This One Time I Sort of Became a Cook...

So, I don't have the gift of hospitality. I love having people over for dinner, really love it, but the idea and the implications of COOKING for those people (because when you invite someone over for dinner they sort of come with the expectation that there will be food for them to eat) completely stresses me out. The same for going to someone else's house for a potluck. Love, love going. Complete meltdown when it comes to trying to figure out what to bring. Even the idea of going to the store for chips wigs me out a little bit. There are just SO MANY POSSIBILITIES. Who am I to know whether the gathering would prefer kettle-cooked or Lays or something with artificial cheese?

As Glennon Melton said (www.momastery.com) - "I can do hard things; I cannot, apparently, do easy things."

Trent knew I wasn't a cook when he married me. I had carefully crafted a non-domestic persona. In our first year of marriage we were both in grad school. We lived on ramen noodles and brown sugar cinnamon Poptarts. This we could afford (admittedly Poptarts were a luxury, but family often gifted them to us for Christmas) and this, to me, was cooking.

When Sam came along I went through this organic, healthy food jag and cut out the Poptarts. The problem with organic healthy food is that it typically requires some assembly. Another problem is that children tend to want to eat on a regular basis. Like three or four times a day. EVERY DAY. It's just so draining. I'm pretty good with breakfast (hard boiled egg and fruit) and lunch (sandwich and fruit), but dinners smack me in the face. By five, six o'clock I'm tired and grumpy and the last thing I want to do is to figure out what will satisfy my family's ridiculous need to eat all the time.

So this summer I came across this blog: Easy Summer Freezer Meals. It's all about freeze-ahead meals that GO ON THE GRILL. I LOVE the grill because I cannot for the life of me figure out how to turn it on :) so Trent is in charge of grilling. Bam! Mix up some organic, healthy marinades; zip it in a bag with some organic, local meat; freeze; thaw when ready; hand off to Trent along with a few summer veggies to throw on with it. Perfection! (A problem does arise, however, when I forget to thaw enough in advance. This irritates Trent. This is the reason for the defrost feature on the microwave.)

And then I google searched Freezer Meal Recipes. Did you know there are a whole heckuva lot of meals that you can assemble in advance, freeze and then pop into the over or crockpot. A LOT!

So I did this you guys! It took me two days, five hours each day, gobbling up precious Paul-is-at-camp time, but I ended up with TWENTY-ONE meals. And several of the meals make enough food for leftovers. (I really love leftovers. It's weird, I know, but to me it feels like a freebie meal.)

And guess what? Last week it was my turn to bring food to small group, and I didn't freak out! Because I had Chicken Broccoli Alfredo in the freezer that I could dump into the crock pot and it was enough to serve ten adults plus kids! And guess what else? We're having a teacher potluck on Monday and the hostess asked me if I could bring a casserole or something, and I didn't even hyperventilate once time because I have a Chicken Taco Casserole in the freezer that I can dump into the crock pot to warm up. And it's really good. And serves a lot!

So I may never have the gift of hospitality and I may never quite master a roux or a reduction, but I have Spicy Pork Kabobs and Twice Baked Potatoes in the freezer, and that's all anyone really needs anyway.