Make Ahead Meal Tutorial

Some of you may know that I am part of a "Make Ahead Meals" Group. Every 2 weeks 7-9 of us get together. Each of us make 7-9 of the same meal and when we get together, we exchange them for 7-9 different meals. So, this time, I made 8 BBQ Cups. I met with my group on Monday an I returned home with: Apple Chicken, Lemon Chicken, Pork Chops, Spicy Korean Pork, Enchiladas, Chicken Macaroni Bake, Mexican Chicken, and my BBQ Cups.

I love this dinner group. It means I spend about 3 hours every 2 weeks making multiples of my one meal and in return, all I have to do every night is to pull out of the freezer what I want to eat tomorrow. This has saved me so much time, energy, and money, it is fabulous!

Now, I am no Pioneer Woman, but I thought you might like a peek at the process. So, I documented the making of the BBQ Cups. Here is the Recipe:

BBQ Cups
1 lb hamburger (or ground turkey)
½ cup chopped onion
1 clove crushed garlic(optional)
½ cup BBQ sauce
½ cup shredded cheese
1pkg uncooked refrigerator biscuits (or make your own dough)
Cook meat with onion and garlic. Drain fat and add BBQ sauce. Press biscuit dough into 10 muffin cups. Spoon meat mix into cups and sprinkle with cheese. Bake at 400 for 15 minutes.


My pan is only big enough to hold 5 pounds of meat, so here is 3 pounds of ground beef and 2 pounds ground turkey. Hey, I like to make healthy choices when I can! Also, there are onions and garlic in as well. It does take longer to thoroughly cook such a large quantity, so I like to stand there with a book in one hand and a spoon in the other.

Not! I have Delaney wanting to be a helper. So I gave her her very own biscuit to play with, and she requires constant monitoring.

Delaney took her biscuit and immediately went for the knife. While she did have a very good time, I wondered what this said about her psyche.

Now, moving on to how we make our dinner..... here we see our meat is all cooked and drained. 5 pounds makes a lot of fat! Once that's done, you add your BBQ sauce. I use whatever is on hand, but I prefer the stuff that says "honey" or "brown sugar", over the stuff that's hot or spicy. And I like a lot of BBQ sauce on my cups! I add more than the recipe calls for and mix it in nicely.

Then we move to the table and make our assembly line. If you are lucky, like me, you can have a passel of helpers too. First, you need to press your biscuits into the (greased) tins. Next, I scoop the meat on top.

Callie was a wonderful biscuit separator, but not so good at the pressing and spreading. She worked fast, too. I had a hard time keeping up with her. I put the meat on top of the biscuits and then passed them on to Marian for the cheese.

Marian loves sprinkling the cheese on top. She was quite generous, but she also enjoyed snacking on the pieced that dropped on the table. She was pretty methodical and took a while to complete her job. When she was done, they looked pretty good.

Here you can see the ones in process, and some finished trays. It was actually pretty quick. Once done, it is time to cover them with foil and label them.

Darn blogger! This picture was not rotated this direction when I uploaded it! Still, you can see: covered with heavy duty foil- I like to double cover sometimes. And the label is printed with the recipe, thawing and cooking directions, and my name & number in case anyone has questions about them. Packaging tape is the best for affixing the labels, and you have to put them on before you freeze them, otherwise they won't stick.

Now I take them all to the freezer in the garage and wait for exchange day! See, not to arduous, and the benefits are wonderful! Plus, now you can try out a new recipe tonight. Okay, not if you are in my family and grew up eating tasty BBQ Cups!

Snow Day #2

I love it when I don't pay attention to the weather and get surprised with snow. Not really, but its better than knowing its coming, I think. Sunday was gray and icky and drizzly. By the evening (when I had to go out to a baptism), it was snowing slush. I did watch the news that night to see what was in store with the weather- snow and more snow. So, no school for the kids on Monday.

They were ecstatic. I was not. I'm not sure why. I mean, Joshua only came in to run to the bathroom and for a short lunch break. Other than that, he was out in the snow. Marian was in and out a bit, but she wasn't harassing her sisters when she was inside. Dan had the day off as well.He had to get up at Zero dark hundred to call in and the word was a 2 hour delay. So, at 8am, he was getting ready to go in to work and his boss called just as he was walking out the door and said, "stay home." Whew! It snowed till about noon.

Here is my manly hubby, shoveling the walk. He did the driveway too, and helped the neighbor clear out her car, since she did have to head in to work.

This is to prove that we DO dress Delaney for the weather. See- boots, hat, mittens, jacket.....

I know, this is an entirely different outfit, down to the jacket and mittens. Delaney likes to change clothes frequently! I wanted to show you that this is what she does after she's been out for 10 minutes. First she pulls off the hat. Next go the mittens, and last comes the jacket. She just tosses them on the ground.

5 minutes after she sheds her warm stuff, she's not having fun anymore. She was crying, but stopped when I pulled out the camera. I know, her hair is a mess. It got worse too, when it got stuck in her runny nose and dried. Gross. This is why she has to have her hair done, but it wasn't worth the fight yet then!

Here is Joshua and his friends. They took cardboard boxes and big Tupperware totes and made snow bricks to make an Igloo. They worked on it all afternoon and did a pretty good job. It was a "roofless" igloo.

I'll have you know Marian unzips her jacket and refuses to keep it zipped. She is wearing boots, mittens and a hat, so I do not complain. Neither does she. This is the half finished "Igloo". They packed the snow so tight, the thing may stand till summer! They got all the sides up pretty high and had a marvelous time. Poor Joshua came in around 5pm, just red cheeked, blood-shot eyes, and exhausted. He was so cold too, he had to take a hot shower to warm up and even then he complained he was cold. He sure went to bed easy though!

Today it was back to school, but a 2 hour delay. The 2 hour delay is just silly, but it meant I got to sleep in and had time to drag my feet. It also meant squabbling in the morning which we do not usually have.

Great things about this Week

I have discovered how to get the house cleaned. It is amazing! For Christmas, my parents sent me a cd of ragtime music. I LOVE ragtime music! How can you not wiggle and dance to it?! So that's what we do. We put in the cd and shake it to the music and see how much the kids can pick up before I stop the music. Sort of like musical chairs with toys. Or maybe not like that at all. I just know they have a blast. And I get a kick out of watching them dance. Dance may not be the right word, but it sure is fun to see!

Here we have Delaney feeling overwhelmed by the gyrating antics of her siblings. Marian is convulsing on the floor in some strange, yet vastly amusing dance move. Joshua is trying to break dance and Callie fell over spinning. I laughed much. Yes, I did.

And here is a clearer shot of it all. Same thing, except Callie is showing me her ballerina moves. They had me in stitches. Plus, they got the living room nicely picked up! (PS- Aren't Delaney's pajamas awesome? So ugly they are adorable!)

Also fantastic this week was the arrival of a box of chocolates. Most of you may know that my brother and his wife work for Harry and David. Don't feel bad if you are not familiar with Harry & David. I'd never heard of them till Adam got a job there. They do mail order fruit, chocolate and gourmet stuff. And while some of it is a bit odd, its all yummy!  Adam lovingly scoured their after season sales and sent me a huge box of goodies. (So I'm set for Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, birthdays...!)  If you wonder what a 38 pound box of future hip-padding looks like- here it is! I laid it all out on the couch so I could revel in it.

Okay, actually, I wanted to roll in it on the floor, but I was concerned that it might melt some of the chocolate. I did sample some and while the chocolate covered graham crackers are still my ultimate favorite (hence the presence of so many), I did LOVE the chocolate covered oreos. Ahhhh..... yep, add a nice 50 pounds to me right now. Wait. Why is it that 38 pounds of goodies will end up as more than that on me?

And the last really fun thing I wanted to share was my Activity Day. That was Wednesday evening. We talked about modesty and I had cut out 10 giant paper dolls. Yikes. That was a test of my (non-existent!) artistic capabilities, since I first had to draw it, then cut it out. Not so fun. Fortunately, "War Games" was on Sci-Fi channel, and I watched that as I laboriously snipped out my dolls from posterboard.

That evening the girls had a variety of craft stuff to design modest outfits for their dolls. They were amazing! I was really impressed with their creativity and imagination. I'm only posting one picture, since I'm not sure how all the other moms would feel about their kids' picture being here.

But check out the outfit! And the hair and the boots, I think are awesome. So yeah, it was a fun night!

And those were some highlights of the week! Now I'm going to have a pizza picnic on the living room floor and watch a movie with the kids. Because sometimes I AM the fun mom!

Dental Complaints

I am a bit cranky. I loved the dentist in NC. Mango & Mango. Fun name, great place, good dentists (Nice husband and wife team). I really liked them. I also liked (a lot!) that when you needed work done, they printed out a sheet for you. This nifty sheet told you what they wanted to do, how much they would charge, what insurance would pay, and what you would have left to pay. It was awesome to have this at my fingertips. Let me mention that this was NOT a Tricare approved place. They were not on the Tricare list. Mango & Mango simply agreed to accept Tricare terms and pretty much acted like an approved provider. Did I mention that I loved them? And the dentists were great. I didn't even cry when I went there after 6 years of no dental visits.

Now we move here. Sigh. I went to the Tricare website. I found the list of names, and then I asked my friends. I had a military and non-military family who both recommended a guy. So I figured I should be good. That's where I went. He IS on the Tricare list, which again, means he agrees to the Tricare charge limit for services. And yet he billed me in excess of the Tricare limit. The whole reason to be a Tricare approved dentist is so that this stuff is covered. I'm really ticked about that. Sure, its nickle and dime stuff (to the tune of $30), but come on! He's charging me when he shouldn't be and that really ticks me off. More so is that I requested a quote for the 2 fillings he wanted to do and I was told they couldn't do that. What?! How can you not know what you are planning to charge me?! Ug. Again, this guy was on the list.

Admittedly, I did like the dentist himself, and they hygienist was very good. I will allow that it perhaps is not the dentist himself, but his receptionist and secretarial staff that are the root of my irritation, but I'm still mad about it!

Fun with Kids!

They say that having children keeps you young. Sometimes I think that is true. Sometimes I think it just turns you into a raving maniac. Today we are going to see some things that could make you pull your hair out and scream, or laugh. I prefer the laugh, but sometimes its a close call.

Delaney likes to play for an hour or so before she falls asleep. Note the mess in her room. It did not look like that when I put her down. Note that she is wearing her sister's pajamas, and that the shirt is on inside out. She picked them out and she refused help to get them on. Forcefully refused help. "No, Go AWAY!" Yep, that's what she said to me. She was so cute, fast asleep on the chair though.

Oops, the flash woke her up. It was actually a good thing. A middle of the night diaper change helps keep the sheets dry in the morning.

Ah, a funny thing here. I know she is wearing the exact same thing, and yes, the top is on inside out and backwards. The sad thing.... its not the same day. Even sadder, it really is the same, unwashed jammies, and I don't even care. The point of this picture, actually is not her attire. Its her hair. The silly pickle got into a tube of bacitracin and thought it was hair gel. The entire tube is now gunked into her hair. Ug. I washed it 4 times and it was still a bit greasy. At least it wasn't Desatin.

This was this morning. The girls were in their matching dresses and we had 20 minutes till we needed to leave for church, so I went ahead and took a picture. I figure if I take a picture every week, eventually I will have one nice picture of the children! This was the nicest one this morning. Sad, isn't it?! They are so goofy without even trying to be goofy.

At least with the official goofy picture they are all making faces! (Check out that all the girls are wearing ruffly socks and black shoes! I am SO the mom today!) Everyone commented on how adorable the girls were with the matching dresses. Thanks Grandma White!