I have a lot of different deals and freebies to share with you right now, but I'm going to take a break from those for awhile today because I'm going to be "live-blogging" another Baking Day.
I'd love to have you join me and do your own Baking Day today or some other day this week. When I finish today, I'll post up a Mr. Linky post so you can add your link if you've done some baking and blogged about it. It's fun to find new recipes and ideas from the wealth of knowledge lurking out there in the blogosphere!
For those who might be new around here, once every few weeks, I take a morning or afternoon to bake up a bunch of things for our freezer. I use the term "Baking Day" fairly loosely, since I often cook up rice, meat, and so forth in addition to making baked goods.
The overall goal is that I do a large chunk of necessary food prep for the next two weeks in order to make meals much smoother on an everyday basis. Have a Baking Day also saves us a lot of money since it helps keep our freezer stocked with foods to make meal prep easier and thus often avoid the temptation to hit a fast food restaurant on those very busy or harried days.
To have a successful Baking Day, I've found it's best if you pick a day where you'll be home all day (this is especially important if you have little ones underfoot!), wear comfortable clothes (today I'm sporting my tennis shoes, favorite maternity yoga pants, and a hoodie), and begin with a clean kitchen.
It's also imperative that you have a plan for what you'll be making, a basic idea of the order you'll be making it in (to be the most efficient), and, of course, be sure you have all of the necessary ingredients on hand! There's nothing like being halfway through making up a big batch of pancakes to find you're out of eggs or flour!
Here's my plan for today:
Make juice (to start the morning off with a nutritious kick!)
Cook up rice and wild rice
Cook up sweet potatoes
Make BBQ meatballs
Make granola bars
Make loaf of bread
Make pancakes
Make waffles
Make spinach, rice, cheese casserole
We're having salmon for dinner so I'll just thaw that and throw in a pan with marinade sometime along the way as well. Baking Day wasn't very successful if at the end of it, we have to order pizza or go get carryout!
There are a dozen other things I could add to this list, but I'm also trying to be realistic given the fact that I'm almost in my third trimester and have two little ones, too. I'd rather accomplish a shorter list than barely touch a huge list!
Before I get started, though, I need to follow my own advice and clean up the kitchen a little bit:
I'll be back soon with a report on my progress!