Worth It? The Jury Is Still Out...

This constitutes only round one of the dishes that were dirties last night in my whirlwind cooking extravaganza. Of course, calling it that makes it sound a whole lot more fun than it actually was. The temperature was 94* at 5:00pm when I got started last night. Admittedly, I had wanted to start earlier in the afternoon, but couldn't. I started on 5 recipes at once. That might have been a mistake...

I got the wheat berries cooking in one pot. water boiling for the lasagna in another, and a large saucepan for the lasagna sauce. In the sink, the chicken for the chicken crescents was thawing and in the oven were the zucchini and tomatoes, roasting in preparation for the ratatouille (which I had to make without eggplant this time). It was about that time that I needed about 4 more hands... one to lay out foil on the counter that was already covered in dishes so I could lay out the cooked lasagna while cooking more (had to do in batches), another hand to line the lasagna pans with plastic wrap and foil so I could freeze 2 pans, another set of hands to open all the cans of tomatoes, tomato paste and tomato sauce to dump on the frying onions and another to check on the veggies in the oven. Because that all needed to happen at the same time.

This is when I put out the S.O.S. call for a sous-chef. My husband came to the rescue, opening cans and spreading copious amounts of foil. The temperature in the kitchen was hotter than outside with 3 burners on full blast and the oven at 375*. We ran out of counter space so once the lasagnas were put together (not baked), I had to place them on the floor in the pantry to cool before I froze them. The roasted veggies found their places on kitchen chairs to cool (thankfully the kids were outside playing) and as you see in the picture above, the dirty dishes had taken up what seemed to be permanent residence on the counters.

I didn't quite get through my entire list of food to prep for this week- sometime tonight I still need to make homemade sausage-flavored seitan and mix up Cara's FABULOUS basil salad dressing (see previous post). James grilled 10 chicken breasts. There's no way I'd gotten through it all without him (or if I did, there's no way I would have still been a pleasant person).

Once I get those last two things made, I will have plenty of food all prepped and ready to serve up for the next 7 nights. I really, really hope it was worth it. And I hope I get better at this, assuming I ever choose to do it again. :)