Large scale cooking

Today is my second day on maternity leave. I have had plans of things to do to keep from going insane being cooped up in the house all day. Over the weekend, Mr Kiwi and I went to Costco to buy some ingredients for me to do some massive cooking for freezing and having on hand when I'm too exhausted to even think about what to eat. I bought ingredients for Lasagna, Eggplant Parmesan, and Beef stew. Today (after a mid morning nap) I set on to cooking the lasagna. I cooked everything to the point of assembling it, then instead of in the oven, it went into the freezer for a few hours to thicken up. I then cut it into thirds and each third went into a freezer bag with the cooking time and temperature written on it.

While waiting for the lasagna to freeze, I started the eggplant parm. I had to wait until I transferred the lasagna before I could assemble the eggplants, since 1. My freezer is small and 1/2 of it is absorbed by an ice maker that does NOT work, and 2. I wanted to reuse the same pan since I was making enough mess with dishes anyhow.

I had plans to also do the beef stew today, but because of the freezer size (I want everything to cool flat as long as possible before I tilt them at funky angles) and the fact that my feet and lower back are pretty sore, I think that will be saved for Thursday.

I feel pretty good knowing that no matter when the baby comes, I won't have to worry about what to eat. I'll have at least 3 meals ready to go and all I'll have to think about is what sides to make. I feel pretty accomplished knowing that I'll have a couple of weeks' worth of meals already ready to go.

I've also finished another soaker since the last post, and am half way through another one.

October post!

Okay, so it seems as though I haven't had a "real" update in a while. So this is it! In all of it's October glory. Last weekend.. as in the last weekend that I was concious (note: October 12-16 2006 does not exist in my life since I was not here for it) Mr A and I went out to find a pumpkin patch and to do the search for Pumpkins, play, and poke at cute little farm animals thing. It was a huge success. We found pumpkins, two of which I made into a pie ALL from scratch, including the crust. Mm! The first image is clearly the pie mush going into the crust, and the second is the first slices after coming out of the oven.


You can kinda see how there was more filling than space in the crust buuuuut I made it fit. :o) Mr A is spoiled for only having ever had my homemade pumpkin pies that he is scared to try store bought pies. I love the fall season specificall for the fact that I can make yummi warm foods such as these. Oh, and this year's pie came out slightly better than last year since previously we did not have a blender. Yeah, go ahead and contemplate that scenario.

I have also been knitting up a storm on my Boise shawl. The photo is what it looked like about this time last week. I was nearing the end of my second ball. Now, I am about the same place in my third ball. I was making good time and really chugging forward, aside from GIANT mishaps yesterday. I spent about 4 hours trying to figure out where I made a mistake and how to get back to it to fix it. But the problem is now solved! So the only way to go from here is up! Or forward.. And I must say that with my last week (that one that didn't exist, remember?) one of the things keeping me sane was knitting. While I was inable to move and barely able to stay awake for longer than 1.5 hours at a time, it made me feel really good to feel like I was accomplishing something and making progress somewhere. Knitting, you are my best medicine.
Happy October, everyone :o)