Mealtime Monday Preview

Boy am I pooped! It's Sunday night and I just finished my marathon meal prep for the week. I am sad to say that I did not meet my 1.5 hour time budget tonight. It took me 2 hours and 10 minutes to complete meal prep for 5 meals and 1 side (x2 for 2 families). Now I will say that part of the reason it took me so long to complete meal prep tonight was.... well really it was three-fold....

First- I attempted to keep a neater kitchen while cleaning. I tried my best to put up ingredients as I went; and to sort garbage from recyclable between meals; I even had a sink of hot soapy water ready to soak dirty dishes. I really thought I was doing a good job until at one point I looked up and just laughed...... this was my "neater kitchen"? Scary to think what it would have looked like if I hadn't been cleaning as I worked!

Regardless, I'm claiming at least 6 minutes of my overtime was due to extra clean-up.

Secondly- Drama! Around the 1 hour 22 minute mark I was on the home stretch with only 1.5 dishes to complete. That's when my family got home from Awanas. While DH served the Chicken Tortilla Soup to Colby and himself I got Cohen's dinner ready and served up on his high chair. No biggy- just another 5 or so minutes used up. But then.... While I am hard at work dipping the eggplant slices into the egg substitute, then into the breadcrumbs, then onto the cookie sheet, repeat (over and over and over again) Colby is sitting at the bar talking a mile a minute. Well, I guess he forgot that he was sitting on the counter height bar stool instead of his chair because the next thing I know I hear a splat and Colby is laying flat on our concrete floor. After his initial shock the wailing begins. Colby is crying too. I'm a little freaked out about the fact that he has hit head first onto concrete floors but I try to stay calm for his sake.

I was instantly transported back 20+ years to the time I was dropped on my head and hysterical because I just knew my brains would fall out. Two lessons learned from that traumatic event in my childhood 1) I did not appreciate that my parents got such a kick out of the fact that I thought my brains would fall out during my moment of crisis; therefore I did not laugh when Colby said that the only way he would "feel better" was if he stayed up all night and watched TV. 2) My brains did NOT fall out; therefore I felt pretty confident Colby's brain would stay intact too. Drama over!

Of course I did NOT get a picture of the event. I mean what kind of Mom would I be, if I had asked Colby to just "hang tight" until I was able to get a picture of him laying on the floor. But..lucky for you, Cohen decided to recreate the scene later that evening. He did not actually fall and hurt himself he just decided to lay on the kitchen floor to see if Mommy would jump around and act crazy if he was on the ground too (anyways that's my best guess why he was striking such a dramatic pose).

Drama accounted for at least 20 minutes of my overtime.

And last, the third reason I feel I went over my time budget was because of those darn eggplants. I prepared double the recipe so that was a whole bunch of eggplant chips to make. I will say although the recipe calls for 3 eggplants you could easily get by with just two or even one in my opinion. I normally don't feel like my cooking for two families slows me down BUT this meal really did take double the time. We'll see if it was worth it!

My guess is that the double Eggplant Parmesan dishes cost me around 14 minutes.

So there you have it... I can easily explain away my overtime bringing me back to my 1 hour 30 minute deadline. TA DA! I know... excuses! excuses!