I have bonded with my freezer

I have lots of random thoughts in my head about food, kids, time, management of my time, things I enjoy, things I do not enjoy and the such.  Food:  a necessity.  Sometimes it is good and sometimes not, but we eat it either way out of need.  Kids:  the little picky people that I must feed.  They need food for energy to play soccer and fuel all of the things their little bodies can do and their brains...let's not forget their brains!  Time:  The thing I can never get enough of.  The one thing that I can sense wasting away throughout my days that I can never get back.  Where does it go?  This is also the one thing that I know I have more of right now than I will have after September 14th when my Fall schedule really kicks into gear.  The thing we all try to manage.  I wonder how much time that takes?!  really.   Things I enjoy:  blogging at night, coffee with friends, running, tennis, chatting on the phone with distant friends, shopping, watching movies with Scott, the list goes on and on.  Things I do not enjoy:  packing lunches day after day, trying to cook dinner at 5:30 with hungry kids who are trying to do homework that obviously needs constant supervision and assistance as I am trying to wipe my "allergic to ragweed" nose, all while waiting for my husband to come home, or not.  That is all stuff that sends me over the edge.  

I am hoping that my work over the past week will pay off.  I have 2 lasagnas, 3 meals of chicken enchiladas, 3 London Broils, 4 meals of honey pork chops, 15 twice baked potatoes, 4 loaves of garlic bread and 2 peach cobblers in my freezer.  That should help me to avoid the mac n' cheese and Dino bites rut that I can tend to get into when Scott is not home.  This will be healthier for my kids and for me and it wasn't that bad. It was sort of fun!  We have already tried the pork chops and the enchiladas and they were both pretty good.  Scott said, "These pork chops are really good!"  and I followed with, "Good, I am glad you like them because I just froze 18 of those!" Scott and I enjoyed the enchiladas last night after putting the kids to bed.  The sauce was HOT, but really good.  We will save these for at home date nights when we eat late and get a movie!  Feeding the kids mac n' cheese and Dino bites.  I am seeing a pattern here!

And here is my tip of the century:  because I hate making lunches and my sweet, sweet, super helpful husband is not always here to help me anymore, I have attacked the sandwich making.  Two of my kids love PBJ.  So I took an entire loaf of bread, my natural PB, jam of choice and CUTCO spreader and I went to work making the entire loaf into PBJ sandwiches and then into ziplocs and then into my freezer.  The key is to put a thin layer of PB on each piece of bread and then put the jam in the middle, this prevents the jam from soaking through the bread because of the PB acts as a barrier.  I read this somewhere so I cannot take all the credit, but it does work.  In the a.m. you just take it out of the freezer and pop it in the lunch bag and it defrosts itself in time for lunch.  Genius!  And you can do the same with salami, my other child's favorite of the week.  Just salami and bread. Freeze it.  voila!  Lunch is made.  Then I don't have to make sandwiches again for several days!   And, no complaints from the kiddos!