I Can't Cook.

Disclaimer: I do not think I know much about cooking nor am I an expert at efficiency or organizing.  I just bumble along trying to make sense of things.  A handful of people have asked about my process and, quite frankly, I wish I knew to do this four years ago.  I hope this is helpful to someone out there.

I can’t cook.  

Well, maybe it’s more accurate to say that I’m not a good cook or that I am not an efficient cook.  

This was never a problem before.  When I was single or newly married, we could eat whatever, whenever and it didn’t matter that dinner took 30 mins of active prep time PLUS cooking time.  Back then, things were easy breezy.

Now, my life - especially upon arriving home - is much more like a group of sharks circling a caged scuba diver just after the chum has been dropped in the water.  I, of course, am that caged scuba diver.

When I get home, two of the three kids want to be held and there is a lot of unpacking and repacking that needs to be done to prepare for the next day.  Often, the kids are ready to eat by 5:30p.  If I try to push them to 6p, at least one kid throws several tantrums and sometimes multiple kids throw tantrums.  Like me, they get hangry.

What I realized at some point was that I really have no time for active prep of a meal when I get home.  I need to be able to come home and have dinner basically already ready.  

A few years ago, a good friend, Jenni, taught me how to make food in advance and freeze it in small portions to feed Ana’s small tummy.  For awhile, that really worked.  And then it didn’t.  I still struggled to get food on the table for the entire family.  Jeff and I ate a lot of grilled cheese at that point.

But then, I had a light bulb moment.  I could use the same techniques and strategies to help me be more efficient.  This led me to the next iteration in the food preparation continuum - preparing certain things in advance and freezing them.  For me, this was rice, pasta, chopped onions, garlic, sauces, and chopped veggies for soups.  But even then, I was limited.

Enter the crockpot.  (Imagine the clouds parting and the angels singing.)

My sister told me about “the crock pot lady” - her real name is Stephanie O’Dea (here’s her blog, which has tons of free recipes).  In her blog, she cooked something (gluten-free) in her crock pot every day for one year!  She also suggested that ANY of her meals could be made into a freezer meal (a meal that you freeze, then dump in the crockpot when you are ready to cook) just by taking the ingredients and putting them into a freezer bag instead of the crockpot.*  

I started researching other pins where people made “freezer meals” in bulk.  In one fell swoop, a person would make 10, 20 or 30 meals in one multiple-hour prepping.

This was a challenge.  And a practical one at that.  

So, I started making my freezer meals.  Here’s what I did:

1. I picked recipes that looked easy, had similar ingredients and included many ingredients I already had.
2. I made a list of the ingredients needed to double or triple those recipes (here’s a list for one of my shopping trips).
3. I went shopping (duh).
4. I chopped and sliced per the instructions for each recipe.
5. I labeled my freezer bags with the title of the recipe, the date and the cooking time required.
6. I sorted my ingredients so that each bag represented one dinner (most of the recipes she uses are for a family of four).
7. Then I laid each bag flat in the freezer (we got a big chest freezer when we had Lucia - it started as a  milk freezer then became a food freezer).
8. When I want to use the dinner, I grab the bag, dump it in the crockpot and turn it on.  When I get home, I make veggies, rice (or whatever starch goes with the meal) and that’s it!

My life has been changed by this  sequence.  So far, I’ve been doing this for approximately nine months and have gone through the cycle above three times. When I come home, I can focus on the little details to make my life easier rather than jumping right into dinner prep.  As a family, we have saved money, learned how to eat around Levi’s food allergies and eaten healthier.  

* Of course, there are some exceptions.  If the recipe calls for something to be added later in the cooking time of the recipe, you don’t put it in the freezer bag.