Once a month cooking day (with children:) Part One

Once a month cooking day...I've attempted it solo several times, but this time was different. As I mentioned before, chicken breasts were on sale and I was determined. With this being my first year as a "soccer mom" and school starting, I knew if I wanted to make it through the next few months without pulling all my hair out, I'd have to be on top of MY game, especially where cooking is concerned! Soccer practice is from 5:30-6:30!!! Now when is a mother of five supposed to make and serve her family a hot, delicious and somewhat healthy meal?! So when I saw chicken on sale, I started some intense planning...I even went so far as to defrost and reorganize the freezer, cause this was gonna be a big one!

After scouring my cookbooks and recipes, deciding what and how much I wanted to attempt and making my OAMC plan, I was ready to conquer the grocery store. One problem. My trip kept getting delayed a day and finally, I just HAD to go because it was the last day before the sales changed. So off we go...me, my stack of coupons, 5 children and 2 carts (one being a hard to steer kiddie car cart). Boy, were we a sight! Our trip went pretty smoothly, for several reasons, but mostly because I recently discovered Plan to Eat. This helpful website really simplified and organized my very large shopping list, which cut our shopping time considerably! Click on one of the Plan to Eat links to check out my new favorite thing!!!

Anyway, I digress. We bought almost 12 lbs of chicken, plus I had one small package in the freezer already. Plus we recently bought a quarter of beef, so we had a ready supply available for the meals containing ground beef. Come back in a few days to read the rest of the details on how I (with the help of a few Lil Shoes) made all this...



And this...

and these...plus more!