Resolution #2: Utilize the parts of Once a Month Cooking that work for our family

Let's just get it out of the way now and say that I have an unhealthy obsession with Pinterest.  If you have ever been on it, you understand - here is my page http://pinterest.com/saraprice/.    Feel free to follow.  I get on tangents where I pin weird stuff but mostly foods that I want to try, stuff for my children or arts and crafts ideas.  Side note: After my few posts about my resolutions I plan to start a daily post of "this is neat" type entries.  Mostly from things that I find online or see on Pinterest and want to share with more than my followers.  If you haven't been on Pinerest, you could never understand and should join.  I will send you an invite, if interested.  Now that we got that settled let me also say that this entire idea was found on Pinterest on this woman's blog:  http://pregnant.livejournal.com/17071127.html

Let me go back:  I have been bugging my husband since we got pregnant with Silas that I would like to do some sort of OAMC (Once a Month Cooking) to start before we had the baby so I wouldn't have to worry about cooking when I was on maternity leave.  Based on how Isabella was as a newborn and what I have found to be the case with newborns they are not fun and tend to scream/cry A LOT so I was fairly confident that if I had another "high needs" child that I would be uninterested in my husband coming home from work and having one of those "what do you want for dinner?" conversations.  He refused every time to even entertain the idea.  There was also a reason... and looking back there was always a good reason.  Reason #432 why I love my husband is he sees how we live and is able to be honest about how things will work in the future based off of our past experiences.  I have a tendency to have a more rose colored glasses-type review of our past when it comes to making decisions about our future.  We, as a couple, have a tendency to buy food at the grocery store with the intentions of cooking and eating at home and, in the past, have still eaten out instead of eating that food at home.  He knew that if we spent $200-$300 on food to prep, possibly cook, and freeze that it would end up getting freezer burned or not being eaten until after it's freezer shelf life expired.  And he was right... we would have. 

Then he found that blog post on Pinterest.  Of course, he was on Pinterest on accident looking around for car parts or naked ladies *wink* and not for recipes or anything that the website should be used for.  He was instantly enamored with this idea and brought it up to me one night.  I will say that our grocery trip cost more and made more portions on some dishes than originally stated but all in all worked out the same.  We have made and frozen all dishes except the enchiladas, but have only actually tasted two of them so far so I am not fully comfortable sharing them yet until I taste what was made.  Reviews of her recipes and our version of the recipes coming soon. 

I tell you all of that to tell you that one of my resolutions this year will be to utilize the parts of OAMC that work for our family.  We like having fully cooked, or almost fully cooked meals in the freezer that just have to be warmed up.  We like having stew, soup, chili, sauce type meals that you can freeze in freezer bags flat to save space.  I like to cook my meals over the course of a few days instead of one big cooking spree.  This prolongs the agony, so to speak, but leaves me overall in a better mood and more apt to be a more pleasant person once the meals are cooked.  One thing that I will change next time is to do all of the "prep" work the day before, i.e. chopping veggies, browning and portioning out meats, etc as that makes the actual cooking go a lot faster. 

Any other tips and tricks from once a month cookers?

Non-resolutions

So I am sure that everyone has experienced this... December 15-ish, if not before, you start to get nervous thinking about your "resolutions" for the following year.  Almost everyone will include at least one about "Exercise more" or "Lose x amount of weight".  Most people do really well in January, possibly on into February.  Gym memberships *and* attendance at said gym are up, I can imagine, like 100 fold in the beginning of the year.  Then slowly you start to get busy.  You start to make excuses like you are too tired after work.  You are too tired before work.  You forgot your gym clothes.  You took the stairs twice today and that should count as exercise.  The next time you think about it a month has gone by, then two months, and then all of a sudden you can't even remember when you saw the inside of the gym yet.  You are not alone.  You are certainly not the only one who fails at resolutions and goals that they make at the beginning of the year. 

Why is it that we fail at goals, wishes and wants for ourselves that we are SO passionate about at one time during the year?  Why is it that at the beginning of the year we have so much faith in ourselves and our abilities that we are willing to stake our future year's worth of happiness on the smallest statements?  It seems as if we are doomed to fail if we claim those statements as goals that we are interested in achieving.  It's like we, as humans, need our subconscious to trick us into achieving these goals by not putting them out there in the open.  That, perhaps, we need something like subliminal advertising to help us out with these resolutions as most people during the year will not keep even one of their resolutions.  I know that, in the past, most of the time by May I would have forgotten what any of my resolutions were from the beginning of the year. 

This year I decided that I wasn't going to participate in this "tradition" of making a decision at the beginning of the year that I was going to fail at throughout the year.  Instead, I am reviewing my life now, in February, for little things that I would like to either change or start doing that are manageable, because let's be reasonable... I have a husband... I have 4 children, 2 of which live with me full time and are under 2... I have a full time job that I love enough to want to spend more than 40 hours at... I don't have time for "change the world" type resolutions. 

However, I *do* have time for the following resolutions:

1. Have more patience today than I did yesterday
2. Utilize the parts of Once a Month Cooking that work for our family
3. Write a blog post everyday for at least 30 days
4. Become a better money saver

I am going to attempt to start #3 today.  I will utilize one blog post each to explain the four and their importance and significance to me in my life today.