Pre-Hurricane Season

Oh boy...not even June 1st yet, the official start of hurricane season, and this is the 2nd named storm of this year. Hope this is not indicative of what's to come! See where it says TUE AM 35 mph - yeah, that's where I live. This is a small 35 mph storm, but still gets my senses up to see this type of weather map with a cone and my city in that cone.

Cancer - such an ugly word

One of my best friend's just discovered last month that her 17-yr-old has cancer.  This has been such a shock to everyone who knows Halee.  Go here to read more about Halee's story.

I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around this. Their lives have changed so drastically from where they were just 3 weeks ago. Halee was running for Interact club President and her life was revolved around her friends/boyfriend/schoolwork. Now she is dealing with chemo/radiation/hair loss/weight loss/solitude due to her depressed immune system and the fact she is getting treatments 5 hours from home.

On top of Halee's health concerns, they have no insurance.  Click the link below if you are able to help out financially. If lots of people would just donate a little, it would go so far in helping this sweet young lady.
Please help!

Once A Week Cooking

We eat out a lot. When I say a lot, I am talking every morning for breakfast, every day for lunch and at least 4 out of 7 nights a week.  There's 3 of us at home (my husband, my 15-yr-old and myself) and we all have hectic busy schedules so it's easier to grab breakfast through a drive-thru, lunch through a drive-thru and then pick up Chinese, pizza, or chicken for dinner.  Unfortunately this isn't so great on the pocketbook or the waistline!

I have been wanting to do "once-a-week" or "once-a-month" cooking for a long time but could never get motivated to go through with it.  Thanks to a friend of mine who actually did this last week, and posted pics of her progress/meals I finally decided to just go for it!  Last Sunday I got up, planned my meals for the week, went grocery shopping (husband went with me to help since I had a very detailed list he could follow) and then came home and started cooking. It took me all day - yes 7 hours of cooking, BUT it was so worth it!! This is what I produced in that 7 hours....

I made a meatloaf, beef stroganoff, baked ziti, 12 twice baked potatoes, 3 bags of cooked chopped chicken, 3 bags of ground beef mixture (mixed with peppers, onions, shredded carrots), 7 sausage, egg, cheese biscuits for breakfasts, 6 breakfasts pizzas, 1 gallon of chicken stock and 1 bag of chicken/cream cheese/chive mixture to be used inside crescent rolls for chicken packets.

I was able to pull out our dinner every morning to get it defrosted and with only about 15-20 minutes prep each evening we had a wonderful home-cooked meal. I made burritos one night with a packet of ground beef and a packet of chicken and had so much left over I rolled each burrito individually and froze those so now we have 13 burritos to add to my dinner choices.

Today I am planning next week's menu and going to add a few things to what I currently have stored in the freezer so hopefully if I am able to do this for a couple of hours every weekend several weeks in a row, then I will get enough stored up so I only have to cook one big day/month.