Planning Your Cooking

Since I didn't start this blog until after I'd finished everything, I don't have any pictures of what I did as I did it, but I can tell you, my kitchen was a mess for three days, and that was WITH cleaning as I went along.  I used almost a whole bottle of dishwasher detergent.  The floor was so greasy it was like a skating rink. 

I'm going to go ahead and tell you, if you're not a multi-tasker, this could get difficult.  I am good at having things all going at the same time, but I HAVE to have a written plan.   You want to try to have as many things going at the same time as you can, so that you can get more done, more quickly.

The equipment you'll need will vary, based on your recipes, but here's what I used this time:

• Two cast iron dutch ovens with lids
• Several cast iron skillets in different sizes
• Electric skillet
• Crock pot
• General pots and pans
• Knives, ladle, wooden spoons, etc.

This is my basic "Order of Operations."  (See, math teachers?  I used something you taught...sort of...)

1.  Prep all the meat.  Rinse, slice, dice, whatever.
2.  Chop up all the veggies you'll need.  Make sure you separate them all out so that you don't get confused.  
3.  Start a crock-pot recipe.
4.  Get something started in the oven.
5.  Put 1-2 recipes on the stovetop.
6.  Once that's all started and cooking on its own, do something on the counter.
7.  As soon as something is done in one place, get something else going while it's cooling down.
8.  Repeat.

Here's what this looked like for my recipes:

Day One:
1. Cut one pack of chicken into strips for fajitas. Put in bags to marinate for a couple of hours. Thin slice the other pack and pound till even thickness.  Rinse pork chops and boston butt.  Pick apart rotisserie chicken for chicken spaghetti.
2.  Chop 1,937,938,472,398,472,384 onions and garlic cloves.  No, really, that's how many. ;-)  Chop green peppers for spaghetti sauce and chicken spaghetti.  Slice onions and green peppers for fajitas.  Chop carrots and turnips for beef stew.  Chop apples for pork chops.
3.  Put Dr. Pepper Pork in crock pot.
4. Cook tilapia filets for fish cakes.  As soon as that's done, cook corn bread for stuffing.
5.  Cook hamburger meat in two batches on stove top.  Bag one batch, and use the rest for spaghetti sauce.  Make spaghetti sauce.
6.  As soon as corn bread is done, make stuffing and bake in muffin tins.
7.  While spaghetti sauce cooks, brown chicken for BBQ chicken and assemble.  Put in oven.
8.  Make beef stew on stovetop.
9.  While all of that is cooking, do countertop stuff--make souvlaki marinade, put together fish cakes, make pizza dough.
10.  When spaghetti sauce is done, use that burner to make chicken fajitas.  
11.  Brown pork in electric skillet, make apple pork chops.
12.  As soon as everything is cooled down, put in bags/containers and freeze.  Refrigerate pork/pork juice seperately to get rid of fat on top the next morning.

Day Two:  
1.  Deal with pork.  Shred, put in bags with sauce.
2.  Make all three soups on stovetop.  
3.  Put sweet potatoes in the oven and bake.
3.  Assemble and freeze pecan chicken.
4.  Assemble chicken spaghetti.
5.  As soon as one of the soups is done, make glazed carrots.
6.  When the next is done, cook cubed white potatoes.
7.  Assemble country fried steak strips.  The biggest mess and hassle in existence, PS.
8.  When sweet potatoes are cool, skin and mash.
9.  Put everything that's left over in bags/containers and freeze.

Day Three:
1.  Anything that's flash frozen (fish cakes, steak strips, potatoes, etc.) put in bags.
2.  Finish up anything you didn't finish the first two days.
2.  Pour a glass of wine and lie down.