Freezer Cooking!!!

It has been the week for freezer cooking! I think Mike smoked some chicken thighs for me last Thursday so I could shred and freeze it, then I got some chicken tenders that were on sale the other day and just diced and cooked them on the stove top. I have plenty of chicken now for meals for the month, which I love! Then Wednesday I froze some green beans out of the garden for dinners. That same night I made up some salsa, we love salsa at our house! Thursday I did some more green beans for the freezer as well as pinto beans for the freezer to make refried beans or just add to taco dinners.

Today I had my wonderful friend Kami over to bake with me. I needed to make a potato salad for the ward campout tonight, so I didn't get more beans done like I was hoping, but Kami made some very yummy, EXTREMELY easy pumpkin cookies (they have 3 ingredients), I cooked my potatoes, and then made pumpkin bars and monkey bars that smell great! I got the recipe from the Utah Deal Diva, who got it from Woman's Magazine. They are very easy to make and I plan to freeze them and pull them out before the kids get home to give them as their after school snack. Love it!

Next I plan to do more pinto and black beans, breakfast sandwiches, and "pop tarts" from the Utah Deal Diva. I also plan to start making actual freezer meals soon to. I would love to do a freezer meal swap as well with friends and neighbors. That way we all make a little, but leave with some great variety! So much fun!! I have done this in the past with my mother-in-law and sister-in-laws and have enjoyed it. Here is a picture of the pumpkin bars:

sorry, the picture turned out weird...

Hello, Hello my wonderful friends!

Wow, what a week, I have been wanting to post all week but have been so busy! Wednesday was the first day of school for my kids! YAY! It was a very wonderful day! So quiet, for the most part, my kindergartener doesn't start until Monday, but he is pretty quiet.

I decided that I need to start a new goal for some cleaning in my house. My aunt told me about a website that helps you clean. Not literally, but they help you organize your life and your cleaning. The first thing that she tells you to do is to shine your sink. When your sink is shined you don't want to dirty it again. She then says to not let it get dirty, so no dishes piling up in the sink. She even says to put a bucket under the sink to have family members put their dirty dishes or put them directly into the dishwasher. So I started this endeavor and I want to share with you how happy I am that my sink is clean! I told my hubby that night that I don't think my kitchen has been this clean since we moved in! So as embarrased as I am to show you this, I have pictures to show and prove that this can be done. This is what my kitchen looked like before the cleaning:

As you can see, I have just STUFF all over every inch of counter space, including school supplies, fruits, veggies and many dirty dishes. I don't know how things can get so out of control so quickly. It doesn't take long at my house. I decided to start by actually doing my dishes and putting away items that don't belong in the kitchen, like the school supplies. I made it through all the dishes and had the kitchen looking pretty nice, then I decided to use the dehydrator and dry some zucchini that my parents brought me. I made some zucchini chips to eat with dip, very yummy. I also had a box of tomatoes, pictured above, that were ripe and needed to be made into salsa, so I made two small batches of salsa this day as well. I did a lot that day and only ended up sitting down for about 20 minutes total all day, I stayed really busy and felt great! I also made biscuits and gravy for dinner, with homemade biscuits, so I dirtied and cleaned many times that day. But at the end of the day, my kitchen looked great and I was so proud of myself!

I did have my dehydrator out still, drying zuchini and the fruit bowl on the counter, but otherwise very clean, especially for my kitchen. If you are at all interested in how to start your cleaning habits and goals, check out flylady.net that is where I got my inspiration for keeping my kitchen clean, now on to the rest of the house!