Brittany 1, Kitchen 0

I win.

It took two days, a total of 12 hours of blood, sweat, but no tears. I might have dirtied every pot, pan, spatula, spoon, and fork we own. Diva baby might have flipped her little baby lid 18 times, but I did it.

There are now enough frozen meals in my freezer for every weekday for the next four weeks.

(!!!!)

I would have kept going, but I ran out of room in the freezer. I learned the hard way this morning about cramming too much crap into your freezer. Have you ever had two pounds of frozen chicken and soup fall onto your bare foot from three and half feet up? It really effing hurts.

Now that I have my first victory at freezer cooking under my belt, I feel much more confident that I can pull it off in less time next month. Maybe even in ONE DAY.

One important lesson learned and retained for next time: it's all about logistics. Chop, measure, label, and store as many ingredients as you can beforehand so you know what's going into what dish and how much is supposed to go in. I chopped a lot of my veggies, measured them, and threw them in labeled bags the night before, but measuring out my dry pasta and sauces would have been super beneficial, too.

I wish I had taken pictures of all this. I am just so damn proud of myself.

Seriously, $250.00 in groceries (and not all of it for these dinners!) made enough food for us to eat Monday through Friday, for four weeks.  FOUR WEEKS. I can hardly wrap my brain around it. I say screw the weekends; most of the time we eat out, order take-out, or have dinner with friends and family on Saturdays and Sundays anyway.

This means I only have to go grocery shopping once a month. I used to go twice a month and spend at least $200 each time. That's at least $400 a month. This is monumental for me.

If anyone is interested, I highly suggest you check out Once a Month Mom. It's my new go-to site. This blog provides you with recipes, shopping lists, and a conversion spreadsheet to tweak your recipes to fit how many people you'll be cooking for (I'm swooning just writing this). Whole foods recipes, vegetarian recipes, it even has recipes for homemade baby food, which I am so stoked to try out since I'll be starting Peyton on solids soon enough (MY BABY IS SO OLLLLD SHE'LL BE WALKING SOOOOON). Seriously, LOVE.

Princess Peyton decided that she was up for the day at 6:00 AM and would not nap and just wanted to eat and be fussypants (Three-month growth spurt? When do these things stop happening? When she's 27?) all day long, so this mama is tired. I cannot wait to faceplant on my bed.