At one point during the conversation the man's wife commented, "I can't imagine how you feed them all [your kids]." I replied, "Well, I cook big." Really, I come by it pretty naturally. When Matt and I were first married, I consistently and notoriously made too much food. That's just how I was used to cooking. All those summers cooking on the farm, I guess. I've finally reached the point in my life where my cooking big tendencies are actually a plus.
I've always wanted to get into the Once A Month Cooking thing, but I've never gotten off the launching pad with it because it just takes too large of a chunk of time to put together 30 meals in one sitting. Instead, I double (and even quadruple) recipes as I'm able and stash the extras in the freezer for another day.
Taco soup, enchiladas, pizza dough and sauce, spaghetti sauce, chicken broth, muffins, quick breads, waffles, french toast, pancakes, roasted shredded chicken and browned hamburger are all things that I freeze regularly.
I have added two new elements to my cooking routine this year. One is the lunch time burrito. I've been making these in big batches and freezing them in zip lock bags. The kids can grab one and nuke it for their noon meal if they don't like the leftover choices of the day or they don't want pb & j. I just cook a big batch of pinto beans in the crockpot all day, then brown up a couple of pounds of hamburger with taco seasoning and mix the beans with the meat. I then spoon the mixture onto large flour tortillas, add a little shredded cheese and roll them up. I flash freeze the burritos on a cookie sheet before transferring them to zip lock bags. Viola! Our own convenience food.
The other item I've added to my cooking routine is a big Sunday breakfast. I've found that if the kids' stomachs are good and full before church (especially since late service runs past our normal lunch time), they behave much better during the service. So on Saturday night I preassemble and egg casserole or an overnight french toast and put some sausage or bacon in the fridge to thaw so it's ready to be cooked on Sunday morning. If I decide to make pancakes or waffles, I'll assemble the dry ingredients the night before so that all I have to do is add the wet team in the morning. I always quadruple waffle, pancake and french toast recipes.
For example, this morning I made my dad's buttermilk pancake recipe. I used a whole half gallon of buttermilk, eight eggs, eight cups of flour and two sticks of butter. We ate some of the pancakes along with eggs and sausage this morning. Some of the pancakes will be stored in the fridge to be used for breakfasts this week. (We'll spread peanut butter on them to add some protein). The rest of the pancakes will be stored in the freezer and I'll pull them out in a couple of weeks for another week of easy breakfasts.
Matt bought me a huge electric griddle for Christmas. Most wives would have thought this was a really tacky gift, but I actually wanted it. Now we can use our old stove top griddle in conjunction with the new griddle and empty a big tupperware bowl of pancake batter in no time (well, sort of). Same goes for french toast. I'm considering getting another waffle maker for the same reason.
If Matt is the one doing the pancake flipping, he always uses the last of the pancake batter to make a giant pancake. It's hard to tell from the picture, but this one is the size of a dinner plate. It took two spatulas to flip it. Since Matt is the Daddy, he gets the privilege of eating the Big Daddy pancake.
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