Cooking for a Month, Take 3

Hello everyone! I thought that I would document and post my third adventure of "cooking for a month"... I tried to take more pictures of the actual process! Yes, it got a little messy! As I was taking pictures at one point, Derek asked if I was actually going to post the picture with the mess in the background. I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess it's an important part of keeping it real, right??

 First of all, this time took 6.5 or so hours in all, although this time it was spread out across the day. I also felt more tired this time because I did nearly all of the cooking and cleaning (Derek was busy with baby-related projects) and because my bump is getting a bit bigger all the time!

I started out by making pizza dough... 

...and chopping vegetables until we had to go to our hospital tour. When we got home, I finished chopping and made a sauce for the lasagna.

While on the other side of the stove I was boiling water for lasagna noodles and sauteing onions for I can't remember what. 

I used the pizza dough to make frozen mushroom and olive pizzas. (I tried one last night and today for lunch... it was great!)

Then I took Layla to the vet. She was NOT happy! Here she is plotting an escape. (She is fine but had a bladder infection! Poor girl.)

When I returned home I assembled mushroom and eggplant parmesan (I had previously dunked the sliced eggplant and mushroom into egg and breadcrumbs and roasted the slices). This was one of our faves from last month! 

I also assembled 2 pans of lasagna...

At this point I had to go BACK to the vet to pick Layla up. (They didn't have enough urine to test at first... I know, TMI!) This was basically "halftime"... I was about halfway done as I had finished enchiladas (no pic... sorry!), lasagna, eggplant and mushroom parmesan, and frozen pizzas.

When I got home, I started on an asparagus risotto (vegan, no butter!) that was super delicious when I sampled it! It has asparagus puree as well as steamed asparagus in it.

I also made Pad Thai (the real thing, I even bought tamarind paste), and chili was going on in back.

On the front burner is onion and asparagus for the asparagus puree. In the back is chili.

While this was going on, I started the batter for zucchini muffins. The pumpkin muffins from last month were very convenient to have around (the quiches were so-so), so I wanted to make some type of muffin that would also be delicious as well as go well with peanut butter. They are so yummy!

There is the cooled off Pad Thai in bags, with rice noodles.

This is the asparagus risotto, all stirred up.

Here is a bunch, not quite all, of the food. From left to right, I see enchiladas (foil covered in the back), frozen pizzas, probably sitting on top of lasagna, in the back middle is the eggplant and mushroom parm, then the Pad Thai, and chili in the containers on the right.

Individual servings of chili, and we also have a few larger containers with 2-4 servings.

Same pile of food, this time with muffins and one of the two risottos. (I made another one with farro and millet, this one with peas, not quite as excited about it but my taste test was promising!)

At this point I was a) tired and b) having trouble operating in the kitchen because there were so many dirty dishes!! I started moving food downstairs, complained to Derek, took Maggie for a walk while he cleaned, and when I got back I had just enough energy left to make this roasted red pepper and artichoke tomato sauce.

Wow! Even the replay makes me exhausted. However, I have already been reaping the benefits through the quick breakfasts I have been enjoying as well as the super easy frozen pizza. Even though I made all this food 5 days ago now, we have just started using it since we were still finishing up everything we looked last month! All in all, the food I cooked last month lasted about 5 weeks and four days!! 

Total grocery bill was under $300, I believe. Let's say $300, give or take. We had a bunch of extra arborio rice and farro... that stuff was super pricey!!

Some things I learned this month: 

- I can make this work with my own recipes (enchiladas this month)... I'll confirm this once we've actually tried the enchiladas. 

- It would be much less annoying if I didn't have a bunch of other things going on in addition to cooking. Need to pick a freed up Saturday! 

- While I am still good with cooking 8 main dishes (8 servings of each), a breakfast (about 24 servings), and a soup in one day, I can also envision a "light" version where you might just do muffins, a soup, and maybe a dinner or two and freeze all of it. That would be enough to just get you through those days when prepping for any one meal is just too time consuming or tiring.