I was going to post this on Monday. Really, I was! But then I looked at this giant bag of potatoes and figured I needed to make this week’s menu plan “The Mondo Potato Edition”.

But what can I do to a potato to make it different for a slew of different meals? That got me to thinking the large bag of potatoes could inspire us to try new things – much like Joram’s adventure last week!

Nope, no mashed potatoes… that would be far too easy! So off I embarked on another tour through the world’s cuisine.

That was when I stumbled upon a brand new site that just wowed me.

You guys know I love my freezer cooking! One big baking day, a ton of meals in my freezer, and life is so much easier for our busy schedules!

I found Onceamonthmom.com – the new site where they give you a menu and a grocery plan for the month! Even better, they set it up for buddy cooking.

Freezer cooking is the bust when you have a buddy or two to help. This gives you the benefit of making more meals, and while a bunch are the same – you get more variety. In Ohio I was part of a freezer cooking swap that was an absolute phenom!

I’m not a great cook (but I’m getting better each year!), so they probably considered my meals the ghetto low rent meals. I can attest that not a one of these ladies ever made a bad meal. In fact, there’s a couple that I am now craving. Oh Christy, where’s your pot pie now? *SIGH*

Yeah, I’m hungry. And I miss my group. I’d love to freezer meal swap again if anyone is interested.

I picked out my potato meals for the next week and I also spent the day planning for my next big cooking day. I’m going to try some new meals and I’m also going to try some old faves with new recipes.

Of course since I don’t have a buddy I then got lost in trying to figure out how to best arrange all these meals so they wouldn’t be so right on top of each other.

So there I was on Monday with about 40 meals and how to spread them out all while putting together a shopping list.

That was when I decided Menu Monday was going to really show on Tuesday. After I hit the grocery store for the items needed for my freezer cooking.

That was fine, I had to post about Italy anyway. Right?

Tuesday came and the next thing I knew I was going to a movie when I would have done my shopping. We hit the store after the movie.

My feat was frozen and I had a slew of things to put away so I took a look at my pantry. Insert screaming crazy hysteria HERE.

I love my boys but organization is NOT their forte. I needed to remove everything from the pantry with the cans and reorganize.

While I was at it, I took an inventory. My pantry stock is so great that I really need to start tracking it somehow.

About 2/3rds of the way through the reorganization and inventory the migraine struck. I hate migraines.

And now it is Wednesday. Good grief!

My head is still pounding. Yuck. However I pushed through and did some great work today. Caramon, in his attempt to help, stuck all my meat in the freezer. I got up this morning and had a pile of frozen hard meat.

Guess baking day is tomorrow.

That’s OK. It’ll give me a blog for tomorrow, right?

So here’s my menu plan for this week:

Monday – As you know Pizza Margherita
Tuesday – Baked Potatoes with chili, cheese, and sour cream. YUM!
Tonight – I have early scouts and late scouts so we’re hitting Chick Fil A or McD’s or something.
Thursday – Spanish Tortilla (Yay a trip to Spain!)
Friday – Beef Hash (Let’s check out the Scandanavian countries!)
Saturday – Friday is Sir Megabyte’s birthday but he gets in awful late. I’m assuming we’ll go out to a restaurant of his choice tonight. But this could get flip flopped. BTW This usually means Japanese steakhouse.
Sunday – Hot Dogs with homemade french fries of course!

How’s that sounding for some goodness? Oh yeah! Let’s hear it for the yummy yummy!

Now you gotta check out my usefullness thanks to the Google Gods. All that stuff I have done over the past two days?

Menu Plan – I finally gave up doing this on paper. It was far too many meals. I went to my Calendar and formed a new one for Menu planning and laid it all out to there. Because of how many meals and some trips I have my menus planned out through May 19th. That’s awesome!

Inventory of Stockpile – It’s still rough, but I put together a spreadsheet at google docs. If there’s really an interest I can publish it for people to look at. I’d love to hear ideas for what you’d like to see in something like this. I included at the top the list of recommended essentials for a year’s supply and then under that I have made sections for our personal needs. Each is broken into groups and there’s a place for our goal as well as what we have Now I just need to figure out how to print it neatly for posting on the pantry door.

Freezer Meal Planning – These moms have it going on at that new site. My freezer meals are scattered mostly in emails as well as a magazine and a few cookbooks. I like the thought of having it all together. Plus they even included how many meals each recipe makes. Love it cause I can never remember. I started putting together my own using the recipes of theirs I plan to use as well as a few of my faves. I even found one I’d made like 2 year ago that everyone loved but I completely forgot about! I need to continue to add in our regulars. This is of course over at google docs.

I didn’t get to freezer cook today but at least I did a lot of organizing and planning!

Of course all this talk about food has me so hungry today. I can’t wait for dinner!

–Lady O