All I Did Was Shop & Cook

Remember I decided yesterday that I needed to start back up Investment Cooking so I sorted out eight recipes and made a shopping list. It was a long list. Off I went to the grocery this morning and look at what I brought home. Five bags full! I spent almost $129 but there's a lot of meat, fresh veggies, and canned goods in those bags. I put it all away, had lunch, and got started cooking.

First I made Sesame Ground Chicken from thepounddropper.com. The original recipe only made four servings and I need at least six so I thought I'd make a batch and a half. But I could only buy ground chicken in one pound packages so it made sense to just double the recipe and make eight servings. So that's what I did. Then I cooked up a couple cups of brown rice so that I could scoop 1/3 cup into little Glad containers, top it with the Sesame Chicken, and slide it into the freezer. I've never made this before. I hope I like it. It's supposed to have green onion and sesame seeds garnish but I didn't think that the onion would survive the freezing. It's supposed to taste like Sesame Chicken from an Asian restaurant. It won't have that distinctive sticky coating but I'll bet it tastes pretty close anyway. I'm looking forward to trying it.

Next I put Italian Beef & Lentil Stew in the slow cooker. It has beef round, onion, garlic, diced zucchini, diced tomatoes, and lentils stewed in beef broth. That one is also a new recipe that makes six servings and it had to cook for seven hours so it was just done around 9:00pm. I scooped rice into Ziploc containers then topped it with the stew. It's very juicy stew so I thought it needed rice to soak up some of the liquid. I'm letting it cool a bit before I put the lids on the containers and carry it downstairs to the freezer.

I was going to quit for the day since it was mid-afternoon but then I thought I could make one more recipe pretty quickly so I made Chicken Breasts Pierre, which is one of my favorites. I had just enough rice left to scoop 1/3 cup into six Tupperware square rounds, divvy up the chicken and sauce, and put that in the freezer.

Only five more recipes to go. Two of them are slow cooker ones but all of them I've made before. I do one slow cooker recipe every day and then one or two more skillet or oven dishes the same day. I have to get it all done before time to take the trash out on Tuesday evening. All those meat packages will start to reek in the summer heat. Yuk.

I have a lot of different size and shape containers that I put the foods in so that I can pull out one of each every week (or so) and have a variety. I don't want to have to eat the same thing six nights in a row or eat BBQ Turkey Mini-Meatloaves twelve nights in a row. I've got this thing down to a science.

I didn't draw. I didn't paint. I didn't write. All I did was shop & cook. Oh, and I had two Zooms today, one writing and one knitting but other than those I was chained in the kitchen or grocery store all day. It was a good day. Plus the house smells great. And the smoke alarm didn't go off.

Oh, and when I went out to water the tomato and basil and snip some basil for the stew I noticed that some critter, probably a chipmunk, had decided to nibble on one of the tomatoes that had just started to turn red. Arrgh! So I picked the ones changing colors to let them finish ripening on the counter. Stupid chipmunk.

--Barbara