Anyway, I bought some sweet potatoes at Aldi on Sunday - $0.75 for each 3 lb. bag. I couldn't pass it up! So I got two bags and boiled both of them today. One I peeled (after boiling) and sliced and then candied and stuck in a glass pan in the fridge for attention later. The other I peeled and mashed and stuck in another glass pan for later. I want to make streusel toppings for both and then bake and freeze them. I love sweet potatoes and, with as much extra stuff as I've added, I'm sure Josh will thoroughly enjoy them, too. I also made a huge batch of pancakes. I meant to make a small batch, but I didn't check the recipe first and ended up doubling the flour and, too late, figuring out that I needed to double everything else too. ;-) Mary ate them, but Felicity wasn't a fan - maybe she was full from the grilled cheese sandwich I made her.
Let's see, my only other accomplishment of the day was loading and unloading the dishwasher. I washed a few dishes, but my counter is still piled. :-P I think if I load the dishwasher, it shouldn't be too difficult to wash the rest of the dishes, but I have to work incrementally and sometimes I just have to stop and remind myself that the reason I'm at home is my little girls, not so that I can be an awesome domestic. :-P Oh, I also got a small crock pot of pinto beans cooking. I love cooking them this way! It's a small crock pot and cooks a perfect amount of beans for us to eat before they spoil. Plus, it's easy to wash. The big crock pot is a pain and so I tend to put off washing it, which means there's a bunch of extra space used on my counter when I try to use it. Plus, I have to figure out how to fill it up to make it worth using. I'm telling you, a small crock pot is the way to go - at least at this point in my life. And cooking dry beans this way is a snap. Into the crock pot with the water and seasonings, I turn it on high, and by lunchtime tomorrow, I'll have beans ready to mash or eat whole. It's wonderful!
So tomorrow I will make streusel topping and bake the sweet potatoes. I'll mash the beans, most likely, and serve them with some taco meat and other taco fixings. Well, that's what I'll eat, anyway. I don't know what Josh will eat. I have turkey ham, so he could have sweet potatoes with turkey ham and some green beans. Or I could send those things to work with him. I guess we'll see what interests him. Lately, I've been trying to do more batch cooking and freeze things in serving-size portions. I am finally able to pull off fairly instant meals. And it makes it easier for me when I get hungry, because I can just heat and eat instead of having to go through some elaborate process. It's like borrowing time when I have it for later when I don't. I realize now that my big hangup with freezer cooking had a lot more to do with trying to plan on "meals" instead of on just having individual servings available, set up for flexibility. Like, I bought some beef rib meat (not on the bone) and didn't know quite how to cook it. So eventually I just through it in a frying pan, browned it on all sides, and finished cooking it in the oven. Then I sliced up the meat and froze it in little baggies. I used on baggie of meat for making beef and broccoli today - it was perfect.
Now, I have browned hamburger in the freezer to use with Hamburger Helper type meals. And I have taco meat all ready to go as well. These are things I know we like to eat, so now I've just reduced prep time to very little for several meals. Recently, I also made a decent sized batch of twice-baked potatoes. I didn't have bacon bits for them, so they were a little disappointing, but they were still quite yummy. I baked the potatoes with salt on the skin.
I'm talking about food. That might be lame. But there's not a whole lot else I do. Well, that's not true. I care for two young children and read about psychology and theology. LOL! Somehow, talking about food is easiest, though.
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