cooking

My July cooking story. . .

Posted by tricia on 08.03.09 | 1 Comment Short Link: http://onceamonthmom.com/?p=3038  Print This Post

After a several month hiatus from cooking the menus myself, I got back in the saddle. You may recall that we were defrosting our freezer back in May and I just couldn’t get it together to do June’s menu. I had hoped for an earlier cooking day for July but decided to go to Blogher at the last minute which changed everything.

However, right under the July radar, Amy and I managed to knock out a “mini” session, complete with vlogging! Yep, the swag bag I received at the Social Luxe party at Blogher contained a Kodak Zi6 Pocket HD Camcorder. AWESOME (Thanks Kodak)! You folks are in for some real treats; starting with this month’s cooking session.

We didn’t start cooking until 3:30 pm so I was able to spend some time while my little one was napping getting all of the veggies chopped up. As I mentioned before, we did a bit of a mini session so I didn’t have quite so many vegetables as most of you did.

Of course, it is important to start your cooking day on the right “foot”, so we have a great video about “preparing” for your day. And no, I didn’t put on any makeup (Jenny will likely be appalled volunteer to come over before my next cooking session) but I find it usually melts off my face during the day anyway. So here is how we got started:

(Crocs Rock! Tayga has the cutest aprons. Be sure to check out both of their sites)

The day was largely uneventful (in the whole kitchen catastrophe kind of way). Here we are halfway through with Amy working on the Chicken Rice Casserole:

We had a lot of fun and managed to finish in a little over five hours. WOW! That was some quick work. We made 9 of the 15 listed recipes and went home with 16 meals each for a total of 32 meals. We spent $117.81 ($58.91/person; $3.68/meal). Pretty good I would say. I am SUPER happy to have food in my freezer again and to be working my way towards the August menu.

Here is our closing video (beware: lots of unsolicited props for the Swiffer):

Of course, you don’t think that I would leave you with a monthly cooking post without some great pictures, do you? No way! Here are a few of my favorites from the day. Remember that clicking on them will allow you to see a bigger version as well as to scroll through them.

I hope you participated in the July menu and we look forward to hearing your stories as well. Until next month . . .