HELP! Planning for homebirth.

[mahdokht]

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[dnr3301]

Check out a book called "Once-a-Month Cooking" by Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg. Lots of good recipes, mostly with chicken/ground turkey, but some without. It gices good guidence on spending one day a month preparing food, then eating for the month out of the freezer with homecooked meals. Hope that helps some. There is also a 2 week plan if a month seems like too much.

Rebecca

[bellee]

Have a casserol party! Invite friends and family to a last get together before the new baby arrives. Ask everybody to bring a dinner to freeze. Of course you'll have to feed 'em at the party but that's easy enough to do :wink Just make sure to make room in your freezer! I'm doing this [nearer my EDD] and am just worried I won't have enough room for all the goodies I'll get :)

[ma_Donna]

I have a chest freezer which is wonderful for storing things. They're really pretty cheap and are a little better for storing foods (and breastmilk) than upright freezers. I also have a vacuum sealer which is fantasic for prepping meals.

We have home-made soups in those square, milky colored freezer containers which are a great size for lunches.

When I cook I make extras, curried cauliflower, meat sauce, stews and vacuum pack them in bags. The bags can be either microwaved to heat or better yet, put in boiling water... NO MESS! Because they're little boil-in-bags. I have a vac-u-saver, but the FoodSaver is also quite good and available at Wally-World and I'm sure lots of other places.

For casseroles/lasagne/enchiladas, whatever you'd do in a baking dish, line the dish with plastic or aluminum foil before you put in the food, freeze it then pop it out and wrap it. It's much easier to stack stuff that way and you don't lose all your dishes to the freezer!

You can start making a double recipe of the stuff you make now and freezing the second portion. Especially if you're only looking to stock up for 10 days, that should go quick!

Think of sauces and things that can go over a starch like pasta, rice or potatoes since they're so easy to make, you'll feel like you're having 'fresh' meals.

Also having bags of veggies like peas, corn, etc will allow you to have veggies w/o having to keep on top of fresh stuff in the fridge.

I'm sure that you just have to look at how you cook now and you'll find it easy to stockpile things you make already.

HTH!!

[Quickening]

Setup a bedroom on the ground floor for yourself so you can
"live" downstairs for the first week until you get back on your feet and can manage the stairs. If the guest room is downstairs then maybe you can let your mom have your bedroom and move temporarily into the guest room?

I don't know about meals but if you're after ideas for meals to make, there are recipes at www.vegweb.com

[Wooby]

Ma Donna,

Thanks for the fanstastic freezing tips! I am going to be cooking all weekend!:thumb

[Sahara]

You can also plan some simple dishes like couscous and steamed vegetables, that's a grain that cooks so fast you just barely have to know how to boil water! Maybe you could have 5 or 6 freezer meals, but then also plan out a few simple meals in advance, make a detailed grocery list for your mom, and send her to the store. Treat it like a camping trip and plan 3 meals and 2 snacks for each day.
Day 1
breakfast - granola and milk, juice
lunch - 'eggless' egg salad sandwich w/ lettuce (made with tofu)
dinner - frozen meal
snacks - fruit, whole wheat crackers, peanut butter, hummus

Day 2
breakfast - eggs and toast, juice
lunch - tortillas with black beans and cheese
dinner - couscous with mixed veggies and parm cheese, salad
w/tomato and favorite veggie, plus mom picks her meat side
snacks - trail mix, fruit, yogurt

Once you outline each of the 10 days, then you can make a comprehensive grocery list. You could even break it up into two 5 day lists, so you can send your mom to the store twice :D Frozen veggies are good to have on hand, too, better than canned and cook quickly. I think once you get going you could have a meal plan for 10 days in less than 30 minutes. Then take a break and come back another day and make out the grocery list. You could even write out each days meal plan on a separate sheet of paper in a notepad, so your mom has a plan to follow.
You might want to try looking at www.flylady.com, she had a lot of ideas for planning meals and some good crockpot recipes.
Good luck with everything!!
Steph

[1jooj]

Mahdokht, when are you "due?"

I second the recommendation for the "casserole" party. If you have a number of close friends who cook halal/vegetarian, and you suggested to a girlfriend how valuable frozen dinners would be, you'd be surprised how many dinners you might end up with. My last 2 girlfriends who had babies got frozen meals as postpartum presents from me. I think I made a week's worth for one (all chicken breast and ground beef based) and the other close to the same (veg).

Not one of the meals was a casserole, though--I did stews, curries and such, and supplied the rices and noodles to go with them, which dh could cook in a couple of minutes.

The first was recovering from a c-sec, and she and her dh really needed the extra meals.

[mahdokht]

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