Reviews are coming in...

Wow, ok - so in the past few weeks we've all begun to sample our freezer/crock-pot meals and I think it's safe to say some are better than others. Disclaimer* our crock pots vary, as do the hours these babies cook while we are at work as well as how we serve the dishes. I'm going to start the reviews with the Chunky Beef Stew since Shawn & I just had this tonight. We enjoyed this meal and so did one of our other "chefs".  Now as I mentioned in a previous post that we like to cook, we like to add a twist to conventional fare and experiment in the kitchen.

This morning I placed the beef stew slush in the crock pot. A little background on this particular crock pot - it is straight from my mother in law's kitchen circa 1975. The stew cooked on low from about 8AM - 6:30PM (all of these recipes call for cooking on low 6-8 hrs). The stew was runny when I got home but the potatoes were cooked through. "P" had issues with the potatoes being a little tough so make sure when preparing you cut them thick enough that they won't disintegrate but small enough that they will fully cook. The original recipe didn't give any direction on the potatoes. I added the stew to a pot on the stove and thickened with cornstarch/beef broth. I will mention that I also removed the potatoes. These crock pot meals have needed some sprucing up, we've tried a few and none have really impressed. One way I can ALWAYS get the hubs to eat foods is to make mashed potatoes with the meal...I also feel like I'm kind of contractually obligated to make mashed potatoes for Shawn once a month since he got me the kitchen aid diva mixer for Christmas ;). Cooking Light mag inspired us to add some sautéed kale and green onion to our redskin mashed potatoes (NF organic milk/butter/salt).

Our meal was delish! I really liked the flavor of the stew, we both did, the tomato base with the spices worked well and the kale mashed potatoes finished it perfectly. There may be no serving beef stew without them in my future. The best part - plenty of leftovers so I get at least one night off this week. Attaching a photo if the recipe from whoneedsacape.com and a photo of our creation which will go into the recipe box. This recipe was made even simpler by buying pre cut stew meat from my
favorite discount grocer. We also did not brown the meat prior to packaging - just kind of threw everything in the freezer bags! Win!

Selling out with the Slow Cooker

Shawn and I have been married for about 5 1/2 years, together for 10, we have no children but two hectic work schedules and some after hours things that keep us on our toes - for him a tax business, for me licensing studies and my love-hate relationship with all things gym/work-out related.
We live in a house with NO dishwasher - yes you read that right, and we cook every night. I don't mean I throw together some Hamburger Helper (no offense if that's where you're at) but we prepare homemade meals that are not processed every. night. Some nights are easy, throw a chicken breast on the grill, make a salad and cook up some spiced couscous - other nights I feel as if every pot in the kitchen is used and its 9PM until I finally sit down.

Some friends and I decided we would try a meal making day - you know a poor man's version of Let's Dish or Dream Dinners. And we would further simplify by making them all crock pot meals!
Now I will say that my husband strongly dislikes the crock pot - I don't know if there was some childhood trauma or the sous chef in him (from his college days) is just totally turned off by the laziness of the thing...but he reluctantly agreed to go along with this experiment.
I'm going to give some credit to the group of women over at whoneedsacape.com for coming up with the idea of 40 meals in 4 hours. "C"stumbled upon this blog post and we ran with it.
Now these ladies REALLY took away a lot of our leg work - selecting recipes (hopefully testing them out) and creating a master shopping list.  All good things can be made great though, right?

Because we like to go big and make everything a social event - instead of one person making 40 meals, how about four people make 80 meals? What on earth could go wrong? Just made sense - no one has enough freezer space for 40 meals and what if they are awful? Who wants duplicates - not us!
So "C" and I  - the organizers of the bunch - decided that we would go shopping for everyone and "L" & "P" could just reimburse us. We would take the master shopping list provided by the gals at WNAC and get it done after our Saturday AM kickboxing class. After a quick review of the list as we sipped our post work-out lattes we noticed our first hint of trouble...pantry items - jalapenos? Who keeps jalapenos as a staple? Also - amounts/measurements of spices and sauces were conspicuously absent as well (and we were doubling everything!)...with no time to review each recipe with a fine toothed comb we had to roll with it. Some awesome things about these recipes 1) they are mostly healthy 2) they are super inexpensive - roughly $6 per meal per family - yes way! 3) they are so easy some ladies full of pinot grigio can prepare them. 

Ok - so meal making day arrives and we are loaded up with canned vegetables, sauces, meats and produce. Everyone was asked to bring some spices (again, from the list of pantry items since we were flying blind), knives, and cutting boards. Here's what we would also include in our list of to do's if we are/were to attempt this again and/or if we were advising others: 

1) Everyone bring a can opener - the more pop tops you can buy on your shopping list - the better!
2) Everyone bring soy sauce - good god there was a lot of soy sauce...make it low sodium while you're at it
3) Compare the master shopping list with the recipes and then compare the list to your cupboards. I know it's a pain in the a$$ but it will save you time and money in the long run.We found ourselves without Island Chicken and Orange Chicken because the MSL instructed us to buy meats by weight but the individual recipes were for numbers of drumsticks or chicken breasts.
4) You don't need that many diced tomatoes - we had a shit-ton leftover -we still don't know where they got those figures...
5) Better buy the gallon freezer bags 
6) You're going to need more wine
7) You're going to need longer than 4 hours, take your time and enjoy yourselves - cheers!

Next post - some recipes and reviews as we all start to sample our handiwork!

Here's what -

I'll start this blog post by stating that I'm NOT training for a 1/2 marathon! Woo....
We ARE doing the Color Run in Hershey, in June, and it's a 5K so I'm not looking for a ton of inspiration at this point. After the Gettysburg 1/2 - which was a disaster - I pretty much hung up my Brooks running shoes, my waistline can attest to that. After a gnarly ankle sprain in NOLA (on Bourbon might I add) last year, I thought my oft injured ankle was toast and my running days may be behind me altogether. In the year plus since my last blog I've slowed down, um, not at all! I've managed to pass my PA Life Accident & Health Insurance exam, travel...a lot, entertain and laugh...a lot, work 40+ hours every week, hold down the fort at home...oh and QUIT SMOKING! For real this time, I'm nearly 4 1/2 mo. in (can I also blame this for some of the weight gain?!).

I'm in the process of studying for my general securities licensing exam -  the dreaded Series 7, would love to shed some lbs and get a more regular work out schedule. So yes - I'm still, in essence, Running on Empty and thought perhaps you'd like to follow along :). In all seriousness, my main motivation for returning to the blogosphere is that some friends and I literally spent all of yesterday doing a meal planning day. Myself and two other working women (one a mother of 4 1/2 yr old), doing their best to balance it all, and one retiree who just wanted to try something new. We live in a world full of blogs, Pinterest pins, google searches, etc. What if I/we tried the things that you've been meaning to try - work the bugs out and report back? Sound good? Will try to give a play by play on the meal making day later this week - should have some recipe reviews (kid reviews?) as well. I'm hoping to have guest bloggers and make this as interactive as possible.

Is there a recipe you've been wanting to try but didn't want to waste your time or money without some more reviews (lets try to keep them semi healthy)? How about Pinterest? Is there a particular craft or idea that you think just can't be as easy as @MsPerfectMom1 is making it look? All of those Facebook recipe shares - does anyone really make those things? Why don't you send it my/our way  - this could be fun...