I was up before dawn on my son’s 11th birthday, something I often am, regardless of birthdays or not. This time was different though, because after 3 weeks of straight work travel followed by nearly a week lost to a bout of Covid, I felt like I was finally re-entering my life fully after having been gone for a while.
Literally and figuratively – not just the travel, but then 5 days of isolation from my family upon my return. My closet got organized as a result, and surfaces cleaned off once I started feeling better, but the absence was hard.
So as soon as i could I started throwing myself back into family life. And just in time, too.
I’m a huge believer in prepping food early in the morning, and prepping food for the week. We had already made batches of clam chowder and chili this week, which keeps us in lunches for quite some time.
We had a busy birthday day of celebrating ahead, and timing was going to be everything. The first thing I did was try to do as much prep as possible. Dinner was a cheese board, Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon, our favorite homemade Bread, salad and ChocolateChocolateChocolate Cake, a specialty of the house (this is chocolate cake mix, chocolate pudding mix and chocolate chips, I’ll share the complete recipe soon – for years it was a most-requested dessert in our family). But in the interim, my husband and I were chaperoning a pack of newly-minted 11 year olds to the mall to run amuk (within reason, of course) to test their independence. We would then turn around, come home, and he would oversee shepherding of the kids home while I prepped for dinner.
So I got up, made bread dough, fished the dried laundry out of the dryer for folding, and set to making sheet pan eggs for homemade breakfast sandwiches.
Sheet Pan Eggs:
15 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup shredded cheese
Salt and Pepper to taste
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F
Prep the sheet pan:
Oil the sheet pan and lay either parchment or foil on it and oil that, to ensure nothing sticks.
Make the eggs:
Stir together milk, eggs and seasoning until well combined. Pour into the prepared sheet pan (I use a jelly roll pan with high sides).
If you want to add some sauteed veggies or spinach, you can. Top with cheese and bake for about 15 minutes until set. Let it cool a minute and slice into squares.
I toasted buttered english muffins with a slice of Canadian bacon each (that I had left over from making homemade clam chowder a couple days earlier) and made homemade breakfast sandwiches. We ended up with 8, plus some extra slices of egg mixture. I served one each to my husband and my son, and froze the remaining sandwiches for easy breakfasts later.
Once the bread dough was prepped and rising and the cake was baked and cooling, I cut up the 2 pounds of strawberries that were on sale this week – a nice break from apples for a bit – I find they get consumed faster if i slice them up.
I also rinsed and cut up mushrooms for dinner, because we were going to be a bit tight for meal prep time when we got home. I had some extra, so I sliced those and sauteed them for a few minutes before freezing them for a future meal. I’m really trying not to waste food, and this is a great way to have just enough mushrooms ready and waiting for use.
At 8:41 the cake was cooling, the mushrooms in the freezer and fridge respectively, the bread dough was rising, the sandwiches in the freezer as well, and the remaining strawberries were chilling in a container in the fridge.
So why get up and prep? It’s a sanity and a money saver. These are meals ready to go. It used up the last of the store-bought eggs (I had also hardboiled some) as our newer chickens are finally laying. The old ladies in the coop are inconsistent, so we’ve had to buy eggs again, and we eat a lot of eggs. It means there’s a few less things we need to do when we get home from our busy day.
The 3-day weekend means I get an extra prep and chores day too, which is great, because I’m behind after getting sick. I’ll go into this week feeling good about our menu and what I’ve done to ensure we’re eating a healthy, varied diet even throughout the busiest of days. It’s the only thing that offsets ‘I’m too tired to cook‘.
And this isn’t just for family-havers. I remember an evening when my husband and I took the RV north to go hiking, and having all our meals prepped and just waiting to eat meant that we didn’t even consider eating out, we just excitedly got back, warmed the food in the oven, lit some candles, and felt lucky as heck to be where we were.
Food prep and meal plans are abundance. I hope your week feels as abundant as mine.
Little House on the Fairy Hill 