the freezer

I'm not the best organizer. My mom always told me that was one of the perils of having a creative mind. But I do LOVE it when I can get something nice and neat and in order (for a few minutes at least). I love my freezer, because it is organized (at least for a freezer). Space is at a premium, so here at least everything has its place. A basket for proteins (though my Costco bag of chicken doesn't fit in there, too bad), a basket for veggies, and little containers for treats.

I also love my freezer because it makes it possible for me to virtually skip cooking with a little planning ahead. Hooray! One of my friends posted about freezer meals on facebook the other day and it occurred to me that my stash had run out (which I am sorry to say has lead to us having two pizzas in the past week--that is usually a less-than-once-a-month thing) so I set to work. On Thursday I whipped up 2 meals worth of enchiladas and popped them in the freezer. That felt so good that yesterday I put together 4 meals worth of baked pasta (not yet baked, obviously) and 2 big batches of baby food for Charlie (he tried green beans today and made a VERY good face). Someone at church told me that you can put this stuff in a bag and freeze it flat instead of in a container--it saves so much space!

And, by a brilliant stroke of genius, I made some kid-sized freezer meals. Why did I never think of this before?! No more Cheerios for dinner on those nights when we just can't get it together. I wrapped them in saran wrap (they had pasta sauce in them and that eats through aluminum foil) and froze them in some small glass bakeable pyrex dishes. I'll take them out and put them in a large freezer bag today, but then when I want to bake (or microwave) them I just have to pop them out of their saran and drop them into their perfectly-sized glass bowl.

Oh... There seems to be an almost empty Costco-sized bag of chocolate chips up at the top there... That's weird... I wonder how that got in there?