What a 35-week pregnant woman does when she has a day to herself...

COOK! My sister took Evie for the day yesterday, so I decided to just go with my crazy mother-squirrel-nesting instincts and get our freezer full of food.

We spent the month of January emptying our freezer. It felt so good to use food that has been sitting around longer than I would like to admit. And it meant that I didn't have to use as much grocery money this month which is always a plus.

Here's what our freezer looked like before.

This is what I had to work with...
I bought 20 pounds of chicken breast from a farm for a really good price, but I did not realize that it came fully frozen and completely vacuum-packed together so that there is no possible way to just pull out 2 chicken breasts for dinner. I used a ten-pound package last month, so this was the month to finish up the other package. I had to thaw it all, cook it in boiling water, shred or cube it, and then I was able to make 7 unique meals out of it with at least 2 dinners of each meal. For those of you new to shredding chicken, my husband saved me a ton of time and showed me that I can shred chicken with the plastic blade of our food processor. It was so easy and done within seconds as opposed to hours!

With all that chicken I made chicken curry, bbq chicken (for sandwiches), chicken burritos, chicken enchiladas in cream sauce, Italian cream cheese chicken, chicken alfredo, and dijon chicken. Then I made stuffed shells and 3 kinds of cookie dough to freeze. Add this to the lasagna, chili, and enchiladas that I already had in the freezer, and that makes about 23 meals ready to pull out of the freezer, thaw, and reheat. Add a veggie and carb and we're good to go!
The rule is that we are not allowed to touch any of this food until after the baby comes (with the exception of the cookie dough).

Here's what the freezer looks like now.
I'm glad there's still some room in there because in a couple weeks we have 25 pounds of cheese and 12 pounds of butter being delivered. And at the end of March we'll be getting our 40 pounds of beef. I know we're crazy, but somehow the food always fits in here, though I always feel slightly defeated before I start loading up the freezer.

So that is what I chose to do with my day off. And believe it or not, I had so much fun! I just kept the tv on in the background and whipped through these meals as if the baby was coming tomorrow. It's amazing what a little baby adrenaline will do to a woman.
Thank you, Sandy, for the blessing of this day!