Dinner's in the Freezer

As we were getting ready this summer for Jason to start PA school, I really wanted to figure out some kind of meal plan for our family. In California, we were just kind of winging it on a daily basis. We'd look around our kitchen at dinnertime, pick something to cook, and make it. It meant that we had a lot of the same stuff over and over and over, because we just had to work with what we had and it was hard thinking up new stuff on the spot.

Now, we're having different, good food every night. Our current plan is based off two principles: theme nights, and freezer meals.

The theme idea comes from "The Food Nanny." Her blog is down right now, so I can't link to it, but basically she says that each night of the week should have a set theme. Some of her ideas are "Comfort Food Night," "Mexican Night," "Pizza Night," etc. Our theme nights are:

Sunday: Beef or Pork Night
Monday: Chicken Night
Tuesday: Pasta Night
Wednesday: Fish Night
Thursday: Mexican Night
Friday: Chicken Night
Saturday: Soup Night

(Also, you know have you say a word over and over and over it starts not to seem like a real word? Well, all the sudden "night" doesn't look like a real word to me. It's a real word, right?)

The freezer meal part of our plan comes from a conversation I had with my sister Alyse. A little while ago we were talking on the phone, and she mentioned that she'd tried out a cookbook called "Once a Month Cooking." The idea is that you buy all the groceries for a month's worth of dinners all at one time, cook up all the dinners at the same time, freeze them into daily-sized portions in your freezer, and then pull them out when needed. She'd tried it out with two week's worth of meals, and she liked it.

I really liked the sound of that, so I looked up the book on Amazon. The reviews were just okay, so I looked around on Amazon some more, and found "Don't Panic - Dinner's in the Freezer." It was based on the same idea, and had hundreds of great reviews. I really wanted to try it, so I bought it (and as much as I love books, I rarely buy them - I usually get them from the library, or as gifts. If I bought as many books as I read, I'd go broke!) and that's saying something! It came in just a couple days.

As soon as it arrived, I went through it with Jason and we marked all the recipes we thought sounded good. I read the first couple chapters that explain the benefits to freezing meals ahead of time, how to plan multiple meals at once, how to shop, what to do on the "cooking day," how to freeze everything, and what to do on the "serving day."

I've done three (I think?) cooking days since then, and made about two months of dinners in those three cooking sessions. They're all frozen and stored away, in one-dinner-sized portions. Our dinners are now written out and planned until the end of September, based on our theme nights, and all in our freezer ready to go. All we have to do is pull them out of the freezer the night before and put them in our fridge, and then put them in the oven or on the george foreman when it's time to eat!

I really really like how it's working. We've been eating our frozen dinners for weeks now, and they're really yummy and so easy to prepare on the day of. This is a great system, and I'd highly recommend the book "Don't Panic - Dinner's in the Freezer" to anyone who'd want to try the same idea.

Some Books I've read Lately

Books. I miss books. I feel like I haven't been reading as many as I used to, and I miss having the feeling that I'm on top of all the new books coming out. I haven't felt like that in a while; I feel like I'm behind in all the books that have come out in the last couple years. And when I say "all the books," I pretty much mean children's books. Because those are the ones I like the most.

I have read a couple lately, though. We went to our new library a couple weeks ago, and it's great. It's a lot smaller than the one we had in California, but it has a really nice children's section with puzzles, hand puppets, a big storytelling area, and of course, tons of books. The adult section's not bad, either.

Here are a couple books that I've read lately:

First off - Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, by Susannah Cahalan. I already talked about this book in this Captain's Log post, so I won't say too much more about it, other than that it was good. In a nutshell: True story, written by the woman who it happened to. Her body attacked her brain, and she went crazy. Her family took her to the hospital and none of the doctors (some of the best in the nation) could figure out what was happening to her. Then one did. It's really gripping; once I started it I couldn't put it down.

Second - David and Goliath, by Malcolm Gladwell. This is my fifth Malcolm Gladwell book I've read. I did like it, but I like his others better. I felt like as this book went on, he was kind of stretching to fit his examples in his main point. But, it was still really interesting and I particularly enjoyed the chapter on David and Goliath themselves, the chapter on basketball, and the chapter on universities.

Third, and this is probably my favorite of the lot - Mindless Eating, by Brian Wansink, Ph.D. This book was so cool! It's not a diet book, so don't start with that impression of it (although if you apply the principles you learn from it, it can definitely help you eat less). This book is all about the pyschology of eating, written by the guy who's done probably more studies on it than anybody else. It's so cool! He talks about all the different studies they've done, from putting secretaries' candy in a clear bowl vs an opaque bowl, or calling the same food items different names at their fake restaurant, or serving food in bigger containers or smaller containers or more bowls or fewer bowls or with fast music or slow music or all sorts of stuff. It's just really cool, really interesting, and I love the way the book is written. It's written in a totally down-to-earth, funny style. And I love that the person writing it actually knows what he's talking about; he's the one who's done all the studies, for years and years and years! Anyway, I highly recommend this book. It was a really enjoyable and interesting read to me.

So those are the new books I've read this month. I've also started re-reading the Harry Potter series; I just finished the third one last night, so I'm on one of my favorites - the fourth book. I also had an idea today, that I'm going to make a big list of all the kids books that have come out the last couple years that I want to catch up on, and then try to read them all this year. I doubt our little library will have all of them, so it might require some creativity, but I really want to feel on top of my book reading again. If you have any recommendations for recent-ish (like last five years) kids' books, please tell me!

Finished Bookshelf

Do you remember the pictures last week of Jason building a bookshelf? Here's a reminder:

Well, it's all done and painted and filled with books. Here's the finished product!

I loooove it! If you follow me on Pinterest, you've probably seen on my "Playroom" board where I've pinned a million pictures of rain-gutter bookshelves or flat display bookshelves. I really like how they make it so the kids can see the front of the books. It makes it way easier for the books to catch their interest and for them to choose one to read.

Jason did such a good job building this bookshelf and I love the way it fits into our playroom. We used these free plans from Ana White, slightly modifying them for our space. In addition to the natural lean built into the bookshelf, we secured it to a stud in the wall.

I plan to change out the books almost every day, with books from the bookshelf in their room and the bookshelves in the office. Also, we decided that this is a really good place to keep the girls' library books, because it keeps them all in one place and they'll be able to access and read them easily.

And that's our new, home-built bookshelf!

York Photo Photobook Review

Hi everyone! It's been a while since I did a review of a photo book company, but I've got a couple lined up that I want to do - MyPublisher, York Photo, Blurb - so let's just get started!

Last autumn I saw a deal for the company York Photo. I'd never used them before, but Christmas was coming up and they had some cute themes for their photo books, including an Instagram theme. My stepsister MaCall posts lots of cute pictures on Instagram, and when I saw the Instagram theme I instantly thought of her and knew that's what I wanted to do for her and her husband Aaron for Christmas.

I picked a time frame for the book so that I could choose the right amount of pictures (I chose "Fall 2012"), saved all the pictures on my computer, and then uploaded them into York Photo's software (which is all online through their site), and put the book together over a couple days.

Here are a couple pictures of the cover, some of the inside pages, and the binding:

I was really pleased with how it turned out. Having never used York Photo before, I didn't know what to expect. Also, it was a softcover, and I usually only do hardcovers, so I was wondering how that would turn out too. But it was really good! Good quality paper, cover, binding, and printing.

The one downside of York Photo was that I found the software somewhat hard to work with. Sometimes it would run very, very slow. Additionally, the backgrounds were sorted into kind of weird categories and you couldn't search for one type of backgrounds - all the blue ones, for example, or stripes, or whatever. You just kind of had to browse through everything to find what you wanted. But, I did make the book almost a year ago now, and they might have improved their software since then.

So that was my experience with York Photo in a nutshell. The software was somewhat hard to work with, but the book turned out nicely.

To see my other photo book reviews, check out the posts below:

Shutterfly Photo Book Review
Shutterfly Premium Leather Layflat Photo Book Review
Shutterfly Calendar Review
MyPublisher Photo Book Review
AdoramaPix Photo Book Review
Collage.com Photo Book Review
Photo Book Comparisons