Freezer meals...my saving grace

Ok so I love to cook.  I really do.  I love to try new recipes and there is nothing I love more than that moment where you realize it turned out perfectly and may possibly be the best thing ever created! (yes I am that good of a cook...watch your back Martha...but don't stop selling recipes because I need them!)

What I don't like is doing dishes.  I hate dishes.  Cooking from scratch seems to create a lot of dishes, but eating less processed foods is important for our health and our budget so I cook a lot of things from scratch.

This month is going to be a little busy.  First of all we brought home a puppy named Zelda....

Isn't she cute? She was happy to trade in a box with 6 other puppies for the end of a King Size bed.  She has already claimed her spot.  As cute as she is, she is a lot of work, she likes to play and snuggle and she has to be fed 3 times a day, and of course there is the matter of house training.

Then of Course these two little monkey's still take a up a bulk of my day....

not that I am complaining cause they are pretty cute too :)  And they are totally psyched to have a new puppy in the house and nothing is more sad than a sleeping puppy to them, so not only am I working to train the puppy, but I'm training the girls on life with a small puppy...oh and it's about time to potty train Claire too (I see a lot of little messes to be cleaned up in my future).

on top of this Peter has started his second quarter of Grad school and is in class one night a week and doing homework a few more nights a week.   So dinner isn't always my number one priority and I have to admit that on more than one occasion I have served pancakes or had Peter pick up take out on his way home because I haven't left enough time to make something for dinner.

So I decided that this month I wanted to eat less take out and less pancakes and enjoy more balanced delicious meals at the end of the day, but I just don't always have time to do the prep work or clean up the mess.  So this month I am doing freezer meals! I found this post on freezer meals that promised I could have a bunch of freezer meals for cheap.  She recommends a cook book called Don't panic dinners in the freezer, my library had the sequel available so I checked it out.  (I hardly ever buy cookbooks, I always borrow them from the library first and if it is something I have to have then I buy it....hopefully used. My only exception is Martha stewart cookbooks...I love Martha)  So I spent 2 nights cooking and I have about 20 meals prepared.  There are a few more things I'm going to make to finish up a month of meals but I need to organize my freezer first....can you guess which freezer is mine and which one is from the bloggers?  hint... mine is a mess :) I'm posting it to show you that you don't have to be perfectly organized to do freezer meals. ( I subscribe to the just shove it in there and run method of freezer organization).

So bottom line:
1. The meals we have had so far are delicious we have loved everything.

2. I wouldn't call this a cheap method for making dinner but it was about the same cost as my normal "from scratch" groceries. (you can freeze just about anything so you can tailor your menu to your budget if cutting your budget is something you need to do).

3. I have a lot less dishes!  yay!  next time I'm going to avoid the meals that go in the crockpot because I hate cleaning my crockpot, it takes up half my dishwasher so I have to do an extra load when I use it.

4.  We have not had pancakes or take out once...YES!  I simply pick a bag out the night before and then I pop it in the oven or on the stove about half hour before dinner.  It's working great.

Time to go make dinner!

Not so fast

I was pretty excited when I first tried this homemade dishwasher soap 6 weeks ago, but I have steadily become disenchanted with it.  It started with a few dishes being a little spotty and then steadily progressed into not being able to tell the difference between clean and dirty dishes.  This one lasted a long time and if it had actually worked long term it would have been amazing but I've given it all the time I can and now it is time to eat off of clean dishes.

******UPDATE***** I mixed it with water into a paste and used it as cleanser for my tub.  So all is not lost, it works great as a mild bathroom and kitchen cleaner :)