Planning Ahead

This past week has been crazy town around our house. I knew it was coming, but I really didn't think about planning ahead. So, a couple of days into the craziness, I decided to take a couple of afternoons and get some major cooking done during the kids' rest time. I hadn't planned ahead a ton, but we had everything on hand that I needed thanks to a recent shopping trip to Trader Joe's and Costco and our weekly CSA basket.

Here's what I got done on the first afternoon:

I combined two pounds of ground beef and one pound of ground italian sausage, along with some garlic pepper seasoning that I recently discovered at the meat counter at Fred Meyer. I made some burger patties for dinner and the rest of the meat was turned into meatballs.

Next up, I made up a batch of Nom Nom Paleo's Grilled Green Chicken -- which was AMAZING! It was incredible. I can't say enough good things about it. It was fabulous.

And here's what it all looked like after it was all cooked and consumed...

Burgers, grilled onions, homemade spicy ginger mayo, avocado, and some roasted carrots.

Spaghetti and meatballs (recipe coming soon!). This was delicious and super quick and easy. And I only used half of the meatballs that I made, so we'll still get another meal out of the rest. I'm thinking kabobs of some kind with some cauliflower rice, but we'll see what I feel like at the time.

Grilled Green Chicken and roasted broccoli.

And then today, I took another couple of hours to get more stuff done.

I hard boiled a dozen eggs, made 4 batches of Blueberry Coconut Muffins (two batches were actually made with raspberries), two dozen mini egg frittatas (just like a frittata, but baked in a muffin tin), a batch of Cheap & Cheerful Chicken, and some bacon wrapped dates just because I felt like wrapping something in bacon. By the time this picture was taken, a few muffins and some chicken had gone mysteriously missing. I put sixteen of the muffins and sixteen of the frittatas in the freezer for a rainy day (coincidentally, it was pretty rainy today around these parts). The eggs and the chicken will get eaten this week for snacks, meals and with salads for my husbands work lunches.

So, there you have it, a little planning ahead -- and a lot of dishes -- and I can kick my feet up and not worry about anything for a few days. Okay, well maybe not, but it will definitely make things easier!