Clean Out, Plan & Prep Day A.D.D. Style

This is me.  On the way to a date night with my hubby, which is why I look nice, as opposed to right now when I'm in boxer shorts and a big old long sleeved shirt because SOMEONE keeps forgetting to do laundry.  And my hair is combed and not sticking up like it is right now because I keep forgetting that I'm looking for a comb when I come out of the bathroom.

Well, today turned into a clean out and prep day.  Byn style.  Which means it probably took a lot longer than it should, and that varying amounts of things got done as I got distracted throughout the day.

So, I sat down to check my email and got hungry instead.  So I decided to plan out a meal I could blog, then I would cook it, then eat it whilst I blogged.  Then I realized that I didn't know what we had on hand already, so I got up and went into the kitchen.  Then I decided that iced tea sounded good for some reason and went back to bed with my ice tea, and saw my email up that I was in the middle of ("Hey Honey, what do you want to eat this week, 'm trying to plan out meals  and thought I'd check our freezers first...")

So yeah, off to the kitchen again, amazingly enough, this time I remembered what I was gong there for.  A quick peek told me that our freezers were stuffed full of a lot of food that I hadn't even taken stock of in months.

So I started cleaning out the freezer and realized it might be nice to have a list of everything, so I got my son to finish cleaning out the freezers whilst I went looking for something to make a list with.  Its amazing that in a homeschooling house that I can never find a writing utensil.  I found the books I was looking for before Art class on Thursday and started organizing my art suitcase... oh wait, freezers.

We're being organized this time.  Prepared meats on the top, uncooked shelf 2, veggies on the bottom.  Fruits, broths and prepped veggies & beans are in our other freezer.

So, back to the kitchen and my list.  We found a bunch of ground beef, a bunch of chicken breasts and a bunch of flank steak that a local farmer gave us... so I went ahead and started cooking it.  I figured we always use meats chopped, sliced or otherwise small pieces to make it stretch further, since we're on a tight budget.  I threw the ground beef in the stock pot, the chicken breasts in a skillet and started slicing the flank steak.

Then I realized that this might make a good, inspiring post for my blog.  Maybe you need to clean out your freezer?  I definitely need to stay on top of my freezer meals.  I was almost ill over the amount of things that had to be tossed because they were unrecognizable/not labeled/covered in freezer burn.  I always have the best of intentions, but then we get in a hurry and get busy and just toss something on the stove.  So, for the rest of the month, these are my new goals to help use up our freezer food:

• Cook a bag of frozen veggies to have as a side dish for two meals a day (Or add to soup/entree)
• Make meal plans for using the ALL of the chicken & beef in the freezer before the end of the month. *Yes, my peeps, that means that there aren't going to be any variations on that theme other than my one pork and one fish based dish for the next two weeks!
• LABEL FOODS when we freeze them.  EVERY TIME.  I don't care if I have to duct tape a sharpie to the underside of a cabinet where the kids won't find it, I will get better about this.
• Make some meal plans using chili & prepped kidney beans, Navy beans and chickpeas

There, aren't you proud of me?  All that work accomplished with very little distrac... oh crap.  I actually came out the first time to start the laundry that my husband asked me to PLEASE do today...  Bye!

Okay, so over the last HOUR I sat down here at least 6 times to finish this post with photos and realized that I didn't have my camera.  So I would get up looking for it, remember I had laundry to start/trash to toss, kids to boss around or some other thing... then I would sit down again to realize I never had found my camera.  Then I remembered that the first time I got up, it was to make use of the green beans from the freezer that had been left opened in hopes that they could be salvaged.

Sorry for the lack of photos... but here is something I'm hoping to make use of this month.  I've read about them, but have never tried them.  They appeared in my local grocery store, so I bought some to try... any tips or experience with them (other than Chia Pet stories?)

Remember, this all started because I got hungry.  The PLAN for today was to make muffins. And bread. Sigh.