Freezer Cooking on the Fly

If you give a mom a few minutes...


If you give mom a few minutes of peace and quiet, she will probably get a cup of coffee.
While she is drinking her coffee, she will probably pick up her laptop and check her email.

She will be looking through her email until she reads one reminding her that she needs a dinner plan.
She will then start doing recipe searches based on the few ingredients one generally has after refusing to go grocery shopping for several weeks.

While searching for recipes, she will realize all the meat in the house is frozen, thereby leading her brain down the path of 'freezer cooking.'
So, in an effort to find a complete plan, she will start googling such terms as; once a month cooking, bulk cooking, and freezer cooking.

She will find a plan and decide to print it all out.
While printing, the printer will run out of paper, so the mom goes to the usual spot the paper is kept.

She will find the paper missing. While silently berating her organizational skills, she will go through every last stack of paper and magazines in the livingroom.
When she finally decides that she is out of printer paper, and is having a discussion with herself about whether or not the plan can be printed on construction paper, her 10 year old artist will finally tell her what she did with the paper and the current location of what is left of it.

She will reload the paper in the printer.
After the printing is completed, she will take the grocery lists and look through all the cabinets, refrigerator, freezers, and the pantry and mark off the ingredients she already has.

While doing so, the children will think she is in the kitchen for the sole purpose of making them a snack. The mom will see that it is 11:30 in the afternoon and tell all the children that lunch is on the way.
The two year old will misinterpret this to mean that pizza will be delivered shortly, and announce with glee and sheer delight that she "loves pidda!"

The mom will notice the look of dismay the two year old gives the peanut butter sandwich. Which will remind the mom that grocery shopping does have to occur somewhere in the near future.

The mom will tell the dad that she is going to the supermarket and leaving all the children with him. Because she has left all the children, she view grocery shopping as a leisurely excursion and spend two hours at the grocery store, where she finds that, she can still think in coherent sentences and follow a grocery list.

Because she made such wonderful discoveries, she will decide that she is the supreme - can do it all then help you with yours - mom.
She will decided to start the once a month cooking plan when she gets home. She will not care that it is a Saturday afternoon and the kitchen is a wreck. She is the - can do it all and then help with yours - mom!
She will go home and stand in her kitchen while the children and husband unload the van. She - in her self affirmed stupor- blissfully ignores the chaos around her, not to mention the fact it is 2 in the afternoon and turn the oven on the preheat.

She will NOT unload the groceries. "Why unload the groceries if you are just going to get them all back out?" she thinks.

She gets out the first recipes and starts cooking and assembling. She has to step over several bags.
She decides that having the bags all over the kitchen floor was probably not the best idea. However, she is in a crucial - don't turn away - moment in one of her recipes. She begins to feel the facade of -can do it all and then help with yours - start to crumble.

Panic will start setting in. Because she is not one to panic; she is one to plan, she desperately yells out calls her children, "Get the groceries out of the bags and put them on top of the counter!"

Because the children were in the middle of watching Spongebob Squarepants, and mom is very occupied, the sweet angels will only halfway complete the job. The oldest child will decide to not only help unload the groceries, she will also help put them away.

Mom will notice the actions of the oldest when she has to remove the cream cheese from the hallway closet.
While walking from the closet back to the kitchen, mom will notice the puppy had an accident on the hallway carpet. She will announce this to her husband, who is sitting in the recliner, and continue walking to the kitchen.
Once back at the kitchen, she will notice the puppy is trying to chew through one of the remaining grocery bags on the floor. She kicks at waves her foot around the puppy, while holding a pot of smushy looking chicken, and tries to get husband out of the recliner and into the kitchen to help her.

Husband removes puppy. He is reminded by this action, that this same puppy had an accident on the floor of the hallway. He leaves kitchen to take care of it.
Mom tries not to think about said accident and how long it has been there. She is aware that she is losing control. She is no longer the - can do it all and then help with yours - mom. She is now the - what was I thinking I know better than this - mom.

She starts to feel a strange sensation. It is not her nerves. They are too shot at this point to feel anything. It is the start of a cold. Headache, runny nose, achiness - WHAMO! All at once it hits her. She never gets sick.
(Her husband has wished for her immune system on more than one occasion.)

She frantically starts trying to get everything put away. It is 10 pm and the kids are still not in bed, only one third of the recipes are done, and she is feeling worse by the second.
At 11 pm, the - wilted crazy eyed promise never to talk herself up in the grocery store ever again because in all reality she is just crazy stupid- mom, crawls into bed.

On a good note, she finds an angel to take her Sunday School class of two year olds, and rests up. She is able to complete her cooking day and is now having to resist the urge to gloat over her full freezers everytime she opens them. She finds herself thinking such thoughts as, "It wasn't really that bad" and "I am the most bestest frugalest super mom ever, WOO HOO!"