Cooking Frenzy

I alluded to this in a previous post, but once a week, on a weekend morning, while Asher watches cartoons, I cook up a storm in our kitchen to provide breakfast for the kids and contribute to what's in the fridge for the next few days.  Here's a sample menu and account (each week varies but this is pretty illustrative).

 

 

5:30am: Back from a morning run or bike ride, I quickly shower and throw some clothes on while hoping Asher will stay asleep.  Alas, by this point, he's usually up, so I get him set up with an iPad and start putting all of the morning's ingredients on the kitchen table.

5:45am: First thing to fire up is the oven (so it'll start warming up) and a couple of big pots of water (so they'll start boiling).  Then I can turn my attention to prepping the broccoli, which is one of the things that's going into the water, and laying out a bunch of things from the kids' school lunch box onto cookie pans to put in the oven (mixed veggies, beans, nuggets, etc.).  

6:00am: The cookie pans can go into the oven and the broccoli can go into the water.  At the same time, I throw a couple of frozen pizzas in the oven and dump some ramen packets into another pot.  Timers are set so I know when different things will be ready, but usually I'm pretty lazy in that I leave everything in the oven for the same amount of time and I let the stuff in the water stay there for a lot longer than it probably should.

6:15am:  Turn off the oven but leave everything in.  Now it's time to throw the bacon on the griddle and prep the grilled cheese to go on the griddle once the bacon is done.  The secret step with the grilled cheese is to grate enough cheese to put on the outside of the sandwich and not just the inside.  Between that and the bacon grease residue, my grilled cheese sandwiches are really delicious!

6:30am: Bacon's done and grilled cheese is getting done, so I can turn my attention to mixing the ingredients for pancakes.  Amy and the kids have successfully pressured me into dumping a bunch of chocolate chips in too, but in the past I've also added bananas or dried cranberries.

6:45am: Take stuff out of the oven to cool on the counter.  Bacon and grilled cheese also done by this point.  Now I can take turns flipping the pancakes and cutting fruit and making salad.  

7:00am: The last of the pancake batter is used up, all the fruit's been cut, and all the salad ingredients have been prepped and tossed.  Now I can put away everything in little containers except for the breakfast foods, which the older kids will be a couple of hours away from devouring.  

 The leftovers get put away in the late morning, and everything lasts maybe 2-3 days, just long enough to get us to takeout food, which in turn lasts us til Amy can cook later in the work week.  And then it's time to start the cycle all over again.