Meal Prep for Baby and Other Considerations

Nesting is in full gear now that I am 38 weeks pregnant. At my last appointment, I was 70% effaced, which means I think little man will be pleasantly punctual, if not a little early bird. With that in mind, the 2 lasagnas and the 20 breakfast burritos I made a few weeks back in prep just don't seem like enough to get us through those first few weeks of caring for a newborn, so I decided to shop a little ($100 later at the grocer) and prep a few more meals.

Since Praha (Czech) Stew is such a staple around here, I decided to go ahead and make a huge batch of that. Also, I saw some individual sized tins for pot pies. So, I decided to make both of those today.

Yes, I know those pots are WAAAY too full.
Normally, I would scold myself for this, but today I'm pulling the pregnancy card.

Now if you don't recall, stew has a very critical right and wrong way to be prepped in this household, lest we have a repeat of the "winter of our discontent." So, I could have sworn I had the recipe posted up here for you guys, but I cannot find it! Just understand that it is a beef stew, with potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, and Tony's.

Also, here is the Chicken Pot Pie Recipe. I just made a bigger batch and doled it out into the little tins. Thankfully, there was enough left over to make a small batch for tonight's dinner. That makes this a double win. Here's the low down. Cook the recipe double or triple until you have as much as you need for your prep. I made 6 indiviudal sizes and one family size. Today, I used about 4 chicken breasts, 2 small bags of frozen mixed veggies, one large can of cream of chicken soup, 3/4 of that can of water, spices, and about 1/2 lb of cheddar.

Once all that was cooked together, I used a ladle to fill the tins and allowed them to cool a bit as to not bake the thawed puff pastry that was going on top. Using a small prep bowl that was about the size of the tin, I cut a rough circle of thawed puff pastry for each tin. No Polly Perfects here.

Two puff pastry sheets got me 6 tins and enough to cover tonight's small
Corningware sized container. There was about four small tops per sheet.

Pre and post puff pastry topper. Not perfect but good enough.
Make sure to cut a vent in the top to prevent overflow.

To prevent freezer burn, I covered these little pies with foil THEN their plastic lid. You can write the cooking directions or meal descriptions on the foil. Basically, the pie needs to defrost for about 40 minutes. This is all because of the puff pastry. If you try to cook it frozen, the insides will be fine, but the pastry will be flat and not as delicious.

Digression: Puff Pastry is made up of about 9 million layers of butter and dough. To truly fluff up, those butter layers have to be at room temperature before baking. Also, this is not a dough that likes a lot of manipulation. Do your best to treat it gently and then don't fuss with it. A lot of compression and crimping will compact the butter layers, preventing the puff. Consider yourself warned.

"Thaw 40 minutes and bake 400* for approximately 20 minutes."

An important thing to remember: Remove that foil before baking. It is simply there for freezer burn protection. I don't know if we will be eating these this weekend or in 2 weeks, so I wanted the extra level of freezer burn protection. God knows what will turn out if you bake it with the foil on. Again, you have been warned.

As far as the "other considerations" mentioned in the title... One should really consider how much freezer space is available before prepping and purchasing too many things. Our new house came with a french style freezer that is narrow as hell. Luckily, I was able to cram all these in there after a good rearranging. However, there have been incidences of frozen pizzas that have to be cooked immediately due their diameter being wider than the shelves. I just had a panic attack wondering how I'm going to containers of stew that is still cooking in there. Oh well, live and learn.

~Fin~

Nesting, Butcher Blocks, and Babies

So it's been awhile. *Holds head in shame* I hope there are still a few of you out there wanting to experience the wreckiness that is my domestic life. Let me just take a moment to complain about a few things.

First of all, tablets are not made for blogging. Because I only have the use of my Ipad right now, it has made it very difficult to dash of anything other than a quick picture for you guys. My PC is hooked up, but in his infinite wisdom, Jon told me to return our wireless router to AT&T when we cancelled our plan. Now we are back with them, sans the wireless router, because the PC was not hooked up when the installation guy was here. That being said, I have stolen Jon's ancient work laptop for the afternoon, and I am going to blast a post out.

Just in case you were wondering, here is a few photos of my expansion:

Four months pregnant.

Six Months Pregnant

Thirty-three weeks pregnant

Today...

I have zero energy and my memory has gone to shit. I also would like to comment about how Google has gobbled up Picnik.com, my favorite photo editing tool, and has replaced it with some where Google+ app I can't figure out in my present state.  So now I'm having a hard time making cute and hilarious pictures to add here.

Enough with the rant. I am nesting hard core. The house is a mess and it is driving me bat-shit crazy. We are 98% moved in, but Jon is the ultimate procrastinator. If it were up to me, the nursery would be done, and we would be worrying about how many birth announcements to order, but that is not the case.

The nursery is covered with clothes because we were hoping to get a dresser off our registry. No dice. After a catastrophic prego meltdown yesterday, we went to Target to see what options were available to us. The dresser to match our set was $300 and made of what I can only assume is paper mache. In fact, all the furniture we looked at everywhere was cheap crap. After much back and forth you are not going to be believe what we settled on for a dresser/changing table:

Yes, that is a butcher block...

...And NO the baby's room is not bakery or cupcake themed. Here is our rationale:

1. That butcher block is wide enough for our changing pad (the other dresser choices were not.)
2. This piece is rated to carry a 200 lb load. Most of the dressers, like I mentioned earlier, looked like the couldn't carry the weight of canary.
3. There are pull out shelves that can hold baskets of stuff like a dresser.
4. The wheels are optional, we will be installing legs instead.
5. It is MUCH taller than the dressers we looked at, which will save our backs.
6. Finally, when baby years are over, I can hopefully use it as a craft or baking area. (After a thorough bleaching of course.)

Right now, this thing is in 500 pieces on the living room floor. I have separated the pieces into their various steps, so Jon can put it together tonight. After it is together, I can finally get the remaining nursery things put away, and focus on the rest of the house. Like my messy kitchen.

All of the baby books, blogs, and websites say that at this stage of the game, you really should start freezing meals for after delivery. *Sigh* Since Jon hasn't really had a home cooked meal in the last quarter, this one is something I really need to get into gear about. I went to the grocer today and got $100 worth of goods. Hopefully, over the next coming days, you can see my efforts as I put that stuff together.

Wish me luck.

Olivia's First Birthday Cake!

Carlos from 3rdAvenuePhotography, sent me this family shot of himself, his wife Annie, and their precious baby girl today. She was the little lucky lady who received the three tiered cake wreck. I know, I know I have to quit being so hard on myself, I just wanted it to be perfect for her. Of course she won't remember, but pictures are floating around the interwebs a lot longer lately. Hopefully, Annie will send me some pictures of her eating on that little top layer. However, Annie tells me that Olivia has quite princess-like table manners. So, we may not have the messy face we anticipated. I will keep you posted!

A gracious gal, that sweety!

The candle makes it look less slanted. LOL.

My Smallest Fan and Other Wordlessness

You will give me cake!!!! OM NOM

Losing Control...Running a Bakery is Expensive!!!

Once I get an idea in my head, I just can't let it go. I am so excited about the upcoming cakes that I am going to do that I just can't stand it. I wish that I could make them NOW NOW NOW! Waiting until the end of the month is going to be torture.

I went out and bought some supplies on Friday at the hobby store. Then, I did a little too much shopping at Amazon. I decided that since a true black fondant is so hard to make, I would buy a bin of Fondarific Buttercream Black Fondant instead. I also bought letter cutters so that I could actually get names and "Happy Birthday" on cakes without it looking like a disaster area.

Well, as you can see it is the middle of the night on Saturday...and I've done some more shopping. I bought some molds to help me to make more uniform fondant pieces. They will also cut back on labor and waste of (expensive) product. I also bought Satin Ice Rolled Fondant in a 5.5 pound tub. Guess what...I used up all my rewards points. Thankfully, the leftover total was only about $25 bucks. I was starting to get nervous. All this shopping here and there is adding up. Jon tolerated the $5's and $10's sneaking out the door to the hobby store for awhile, but he's having a harder time tolerating the $20's and  $50's racing out the door after them. I'm going to have to get serious about moving the cakes or I'm going to be in big trouble! I've been making most of these cakes for free for my friends' special occasions. My friends are such mooches, but I love 'em. Seeing their expressions light up when they get a glimpse at their cakes just makes my heart swell.

Meeting Carlos (the pro that will be shooting my cakes) at 3rdAvenuePhotography was very advantageous! He seemed as excited to be working with me as I was with him! I can't help myself, I want to make so many cakes to for him to turn into beautiful art portraits! He was kind enough to offer putting me as one of his preferred vendors on his site starting September 1st! How nice was that! With that, I can get more exposure to brides and families. Hopefully that will drum up some paying business. What is even more lucky is that his baby, Olivia, is going to be turning one that same week, so he's going to be getting her cake from me! God is so good at looking out for me. He even told me to surprise them, I will have full artistic licence. Let me show you what I had in mind for her...

A bow instead of the shoes, and with a more feminine color scheme

I was actually thinking about making it three layers, so that the very top can be a very tiny cake that she can have for herself. That way she can just smash into it and Om Nom to her heart's content. That is always the best part of baby birthdays. You know, the mom's dressing them up in $50 dresses only to let them get covered in gobs of icing. Priceless.

"I will make every effort to make this outfit wearable only once!"

Heaven help me, I've got to find something to keep my busy in the meantime. Decados' Guinness Cake has to be made the of the 15th. So, I'm just biding my time until then. There are a couple of sad bananas in the kitchen that are begging to become bread. I guess I can get to that later today. What I really should do is put my credit card in a block of ice.

Credit on hold until further notice.