Chicken Anyone?

My friend, Ami Peterson, and I are going on two years of making freezer meals together. While it is the next best thing to sliced bread, there is A LOT of work that goes into feeding our families on a budget and saving our sanity at meal times.

Ami does the shopping because she is a control freak and is very good at spotting a bargain. This picture only shows a portion of what was bought.

Ok, let me make this clear. Raw chicken is on top of my "Really Gross Things" list. Having said that, I had to seperate, bag and cook two large boxes filled to the brim with raw, bloody chicken breasts. I can still smell that wonderful smell evertime I see this picture.

Quinn, Ami's husband, was supposed to get us mortician gloves (he is a mortician, hence the access to gloves...), but he FORGOT. I would rather handle a dead body than that box of chicken!! I improvised with a Ziploc bag and a rubber band. Thanks for the help Quinny Poo.

Yep, that's me.

Ami was looking pretty dang cute after shopping for three hours and then unloading groceries, bagging chicken and seperating meal ingredients. Did I mention that this was all happening at about 10 o'clock at night??

We are not against child labor...

What IS Bella doing up?

Day Two.

Browning about 6o pounds of hamburger.

That is a fake smile.

Ok, this is the REALLY GROSS part.

That pan is full of hamburger fat. Fat that we consume!!
This is the very reason I tried to be a vegetarian - for a month.

Ami is still smiling, oh wait. Ya, that's a fake smile too.
Being the crazy girls we are, we decided to go ahead and assemble the meals and cook all the meat a day early - even though we had SEVEN children under the age of five at my house.
I said we were crazy.

We felt that we were teaching our children good values and provident living...

Look! Trey even took notes.

Well, we did have to bribe the kids at one point with popsicles, but thy were very cooperative...

(Am I dreaming?)

Well, for me it was on to Day Three.

I still had six batches of 2x4 soup to make.

I did it, but I wanted to cry - or die - or both.

The Moral of the Story:
Even though it was hard work, I had fun with my fabulous friend, I taught my children a few things about cooking on a budget, and now my two freezers are filled to the brim with food, food, food!! It is well worth the work, but I am wondering if I will ever get that smell out of my house...