Today is going to be a cooking and baking day for me. Since I’ve been sick, my families nutrition has really suffered. The kids haven’t been eating enough fruits and veggies, and have been eating more store bought snacks. I normally try not to buy snacks that I can make myself. I need to get our family meals and snacks back on track. Homemade snacks, even though they still have sugar in them, are much better than store bought with all the artificial colors, flavors and preservatives.

I got a head start last night by making banana muffins. We ate a few for breakfast, but I still have 18 to put in the freezer.

Here’s what I’m going with today.

brownies – quad recipe in a very large pan
no bake cookies – double recipe
french toast – 39 pieces done
oatmeal raisin cookies – double recipe

UPDATE – 12:30 Brownies and no bake cookies are cooling, and I’m taking a lunch break. 🙂

UPDATE – 3:00 I made 39 pieces of french toast. And the Oatmeal Raisin cookie dough mixed. I’m off to bake that. I also need to start packaging all this food for the freezer.

UPDATE – 6:00 A double recipe of oatmeal raisin cookies made 11 dozen and 4 cookies. I put 3 dozen in the cookie jar and the rest are going in the freezer. The double no bake cookie recipe made over 100. People were eating them before I got an exact count.

Here’s a picture of everything thats going in the freezer, including the banana muffins I made last night.

I made chicken soup for supper, but I ran out of time to make biscuits, so we had crackers with it. I cooked the chicken on Monday. I like to do it at least a day ahead of time. I like to skim all the fat of the top of the broth. There’s enough soup left for another meal.

I did have some chicken helpers to get the meat off the bones. I hate that job. Unfortunately, so do they.

I had a very successful cooking and baking day. I need to do meal starters another day. I need to cook and freeze a few different kinds of beans, and get some cooked meat in meal sized packages.

No Bake Cookies

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 cups oatmeal
3/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 tsp salt

Put first four ingredients in pan. Boil for 1 and 1/2 minutes. Remove from heat, then add the remaining ingredients. drop by spoonfuls on waxed paper and cool.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to say the rest of the rhyme! Even though my kids quote it everytime we have beans. Of any kind. Their Father taught it to them. I didn’t. Just for the record.

Last week, I cooked beans to have in the freezer. I cook a 1 pound bag of red kidney beans, a 1 pound bag of navy beans, and half a bag of great northern beans.

Here they are soaking. I did the overnight soak. In the past, I have used the quick soak. I think I’ll use that all the time now. It’s quicker, easier, less stuff sitting on the counter overnight, and fewer bowls to wash. Sounds like a better way to me!

After using about a cup of each kind for our supper that night, I ended up with 3 bags of both the kidney and navy beans, and 1 bag of great northen beans. I put 2 cups in each bag. If you have a smaller family, you’ll probably only want a cup. Which I believe is about how much is in a can of beans. This is the first time I’ve frozen beans. They are definitely better for us, and cheaper then canned beans. And now they will be just as convienent as canned.

I posted before about the peanut butter recall

Today, I found the FDA’s website. You can search by product to see if the one you have has been recalled.

https://lindaslunacy.com/2009/02/i-posted-before-about-peanut-butter/

There was some serious baking going on last night. shhhhhh…….I wasn’t supposed to know.

The faces have been altered to protect the innocent cake bakers.

But, seriously, how could I not know that this was going on in my kitchen? I will continue to protect the innocent, and not tell you some of the questions I overheard.

A helper stepped in, as apparently, she didn’t trust him with the cake. lol There were no other helpers forth coming. They all wanted to sit around and laugh, instead.

I haven’t tasted it yet, but it looks and smells good!

Have you heard about the peanut butter recall? It’s important that you find out about it.

So go check the list of recalled products that is 31 pages long!

And check your cupboards!