At 33 weeks pregnant with a three-year-old and 18-month-old already on deck, I know that meal preparation once the baby arrives is going to be difficult.
Breakfasts will be fruit, yogurt and steel-cut oatmeal that I make ahead in enormous batches (脿 la Dickens, except my kids don鈥檛 ask for more).
Lunches will be whatever I can manage to get into them 鈥� soup, pasta salad, cream cheese on crackers that end up upside down on the floor and hundreds of meters worth of cucumber.
All of this is easy to grab from the fridge and not too challenging to throw together. But dinner is a different beast, especially with some deeply engrained fifties-style ideas about the evening meal.
With our first baby, we bought a chest freezer and stocked it with soups and casseroles.
With the second, we did next to no planning and it played out well 鈥� she slept soundly right off the bat and I didn鈥檛 go through the hellish all-nighter routine most of us experience for months with a new baby, so making dinner wasn鈥檛 much of a stressor in my day-to-day life.
This time around, however, with the more demanding nutritional and preferential aspects of the older two, I鈥檓 taking these last weeks to double up any recipes that freeze well.
At the very least I鈥檒l have something decent socked away to feed us on those desperate days when hubs is late and I can鈥檛 get a minute with two free hands to chop, dice and stir.
I asked friends for their favourite nesting recipes for freezing, and most of the responses would make a hobbit happy 鈥� a good thing for us mountain dwellers.
For the nights demanding a proper grown-up meal, there will be marinated flank steak (to barbecue and serve with potatoes and green salad with lots of avocado, onion, mandarin and toasted walnuts).
For something a little more hearty than regular veggie-blended soup, there will be hamburger soup (Google the recipe, it sounds gross, but it鈥檚 delicious and nutritious and can easily be made vegetarian by using veggie ground round instead of beef).
When I need to get something kid-friendly into everyone, there will be cauliflower mac 鈥檔鈥� cheese and batches of saucy enchiladas that can be served over rice.
To complement any of these meals, I鈥檒l have stacks of flaky freezer biscuits from the Best of Bridge cookbook, a recipe that makes dozens of freezable dough discs that round out the carb component of any meal.
Although the white flour recipe is really, really good, I also make mine with a blend of whole wheat and multigrain flours.
The smell of freshly baked biscuits at dinnertime is really the food equivalent of sleeping late and having coffee in bed 鈥� completely satisfying.
If I can鈥檛 sleep in, I鈥檒l make do with the butter-slathered biscuits.
