Weekend Cooking

Owen' chocolate cake

 I have been a big fan of bulk cooking for a long time. I don't usually do the whole "cook for a day, eat for a month" thing. What I do is just to make multiples of meals as I prepare them and then put a couple in the freezer while we eat the rest. I also will buy lots of meat when it is on a really good sale and prep it before I freeze it. For example, chicken breasts were on sale recently, so we purchased several packages. Once we got home, I divided them up into meal sized portions and made sauces for some of them before I put them in the freezer. I also cut several meals worth into cubes before freezing since we use chopped chicken in a lot of our favorite meals. I always buy hamburger in large packages. Usually we will have hamburgers for dinner that night and I will pre-brown the rest and freeze in family sized portions. It is so much more convenient to have the hamburger already browned to add to spaghetti or other casseroles and soups.

 I have avoided making lots of Owen's keto meals ahead of time because I didn't want to have to throw out a bunch of food if his calories or ratio changed. He seems to be doing well where he is now though (unless he cheats!) and it is looking like we will stay with the current prescription for a while. We've also started school and I've discovered that there is no way I can be available to help the kids at the level they need right now while spending several hours making Keto meals everyday.

 Rod and I have been marathon cooking on the weekends so that I have enough meals to make it through a week of school with out having to do much cooking for Owen. This weekend we made 12 Macadamia nut pancakes. Owen ate 3 of them over the weekend and the other 9 are packed up for use this week. Now all I have to do is weigh out whatever fruit or vegetable he wants with his pancake for each meal. Yes, Owen eats vegetables with his pancake! The pancake is egg and nut, so it actually goes quite well with veggies. A special thanks to my Mom who watched us spend hours grinding and chopping macadamia nuts and sent us her Ninja to use instead.

 I also made 3 batches of spinach bites. Owen ate one for his dinner Saturday and the rest are in the freezer for this next week. I've been trying to get more iron in Owen's diet and it turns out that he loves these. I also got 5 cheese sandwiches made and stored, again Owen ate one, so 4 went into the fridge and freezer. I missed getting pictures of those, but we use Ketocuisine to make his "bread".  Last, but not least, I made a weeks worth of his yogurt snack that he takes his medication and supplements in.

 We still had a few things left over from last weekend, so that gives me enough meals to not have to cook for Owen more than once a day. It generally takes me 30- 45 minutes to prepare one meal, but due to some twist of the space-time continuum that I don't completely understand it only seems to take an extra 15 minutes to make as many multiples of that meal as I want. So even when I end up preparing meals during the week I still make a few extras each time. Being able to get ahead helps a lot toward making the diet do able for us.