Prep 2 meals at 1 time

hello everyone.  So far, I am continuing with the meal list and it is truly making my life easier.  Each morning,  I only have to decide which meal on the list to cook and I know I have everything needed to make it.

This week, I had a slow day and a very busy day.  So I decided to do 2 meals at once on the slow day.
I picked the Eggroll in a bowl and hamburger soup.

These are the ingredients I used- mostly regular pantry and fridge ingredients.

First I started cooking the 1 1/2 pound pack of 96% lean ground beef.  Once it was brown, I drained it and added the whole chopped onion to sauté together.

The carrots and potatoes  and celery were peeled and/or diced or grated.
For the hamburger soup, I covered the carrot and potato cubes in a bowl of water in the fridge until needed the next day.

Some of the carrots were grated for the egg roll in a bowl.

To make the eggroll in a bowl, just add the grated onions and grated cabbage (or cole slaw mix) to to the browned ground beef and a good splash or so of soy sauce and black pepper.  I also added water chestnuts and they were OK but I prefer to use more celery for the crunch instead of the water chestnuts.
It doesn't take very long to cook it until it's done and resembles the filling inside a restaurant egg roll. These are lots of recipes online for this tasty and economical dish if your want more in depth instructions.

I set out the crockpot so I could cook the hamburger soup in it the next day.  It was very fast to drain the carrots and potatoes and add them to the crockpot along with the cooked meat, canned tomatoes and a little beef boullion and black pepper.  

That pack of ground beef yielded enough meat for 3 meals so i labeled and froze that 1/3 and will it later for goulash or something like that.

I timed myself from start to finish and I was done with all this cooking, cleaned up and running the dishwasher after 45 minutes.  

Tonight I won't really be cooking at all. 2 grands are here and they want frozen pizza so I'll bake a Digiorno one and maybe cook me a Marie Callander pot pie in the microwave.  

So, that's my report so far on my meal plan.  😄

Cooking and fun with grands

hello everyone 😄

One of my current goals is to cook all our meals and use the meal plan I recently posted.
So far, it's going fine!

January 1- I cooked the traditional foods that most all Southerners eat on New Years Day.
Black eyed peas cooked with a little onion and ham served over rice & stir fried cabbage

January 2- 2 grands came over and I thought letting them help make pizza would be good. 

We don't have any premise sauce so I put a smaller than normal batch of my regular pasta sauce to simmer in a crockpot.  I ended up with 3 meal size containers of sauce to freeze for future meals and of course, some for the pizza. 

The pizza crust dough was made in the bread machine,  then it was put in an oiled bag and sealed to hang out in the fridge all day.  

When it was time to prepare the pizzas. I cut the dough into 2 small pieces and 1 big piece.  

The grands rolled out their dough and both of them ended up with heart shape pizzas. 

Then they put theirs on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper - because I knew they would be messy with the toppings. 

They added sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni. 

I also made one large pizza with the rest of the dough.  

See why lining their sheet was important?  It sure saved me lots of aggravation and scrubbing.  

The pizzas were delicious.  On the side, we had fresh mandarins and Oreos. 

They were so good, husband and I had the leftovers for supper tonight on January 3rs. 

All of the grands that are old enough to, love to craft.  On this sleepover, they each painted a $1 kit of 2 sun catchers  from Dollar Tree.  

We also did some Perler beads.  

This supplement is always in our Sunday newspaper and I think cover is the best one ever,
Throw kindness around like confetti