Alex's Food Plan Update

Things are slowly chugging along on the Alex's food for Ohio plan. We haven't planned the date of our drop the boys off in Ohio trip yet, but we leave for Germany May 30th, so it will probably be the week of May 16th-ish.

Christian came up with the brilliant idea to freeze some extra food while I am cooking dinner, so that Alex and I will not have to worry about what to eat in Ohio the week we are there. Smart kid, huh?

First, some thoughts on FoodSavering. Food saver bags/rolls to make your own bags are redonkulously expensive. Seriously. I went to buy some to freeze what I will tell you about in a minute and it would have cost me over $20 just for the bags. Blah. I ended up finding a Ziploc Vacuum pump thingy for $4 at my local Wal-mart. The packages of bags were only $2.97 for 12, so I snagged as many as they had (4 boxes.) So far, they have worked great.

Last week, we were given around 20 pounds of skirt steak. We made beef jerky with quite a bit of it and seasoned and roasted the rest. Once it was cooled, we thinly sliced it and froze it in 6oz portions in sandwich baggies. Once the meat was frozen, I took it out of the sandwich bag and vacuum sealed it in the ziploc bags. We ended up with quite a bit - enough for 18 meals. He can throw it in to quesadillas, tacos, burritos, etc. It ended up being a good thing, because the chicken from Angel foods isn't going to work. It is just too greasy for those of us with finicky tummys.

For dinner tonight, I made a double batch of crockpot red beans and rice and froze 5 meal sized portions. If there is any left after everyone eats dinner, I will freeze more portions. Next week when I make our next version of cheapo crockpot beans and rice, I will freeze 5 portions of that concoction.

Hopefully, we won't run out of freezer space before we leave!