I’m calling today’s freezer cooking adventure with the kids a success.
Even though it’s also Laundry Day today.
Even though it was universally decided last night that after nine whole years of never having had a real birthday party, today was the day that our dog MUST have one, which means that she’s queen for the day and keeps getting let in the house, of course heading straight for the kitchen.
Even though I forgot an ingredient for one of the recipes.
Here’s how our day went:
Basically, I was the sous chef. I pre-cooked the bacon in the oven, made sure the kitchen was clean and there were plenty of work spaces available (I was very thankful that the dining table was already decluttered), and gathered the necessary ingredients and supplies.
My oldest (8) made blueberry pancakes. In the plan that I posted last week, I thought that I would have him make muffin-tin-omelets, but last night at the store, I decided to go with the pancakes instead. He had some at his cousins’ house a while back and has wanted more ever since, so I knew he’d be excited to make them. And pancakes are so easy to freeze and then reheat in the toaster, perfect for school mornings.
He did a great job of sticking with his assignment until it was done, even though he was at our too-small griddle for almost two hours. Needless to say, he had blueberry pancakes for lunch.
My 6yo made blueberry baked oatmeal. It is delicious! He did a great job of following the directions, measuring, and being meticulous about sprinkling the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture just right on top.
This was the recipe for which I forgot an ingredient. Somehow, applesauce didn’t make it onto my list. I decided that since applesauce can often be substituted for oil, I could do the reverse of that, but since oil didn’t sound good, I used melted butter. And melted butter can’t hurt anything, right?
For the majority of the time, my 4yo was content to play alone while the rest of us were in the kitchen. But at egg-cracking time, she showed up and was ready to help. Who knew that that child was a champion fast-cracker? She really did have an amazing knack for it, and considering her age . . . the shells-in-the-eggs were fairly minimal. Thankfully, I had extra eggs and secretly cracked a different batch to use in the breakfast pockets. We’ll use hers for omelets tomorrow, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of missing a shell fragment in the time-intensive breakfast pockets.
In the middle of all the “directing” I was doing, I did manage to make the breakfast pockets. They’re perfect for that because there are multiple wait times while making the dough. I had one for my lunch . . . yummm.
It’s not yet 2:00, and we have several weeks’ worth of blueberry pancakes, baked oatmeal, and breakfast pockets in the freezer.
And I’m tired.
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You can see what other bloggers did on their freezer cooking days over at Money Saving Mom.
If you’re wondering about the aftermath of all of this, check out my follow-up post: The Dark Side of Freezer Day: Clean Up.
