Food, Food and More Food

Since Jackson's room is finished and just waiting for his arrival, I've had to direct my nesting instincts elsewhere. So, cooking and cleaning it is.  With cleaning, I have tended to bite off more than I can chew, since the third trimester exhaustion hits around lunch time and I call it quits for the day.  Not as productive as I seem to plan every day!

I've been trying to stock the freezer with lots of ingredients for easy-to-prepare meals. For example, so far we have lots of turkey burgers and chicken sausage (easy for my husband to thaw and grill for us!), some crock pot meals like pot roast, whole chickens, and pulled pork.  Still on the agenda to make this week: pizza dough, pizza sauce, and some meatballs to freeze.  Though if baby boy decides to make his debut before I get these done, I can't say I'll be disappointed!

I have added a few completely made meals, like these enchiladas. Just a warning, they make a TON, so I half the recipe and it makes two 9x13 dishes of them.  One for dinner the night I made them, and one to freeze.  Add to that a big batch of baked ziti...

Currently in the freezer and ready to be baked when wanted... which I'm sure my husband wishes was right now!

Since we're talking about things coming out of the kitchen, I'll add a couple others that  aren't necessarily for post-baby.  The first, Chinese chicken and broccoli, is a recipe that I've adapted and tweaked from a few different recipes to cater it to us.  Since we try to steer clear of Chinese take-out due to the high sodium/ MSG, I've been trying recipes to replace the take-out. We've both enjoyed this, in fact my husband says he prefers this to what he normally orders... score! 

Next are some Nutella cupcakes from Pinterest that we tried.  I have to say, not totally my favorite ever, mostly because they were kind of dry.  But, they were good enough that I'm determined to try them again and perhaps tweak a thing or two to fix them.  We'll see... but they look pretty so I have to post them.  Oh, and we ran out of paper liners so I had to cut out circles of parchment, in case you were wondering!