Saturday four other ladies and myself got together for the day to prepare tons of food for our freezers. I've been organizing and hosting freezer swaps for a few years now, of course we'd love to do them more often but it seems about 1-2 times a year at most is what ends up working for us. It's so hard to get one day to work for everyone. I've got about ten or so ladies that are always interested, but each time we end up with around four to six of us. Which seems to be a perfect number, not too many for the space and time allowed.
This time around we tried a new location, the break room where both my hubby and dad work. I actually hosted my cookie exchange here in December. There's tons of room, lots of tables for us to spread out and work. A large counter top, two ovens, a sink, three microwaves, two fridges, etc, etc. The only thing we were lacking were stove tops. Easy fix though! My mother-in-law had a portable burner we borrowed and a few electric skillets were brought along as well.
We all arrived and got started just after 10:00 in the morning. My dad and the owner were wonderful at making sure we had everything we needed. We turned on some music and got started. Of course there was plenty of talking and catching up, but lots of mixing, chopping, sauteing and baking going on.
My oldest is now 14 and interested in learning to cook, so she came along to help. It was great having an extra set of hands in the kitchen. That's what I love about our group, most everyone finished up about the same time but we had some {like my mom who cooks for a living} that finished way before anyone else! They immediately hop right in and ask what they can help with next.
I think we did great on time for as much as we made. We had to spread our finished products out over three separate tables, there was no fitting everything on one! Everyone went home with right about 20 dishes, mostly dinners but some sides in there as well. Not bad at all for 5 1/2 hours of work, and that includes our clean up.
I won't lie, I personally, was tired and simply exhausted by the end of the day. I'm sure part of that was from staying up late the night before working on a pretty big cake. But it's all worth it. My freezer is full now, these will come in handy as we're gearing up for all the busy spring activities.
Here's a list of what everyone took home on Saturday:
Baked Parmesan potato wedges
Marinated chicken breasts
Monkey bread
Taco soup
Twice baked potatoes
Inside out burgers {stuffed with bacon and cheese}
Party potatoes
Lasagna
Pumpkin bread
Firecracker sloppy joes
Meatloaf
Ham balls
Zesty Italian melts {recipe coming soon!}
Banana nut coffee cake
Chicken enchiladas
Everyone went home with a wonderful selection, a few things we even have doubles of. I can't wait to do it again!
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