Success! November 4, 2009

WHEW!!

I didn’t think I’d make it…..but I did!!!  Potato day was a complete success!  🙂

It started off EARLY, if you read my post below, but I kept the coffee flowing and made it a great cooking day!

Before I made breakfast for the kids, I started off by putting the two squash in the oven to roast, and I then realized I needed to clear the dishwasher!  There’s nothing worse on a “cooking day” than having a sink full of dirty dishes and a dishwasher full of clean ones!

After I made breakfast for the kids, cleaned up the kitchen, and got them dressed, I prepped and peeled an ENTIRE 10 pound bag of potatoes.  Man……did I mention I REALLY don’t like peeling potatoes?!?  I got through the entire bag, though, and Ava hung around as my “sous” chef!!  She LOVES……I mean LOVES to help me in the kitchen!!

After I got one of the bag of potatoes peeled, I started in on THIS soup.  It is such an EASY recipe and it’s so delicious!  I urge you to try it!!   So, as the soup was simmering away, I had Ava help me spoon out all of the roasted squash and get that going for THIS Marbled Mashed potatoes.  This recipe was a little more labor-intensive than I thought it would be, but it was a really neat concept and it seemed to work out great.  Ava had fun “swirling” the squash and potatoes together at the end.  Both the soup and the Marbled Potatoes seemed to come out great!!

Soup done!

Marbled Mashed Potatoes

After I cleaned up a bit—10:30ish—I realized that I needed to get lunch for the kids (Ava catches the bus to Preschool at around 11:20), and I also needed to get Anna down for a nap.

That’s when I found this:

Ava and Luke were having a “sleepover”—-under the Dining Room Table!!!  It was so cute!!  They are obsessed with sleepovers, lately, and I thought it was so cute that they came up with this on their own!!  They really are starting to play together so well and it’s such a joy to see them using their imaginations!!

So…..we made it through lunch and got Ava on the bus by the skin of our teeth—and I got Anna down for a nap in the midst of it all!!  We made it!

Usually, after Ava gets on the bus, it’s “Lukie and Mommy” time, and I didn’t want to change that, so he and I played outside and had a fun time together before his nap.  But, once I got him down for a nap–the heat was on!  It was time to peel the majority of the other bag of potatoes and get to THESE mashed potatoes.  And, right as I was peeling the last potato, sweet little Anna woke up from her nap, so she was my trusty sidekick for the next hour, or so!

I then got going on the Freezer Mashed Potatoes and decided to double the batch, so that I could also use them for the muffin tin potatoes, too.  It worked out perfectly!!  And they are soooooooo yummy!

Here’s the two tins of them:

And here they are in the muffin tin.  I actually just used an icecream scooper and it worked out quite well!

I let them freeze for a few hours, hoping my idea of individual portions would work, and it did!!  Cute little portions of mashed potatoes for the kiddos came right out of the tins.  I transferred them into ziploc bags and back into the freezer!

Woohoo!  All the potatoes were done, and I had some left over to bake for dinner tonight with our pot roast!!

It was quite the hectic day…..but, it was so great!!  It actually was  a lot of fun and it’s great to see all of this in my freezer!!

Which, by the way….the pan on the left is THESE French Bread Rolls—-I can’t believe I had time for them!!  (They were still rising when I took this picture, but they are now baked and in the freezer!!)

If you’re wondering how I package these up—I use plastic wrap, first, and make sure it’s nice and covered.   I, then, go over it with aluminum foil and put a label on it.  I write down what the item is, how to bake it, and the date—then I put a few more layers of plastic wrap on it, just to be sure!!

Thanks for joining me on my 20-pounds-of-potatoes journey!!

It’s Potato Day!

Wow…….4:30 sure comes EARLY!!  For some reason, the kiddos cannot sleep past 4:30 AM.  They are up, lights on, playing in their room, and ready for the day!  I’m sure it has something to do with the time change, but even so, that would mean it’s “really” only 5:30, and they didn’t even used to get up that early!  I’m really not sure what’s going on, but I sure hope (and pray!) this doesn’t last long!!!

Ahhhh…..anyway, since I’m up early, that means I can get more done, right?!  (Oh, which, by the way….Miss Anna is a sleeping gem!!  She’s just 10 weeks old, and for the past week, she has been sleeping from, about, 7:30 pm until around 4 or 5 am!!  9-10 hours straight!  Goooooo Anna!  Plus, I nursed her around 4:30 this morning when the kids got up and she’s back down sleeping again!  I’ve completely stopped swaddling her, too, and she’s now sucking on her fingers to soothe herself back to sleep!  This girl is amazing.)

Alright, so on to my Potato Day!

Today I will be doing some FREEZER potato recipes.  In the past, I have to admit, that I never really thought freezing potatoes would work, but after much research, I have found that if you do it the right way, it CAN be done!!

So, here’s what I hope to get accomplished today:

1.  Prep and peel, at least, 90% of the potatoes.  (Can I just say that I REALLY dislike peeling potatoes…..plus, I feel like I’m taking away all the vitamins and nutrients!!)

2.  Roast Squash (read on–you’ll see why)

3.  Make Panera’s Cream Cheese Potato Soup  (Recipe HERE)  This soup is DELICIOUS!!

4.  While the soup is going, I’ll start on Marbled Mashed Potatoes.  (Recipe HERE)  I just found this recipe last night, but it is so intriguing to me, because it includes squash–I LOVE squash!  In fact, over the weekend we ventured out to a Grocery Outlet and found squash (of ANY size!) for 50 cents each!!!  The best deal I’ve found on squash is about $1.00/pound, so 50 cents/each was a STEAL!!  It’s called Marbled, because of the different colors of the squash and the potato, but the squash I’m using is actually a light, white color:

I believe these are called Sweet Dumpling Squash, and I’m using them, in hopes that I can easily incorporate them into this side dish and not have the kids know it’s in there!!  🙂

5.  Then, THESE Freezer Mashed Potatoes, but, instead of cooking the potatoes in the crockpot (my Pot Roast will be in there for dinner tonight!), I’m just going to boil them on the stove.

6.  And, last but not least, I’ll be making good ‘ol regular mashed potatoes (with butter and cream), and I’ll be scooping them into muffin tins.  I’ll then pop the tins in the freezer until the potatoes are good and frozen, then I’ll bag them up in freezer bags in their cute individual portions!  That way, whenever mashed potatoes fall on the Menu Plan, I can just pull out as many portions as I think we’ll need!

I’m also hoping to get THESE French Bread Rolls done!!!

Is this too hefty of a load, while taking care of 2 toddlers , a newborn—-AND all my SAHM duties?!  Only time will tell…….I’ll post tonight how it all went!!

Here’s to the great potato…….