Our First Place

Week 20 - Getting ready for his first taste of food

Week 20 - pureed sweet potato with breast milk

Week 21 - 2nd attempt - rice cereal

Week 23 - Pureed Carrots

Week 24 - Pureed Butternut Squash - *DO NOT EVER LEAVE CHILD UNATTENDED ON TABLE. EVER!* Our son was able to launch himself out of the Bumbo so we used it a handful of times and never again anyway.

Week 25 - Watermelon & Melon

Week 28 - Grilled Asparagus - LOVES! This is where food really took off and we gave him lots of food off our plate. He was grasping at our plates.

Week 30 - Green Beans

Week 30 - Avocado - Not a fan of whole avocado but loves guacomole.

Week 30 - Avocado

Week 30 - Bosc Pears and gouda cheese

Week 31 - Pizza! His "first processed food" - He loves to eat. He grabbed the pizza. Picked the cheese off and choved it into his mouth to chew on.

Week 31 - Puffs in DUMBO. Logan had buttery biscuits and brisket!

Week 32 - Corn on the cob

Week 35 - Whole Leaf Spinach and garlic

Week 36 - Pasta - I held off on pasta for a long time because I didn't want him filling his stomach with pasta. I wanted him to experience all the other foods first.

After I had Logan freezer meals were a Godsend especially when I went back to work and my evenings were spent nursing my son. Although I'm no longer nursing, my son is getting more active and I want to spend more time with him and not in the kitchen cooking dinner. Also, some nights are a complete wash for us if we have a doctor's appointment or if we have to run an errand. We still have to go home and put our son to bed and such. It's not like the old days where we had only ourselves to be concerned with. I had severe reflux when I was pregnant so I tried to find recipes without red sauce, cheese, and onions. It was hard! The recipes below contain red sauce, cheese and onion but I use a lot less of it now and we don't eat it everyday.

So here's the quick rough grocery list:
$106 spent at ShopRite (this includes a few "me" items that I didn't use in the freezer recipes like milk pretzels and hummus for my son.

-4 zucchinis
-2 onions
-4 red bell peppers
-2 lg eggplants
-1 bag of whole carrots (cheaper)
-1 bag of spinach
-sun dried tomatoes
-head of cabbage
-1 head of cauliflower (in season and on sale)
-bag of sugar snap peas $5
-1 pk of chicken thighs ~$8
-1 pk of ground beef 80/20 ~$7
-1-48oz pkg of smoke sausage $4.99!

-4 cans of tomatoes (peeled and crushed)
-1 can of black beans, 1 can of chick peas, 1 can of kidney beans
-1 cream of mushroom, 1 cream of chicken
-1 box of lasagna noodles, 2 spaghetti
-4 bags of shredded cheese
-2 cream cheese
-3 cans of artichoke hearts
-jar of already peeled garlic
-jar of sofrito
-jar of salsa
-Asiago and Romano grated cheese
-...and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember/didn't use.

Things I already have:
-salt, pepper, other seasonings, soy sauce, garlic, milk, butter, oil, rice, half a bag of egg noodles, and 8 pcs of pork loin from a previous purchase (buy a whole loin on sale and ask the butcher to slice it up), 2 pks of lo mein ($4).

First, have a plan. I break a list of things I want to eat/cook. That simple. I look to look for new recipes and include the easy staples like spaghetti meat sauce. I break that list up into categories: Beef, Chicken, Pork, and Vegetarian. Then see what is on sale. If chicken is on sale, that's what we're making this weekend. I did a little of everything this weekend because I had it on hand. It gets overwhelming though.

Then think about what order you're going to cook everything that makes sense.

1. Pioneer Woman's Chicken Spaghetti
2. Chicken/Veggie Lasagna
3. Sausage, Okra and beans
4. Meat sauce and all it's variations
5. Vegetarian Chili followed by meat & vegetable chili
6. Chicken/Veggie Lomein

I came home and immediately started cleaning and boiling the chicken thighs. Then I boiled the spaghetti. As that cooked, I cut up and roasted the veggies for the lasagna. Set aside the veggies you want to use in your chili and other recipes. Buy precut if you have to! There's nothing wrong with taking short cuts for this. When I popped those into the oven, I chopped up and threw everything into the crockpot for the pork and beans. I dumped the spaghetti out then boiled more water for the lasagna noodles. The chicken was ready after an hour, allow to cool down a bit in the pot while I mixed the chicken spaghetti ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. I spooned the chicken out of the pot and allowed to cool further. I mixed the lasagna sauce together with the veggies. Then remove the chicken meat from the bones. Mix your chicken spaghetti all together with cheese and put into an aluminum pan for freezing. Then go back to assemble the lasagna. Add chicken if you want a chicken veggie lasagna. Freeze that. Give your sausage and beans a stir in the crockpot.

Take a break. (We went to chop down our xmas tree and took our son to the park.)

I like his pose here. He was exploring the ...whatever this is.

When we came home, I started cooking the ground beef. Normally, I'm really particular about doing this with olive oil, gently simmering the garlic, then letting the onion sweat, a little brown sugar, using chuck meat to start, then adding my ground beef, then mixing it up finely, etc...None of that here today! Oil, garlic, meat, stir. I reserved 1/3 for beef stroganoff. I added eggplant and crushed tomato to the rest. I scooped out 1/2, allowed to cool fully, then froze it in ziploc bags. They are easier to defrost that way. Then I added chili seasoning and beans to the rest. While all that cooked, I assembled chicken and beef burritos in 2 separate trays. They were really easy to assemble and then freeze. I had leftover lasagna noodles so I combined that with some zucchini, pesto (homemade that I keep in the fridge) and sun dried tomatoes and asiago cheese (all ingredients leftover from the creamy lasagna). By now, the sausage, okra and beans were cooked. I poured it into a bowl to cool, while I cleaned out the crock pot. Then I threw in the chopped pork loin and a jar of sofrito. I like adding carrots and onion to it to. Then I made the beef stroganoff with noodles. This microwaves back up easily too.

We went shopping and visited my inlaws in the evening.

Now my memory is getting fuzzy. I tried to think about what else I could do while other stuff was cooking. I cleaned a lot. I got the sausage ready for a batch of sausage and cabbage. I froze peppers and cabbage together for a quick stir fry. When the sausage and beans were cooled, I bagged them up. By night, the pork and sofrito was cooked. I use a potato masher to make shredding easier. Allowed to cool, then spooned into 3 Ziploc bags. Clean the crockpot. Then threw the sausage and cabbage into the crock pot, put it in the fridge. In the morning, I put it on high to cook in the crock pot. Then made chicken lo mein with the remaining chicken from the chicken spaghetti.

I ran out of saffron but I wanted to make a persian dish which is saffron chicken with stewed tomatoes, chick peas and lemon juice eaten over buttered rice. I would have had that cooking when the pork and sofrito were cooking. Because of the holidays, I'm going to keep my eye out for chuck meat or more pork loin. Chuck meat, I'l use for pot roast (goes right into the crock pot). Pork loin, I'll slice for stir fry and marinate for bulgogi! Having pre-cut, pre-marinated stuff ready really helps out the grueling night routine and changes things up if you're sick of eating casseroles, sauces, and crock pot meals.

That's about it. Label everything. Freeze everything flat for easy defrosting. Ask your husband to do the second round of dishes. Have a glass of wine and play with your baby.