addiction

Today was the kick off for Women's Bible study at the church we've been attending. And I kid you not, my second sentence in the introduction of myself to the group was "I'm addicted to Pinterest."

While I paused and listened to their giggles I thought Really - of all the things you could have just said, THAT is what you chose?! Wow.

Yeah, so the first 20 seconds went a little (read EXACTLY) like this "Hi, my name is Amanda Hopkins and I'm addicted to Pinterest." Winning right there...

But since this is the topic I'm on today, I'll share another object I'm addicted to, my slow cooker. I think I've been cooking with it for 2 months straight (not a joke. the last time, aside from yesterday, that I used my oven was in July when I made some food for the guys who came to play poker with the hubby). I haven't attempted bread in it yet, but I've made breakfast and dinner (we eat left overs for lunches) and tonight (crosses fingers) Cousin and I will make dessert in it (we're seriously having a REALLY hard time deciding on what to make). UPDATE - we didn't do slow cooker, we did this instead.

I've been reading a lot about the Once a Month Mom. If you've never heard of them, go check their website out. The gist is to do all your shopping, prepping, cooking in one day and have your meals for the month. I think the theory is fantastic - because I love to find ways to save time and money - but I'm not sure the logistics work for me and mine just yet. I don't want to spend my Saturday (while hubby is home to help with cutie-pie) in the kitchen - I want to spend it with them. And, I'm pretty sure my freezer would have a conniption fit...

Anyhow I seem to have found a happy medium, something called Slow Cooker Freezer Meals. I stumbled upon this blog through Pinterest (of course), and it's one of my favorites. It's pretty similar to OAMM, who also has freezer meal plans, but I thought that these recipes were more along the lines of things we would eat.  And I love that after slicing and dicing and bagging for a couple hours you have complete meals that just need to be thrown into the slow cooker.

So yesterday I decided to knock out a bunch of Pins at once... Cutie-pie and I got out of the house before 9am (which is great for us) and headed to the Commissary. We would have been out the door and on the way to the gym for BodyFlow but there was only one register open and 5 people in line. So we scratched the gym for the day and headed home for nap time and prep. While it took me longer than I was expecting (2.5 hours) I did get 6 recipes arranged and in the freezer! That means 12 meals are ready for my slow cooker and I only spent $136. YOWZA!

Here are the two links I used;

http://mamaandbabylove.com/2011/04/05/freezer-cooking-with-slow-cooker-recipes/

http://mamaandbabylove.com/2011/09/06/orange-beef-stew-chicken-n-cherries-french-beef-dip-slow-cooker-freezer-meals/

It wasn't pretty - lots of food, lots of prep, lots of dishes - but all easy, and hopefully very tasty!

I thought that was a lot of work, but then cutie-pie woke up and wanted to help, so we decided to bake some cookies. =)

And they were YUMMY! Cousin and cutie-pie and even hubby have been eating on them all day! And then there was one last recipe to make... had to cover breakfast... not really sure about the consistency, but the flavors were really yummy.

That wraps up my addiction for the day... I'm still not sure how I got all that done yesterday, cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed the house, and washed the floor (this "recipe" btw is great - but my knees really hurt by the time I was done). 

I'm up past my bed time again - so I'm going to sign off for now. Tomorrow cousin, cutie-pie and I are heading to Hancock... brace yourself (and someone hide my cc!)... although I might need to finish up the projects I have started before I begin another...