12 Dinners 1 day

Yes you read my title right. 

I made 12 dinners in 1 day.

 Let me start by saying yes I am totally crazy!! I had no idea how much work it would really be. But now that it is done I am so glad that I did it!! I made these a little over a week ago with a new-old friend. I say new because we just reconnected after about 10 years. Old because I went to high school with her and we were in the same youth group together. Even though we knew each other then we were not in the same class so we did not really hang out that much. And about a year ago we ran into each other at church and reconnected. I love how God does fun things like that. Well anywho...she is great. She is all about being thrifty, and crafty, and she loves to read blogs. So I thought she would be a great person to try this adventure of mass meal prepping together with. 

What we did was we got together for a play date one day and we made a meal plan. The plan was to do 14 meals. We got a lot of our idea from a really great blog ringaroundtherosies.com. This site had some really great ideas and all the ingredients and the recipe of how to cook it all.

 And then we added a few of our own ideas.

Then we both went shopping for all our stuff and I met up at her house to put it all together. When we got everything out and had 2 people's 14 meals worth of stuff it was a little overwhelming. 

But we got to work and just tackled it one meal at a time. 

I personally thought it was going to take us about 2 hours to get this all done. Yikes was I wrong!! It took a little over 4 hours and we only did 12 meals. By the time we got to the last 2 meals we were both tired and our kids were getting to the end of their limits of playing. I will proudly say that our kids played so great!! They hardly came into the kitchen and really played well keeping each other occupied. So we decided to call it quits at 12 meals. And on top of that we had so much food we were both concerned on if we could actually get it in the freezer. 

Praise God because when I got home I emptied my freezer out and I got all my meals in there and everything else back in other than rylee's otter pops. And I figured I can just keep a few at a time in there. rather than the whole box that takes up lots of room.

So now on the days when I am super duper busy...like today (work at my church in the morning and then a ministry training class at night with my husband at our church).... I can just pop one of these meals in the crock pot and I know my family will get a healthy meal and I don't have to do anything about it. That makes for one happy mama! 

I can confidently say that I would totally do this again. We learned a lot of things we should NOT do and I think it will go smoother next time. If you have any good freezer crock pot meals feel free to leave a link as a comment. I am always looking for good ideas. And I hope if you try this cooking adventure that you have fun doing it and find success in it too. 

 {Our cute girls who had fun playing while the mama's cooked}