Journey to Tame the Kitchen

I've been trying to Tame several things within my kitchen since last summer sometime. If you've been around for a while -- you might remember my freezer cooking journey back early last year or the late part of 2015... back then I was planning and making a bunch of recipes and it would take 1 day to shop, another day to prep, and then 12ish hours to make those meals. That system was called Once A Month Meals. It was very time and labor intensive.

 It often left me thinking... there HAS to be a better way to do this. Who has 12 hours to stand in the kitchen -- even if it did speed up the rest of your month's meals. The other issue was that you'd make their recipes to their completion, which often left us eating things that were overdone by the time we reheated them.

That's when I learned about Erin Chase and all of her programs -- and I'm a super fan-girl of everything she does! I found her just about the time she launched My FreezEasy... it's been an amazing -- you literally can make 10 amazing meals in 1 hour! She has preset meal plans for the month - or you can get a membership to be able to swap meals out for ones that your family might like better than the ones on the preplanned menus. Additionally, she now has an app you can use on your phone or iPad too!

She has a plan for most major dietary concerns:

• Traditional Plan
• Gluten Free Plan
• Clean Eats Plan
• Slow Cooker Plan
• 20 Meals Plan
• Zaycon Fresh Plan
• All Chicken Plan
• All Ground Beef Plan
• All Pork Chops Plan 

** The great thing is that every month you get ALL new recipes planned!

With the Premium membership (I have this one) you can go through a database of all the previous recipes and swap out the ones that don't interest you -- or you can even make a plan completely from scratch! I've made two completely from scratch plans and it takes no time at all -- just the time it takes for you to look through the recipes and choose the 5 you want to make! 

Did you get an Instant Pot for Christmas and not really know what to do with it? Yep, Erin has a class coming up to help you get all of the ins and outs of using and cleaning your instant pot. It's on pre-order right now at a very reasonable price -- I'm signed up and can't wait! The start Date for the Electric Pressure Cooking 101 Class is set for January 24th. These classes will be short for your busy life, and you will be able to watch them at your convenience.

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 Finally, the last thing I wanted to tell you about is something that I did last fall. I took part in Erin's Grocery Budget Makeover Class -- it is a 13 week program that teaches you how to meal plan, and make the most out of your grocery shopping game. She covers couponing, sale cycles, and so much more! She breaks down every part of the grocery shopping experience and teaches you how to get the most bang out of your buck!  Think of this as the Dave Ramsey class for the Grocery Budget! One of the great things about this program is that Erin makes it available to you to retake it or go back over the information if you need a refresher at any time! You really have nothing to lose!

You can combine all three of these different AMAZING services like I have... and I will look for what protein is on sale for the week, and I'll try to make a Freezer Meal Plan based on that protein source and stash those away for all the busy weeknights when Mom feels the need to pull something out of the freezer instead of starting completely from scratch! I call that a Busy Mom WIN!