Heavenly Homemakers

It was bound to happen. With all the soccer games going on, and the musical, and the company, and the soccer games. Sorry, but there have been a LOT of soccer games. Oh, and the pollen count has been sky high.

Anyway, I got completely worn out. Exhausted. I’m really not sure how I lasted as long as I did actually. When I started losing my voice last week, I thought it was from trying to yell and coach soccer games. But it didn’t take long for me to realize, “Um Laura? You’re sick.” 

I was finally able to take some time off on Tuesday and rest. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday. Wow, I think I was more exhausted than I thought I was. I’m still not back to 100%. I’m getting there though. I’m focusing on eating nourishing foods (and lots of it), drinking water like crazy, getting a chiropractic adjustment every few days, taking  Congaplex to give my immune system some help (per my Chiropracter’s instruction) and resting. Ah, rest. Where have you been? I’ve missed you so.

My husband has been a rock star and my boys have been learning from their daddy. They’ve kept the house from falling apart and they’ve done a great job helping to put meals on the table. 

However, we’ve depleted all of the prepared food in the freezer and the healthy “convenience” foods I normally make to have on hand. We have no tortillas. No bread. No burritos. It’s starting to look scary in the freezer. (Well, we have a lot of frozen meat, but I wanted to give my boys something easier to make for lunch than say, fried chicken.)

Knowing that I didn’t have the strength yet to pull off a freezer cooking day, but knowing that we HAD to have food on hand that would be simple to prepare…I enlisted the help of the boys on Saturday.

I can not tell you how proud I am of my boys.

I started them on these homemade frozen hashbrowns. I figured if we had a bunch of frozen hashbrowns ready to pull out…we could fry them up with some hamburger meat, or with some turkey sausage, or stir them into a breakfast casserole, or fry them and put cheese on top, or scramble them with eggs…

There are so many possibilities with these hashbrowns. And so, my biggest boys set to work.

They scrubbed, stabbed and baked TEN pounds of potatoes. All by themselves. I had them just throw the potatoes into my big roasting pan for baking:

They went and played for a few hours while the potatoes baked, then cooled. Then, they set to work peeling and shredding. All of them. Without my help.

There was a bit of a mess on the floor when they were done, but I didn’t care. (Well actually, I made them clean it up.)  Then they put the shredded potatoes into the freezer overnight. 

We bagged them up (and ate some of them) the next day!

While the big boys were working up the potatoes, Malachi helped me make a double batch of Whole Wheat Waffles. (Don’t worry, I sat down between rounds of pouring batter.)

Now, we can just pop these into our new toaster oven
and heat them up for a quick and easy breakfast (or dinner).

Today, I’m hoping the boys can help me make a couple of Pizza Casseroles and some Chewy Granola Bars. We’ll see how far we get though. They’d have to make some Peanut Butter before we can make the Granola Bars, but since making Peanut Butter is so easy (and because the boys like making lots of noise), they should be able to handle it.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my family?