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I'm realizing today that staying up until almost midnight cooking is probably not something I should do regularly. Getting out of bed this morning was so hard. But on the up side, I do have 6 meals in the freezer. So that's a pretty big win. And I made homemade pita chips. Where have these been all my life??
They are so much more affordable and better than store bought. And so easy to make! I just cut up pitas and painted them with some olive oil that I'd mixed various spices into, then baked for about 10 minutes. AG helped paint them and she loved it. I even made some special for me that I painted with a mixture of melted butter, vanilla extract, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar. They did not last long. Part of this cooking extravaganza was making pizza crusts. AG was a bit helper with this. She loved getting her hands (and nose?) dirty and helping kneed the dough.
Then she sat in front of the oven and watched it rise for several minutes. I had pita chips baking in the top oven so I put the dough in the lower oven (turned off) to rise because it was slightly warmer than the rest of the kitchen.
All in all, it was a long process but I was really energetic and the cooking was fun and oddly soothing so it felt like it flew by. I watched some Friends and The Office on Netflix while I was cooking and that made it even more enjoyable. If only I had a cleaning crew to follow me around, it would be perfect.
Having the kitchen and living room all one big open space sure was nice when I was the last one awake and I could use the big TV while cooking instead of the iPad.
My quest to remove unhealthy things from our food is going well. Baby steps. One baby step at a time. Today I have officially left coffee creamer in my past. I now use natural raw cane sugar and half & half. I do intend to slowly cut back on both of those as well but this one step is a big one. I loved my creamer but reading the ingredients made me cringe. I love the Coffee Mate Natural Bliss kind but it's so expensive and it's basically cream and sugar anyway. This new method is both healthier and less expensive. Win win. OH and it tastes good too! Win win win! I thought of something exciting while surfing Facebook yesterday... I'm a "blogger" (the quotes are because I don't feel like I am in any way a "real" blogger, but in this case I need to pretend.) so I have an actual excuse reason to decorate for Christmas early! Like, before Thanksgiving! However, I do have standards and if it doesn't cool off and get to a temperature that I deem "downright chilly" then I can't in good conscious decorate for Christmas. But you better believe that once it happens I will not hold back. We are going to be in full on deck the halls mode. The blogger reason for this is that I might have Christmas decorating ideas that you (my loyal readers - Hi Mom!) would like to emulate and you'll need ample time to do so. This is probably more applicable to "real" bloggers with lots of readers but I'm going to take full advantage and just go for it.
Have you ever prepped several meals at one time for the freezer? I'd love to hear about your experience. I'm always looking for new ideas.
