I am not what one, under any circumstances, would call a good cook. I'm not completely without skills and did manage to keep my family fed, but it wasn't pretty. For me, the major product of cooking is not food,but rather, a mess. No dishwasher (never have had one) and a small kitchen make that mess hard to ignore, and believe me, I've tried. Amazing Husband is a better cook, and an overall better (less picky) eater than I am and does more than his share of the cooking and dealing with the mess. Along with the cooking and the mess, we also have an issue of having
too much left over and then a freezer full of stuff we never eat. I
never really transitioned from cooking for 4, plus whomever else showed up at
the table (usually boys who eat mass quantities without much care for
what it is) to cooking for just the 2 of us.
We say again and again that we need to become more organized with our meal planning, preparing, and storing. Neither of us are big on the resolution, but this new year we've decided to take a slightly different direction. In one of my moments of cookbook fascination I purchased the book "Don't Panic - Dinner's in the Freezer". The idea here is that take a day, do a mass cooking of favorite dishes, and then freeze. Dinner planning rolls around and all you need do is pull it out, defrost, and cook. Viola! Dinner. It has some great ideas for the freezing process along with some lovely recipes...which generally serve six with the calculations to increase that number. You get the idea.
I like the mass cooking idea, but for now we are taking whatever we are making for dinner, cook it for six, pop enough for the two of us in the oven and put the rest in a freezer bag. Last night was our first go with beef stew. There it is, in all it's gelatinous glory. Next time stew comes up on the menu we are covered. Should work equally well for lots of our favorite meals. I think we may be on to something! There is still the small matter of the mess, but every light bulb moment has a few dark areas.
Heading out now to the doctor for the latest lung report. I think progress is being made, though slowly. I must work on patience. :-)
