:-) Really I don't know what to title this other than with a smile

One of things I manage to have mastered Mom Guilt over is food.  While entering survival mode this winter and trying to keep my head above water nutrition has turned to food and success was all too often "no one is hungry"  It's not that my schedule is lightening up any or I've suddenly found a wonderful chunk of time to spend in the kitchen but I have set into motion freezer meals.

I bought the Once-A-Month-Cooking book years ago {I think I was still in school} and it seemed complex, time consuming {only for one day, but when you are working, have 3 kids in activities and in a BSN program you don't have a full day -- ever} and to be honest I never even tried it.  I wanted to join a group who already did it, had the kinks worked out and didn't require me thinking and planning.  If you wanted to do all of their meals they have it broken down very nicely but some of the recipes didn't sound like anything I was interested in but not doing that recipe for a few different ones would really throw off how streamline they made it.  Onto the bookshelf it went with a sigh full of wishes.

Now I have less time over all, but the kids are older and don't need constant supervision and best of all I get time without much else scheduled in a chunk.

Toss into the mix the realization that I need to pull myself out of survival mode and do something and I had the idea of getting together with a friend and doing freezer meals.  I have the downstairs kitchen, there is a plethora of recipes on Pinterest for freezer crockpot meals which don't require any pre-cooking and we're good to go.  I've pulled out my stash of cookbooks to see what I can come up with, have been pinning like crazy and I am going to go spend tomorrow afternoon with Maria to plan this out.  I hope it goes well, or what doesn't go well has an easy fix and next time we'll invite some other friends who are interested.

I also pulled out my Make-A-Mix cookbook.  Yes, too much for one day, but there's the week after that right?  I'm amazed at how much I find myself smiling today just because.  I've been more patient, happier, enjoyed the sunshine a little more {it doesn't hurt that I was up before the sun was close to setting!}

Since I have an empty recipe section sitting up at the top I will post what we do, the recipes and any helpful hints we find.  We may even come across a few don'ts but I always learn more from the mistakes anyways.  Time to go switch laundry around and curl up with an episode of Criminal Minds and cookbooks.  Feel free to share your successes and/or failures if you've done this before.