had already. Here at some boring length is my plan - meal sizes are for two + a bit, in case of a visitor or excess hunger or something.

Tomorrow we're in Kingston but I will put on the crockpot and cook the two chickens (my spiff X-mas present crockpot should hold both) while we're gone. That chicken will become the base for my Cooking Light recipe for Brunswick stew, which is fabulous and takes chicken, a tiny bit of bacon, beans, corn, and a few other various things (a very small amount of tomato) and actually is supposed to be made with already cooked chicken. We'll probably actually eat some on Monday, but the majority of it will be frozen for: 2-3 dinners

It will also be the basis for a very shameful casserole I pulled off the internet this morning that has "bland" written all over it, as well as "American comfort food" - a blast from my childhood, as you mix the cooked chicken with canned soup (!!) and layer it with potatoes and peas and top with grated cheese. There's no garlic or spice or tomato or vegetables other than peas in it. I was embarassed to buy the canned soup. I have enough ingredients for at least two casseroles (maybe three - I have three aluminum pans, since unlike stew, this cannot be frozen in a Ziploc bag). Kind of minus several points for nutritional value, but compared to a lot of takeout, not bad. And easy, I must say, except maybe for grating the cheese. 2-3 dinners.

So that's the chicken. Then on Tuesday I'll put the pork roast in the crockpot. We'll have that Tuesday dinner and then the leftover pork will go back in the crockpot overnight with beans and tomatoes and vinegar and sugar and spices - to make, you know, barbeque pork, except with beans to stretch it and make it more fiberlicious and nutritious. That'll be frozen in small batches, and eventually defrosted and served over buns for a fast meal or over rice for a slightly more complicated meal (that is, involving a pot to cook the rice in). Preferably with salad, although I have some extra carrots and zucchini I may hide in there (they will go with the roast on Tuesday). I'm not sure how much we'll have until I see how much roast is left. But with creative addition of beans, it should do Wednesday dinner, plus 3 more. (For bonus points I could freeze this with biscuits attached, or something... once my time & money budget frees up for some baking stuff.)

Then the beef. Thursday I'll make a big beef stew in the crockpot, wine-based and not tomato based, but it will likely have garlic in it. That should do one meal Thursday and then 2 frozen meals. And no beans, in case there's some breastfeeding issue with them.

So, something like 9 or 10 frozen meals plus almost a week's worth of dinners, plus (if I manage) some chicken stock for soups. And all those ingredients are here in my fridge right now, squee. And it still only means really the effort for one dinner each day (thanks to the crockpot, not such a big deal), plus not having the leftovers for lunches.

Having that planned and shopped for made me feel a bit better about getting ready to take care of this baby. I mean I realize that the food is for us adults, but that should give us time and energy to throw at the baby. And it was a kind of a mental hurdle, since all those frozen things kind of felt heavy last time. They seemed somehow like food tainted with false hope, even though I knew that was - kind of dumb. This time, if we do lose Noah, I'll just donate it to someone else rather than trying to work through it.

Nest, nest, nest.

Having Lyria around more helps too, although of course we had the usual conflict over how much meat there is. But we can have vegetarian lunches you see!

Shandra