OAMC April: Day 1, Part 4

Well, I have to say I did okay for output tonight, after a very slow day getting started.  Since our last update, I got the pork curry bake out of the oven (it's missing SOMETHING, but for the life of me I can't tell what...it might be tumeric...hmmm...).  The picture of it all bagged up and ready to freeze is above.  YES, it looks sort of gross, but it does taste good.  I just used canned veggies (I usually use frozen ones with the Lima beans in them because Lima beans taste AWESOME in curries...why I'm not sure why, but they do, but I couldn't find my frozen mixed veggies...darn).  Everything turned out tasting okay, so I guess I can't complain :).

I then decided to maximize my output by cooking the manicotti noodles (via the directions on the box) and the spaghetti for the Lo Mein and the bare noodles all in one batch of water.  That way I wouldn't have to wait for 5 quarts of water to boil twice.  It worked out beautifully.

The Manicotti was super simple to make and I'm very proud of myself (I've never made it before *laugh*).  I used a recipe that instead of using the traditional ricotta cheese, it just called for string cheese.  I didn't HAVE string cheese and didn't feel like shelling out 7 bucks to get some, but I did have mozarella in block form, so I just cut my own cheese sticks and stuck those in the manicotti.  It worked just great.  SURE it won't taste like traditional manicotti, but I always found the MASS of ricotta cheese in the traditional form to be somewhat overwhelming, so we'll see how the kids like this.

And then I made the noodles for just the bare noodles and the Lo Mein.  I decided to go with one recipe of Lo Mein, mainly because I didn't want to have to freeze too many different bags of veggies.  I ALWAYS separate veggies in dishes like this and freeze them separately because when you cook frozen veggies...when you reheat it the veggies turn to mush.  So, if you don't want that to happen DON'T cook the veggies until you are ready to prepare the dish and just freeze the raw veggies in a separate bag.  Even cabbage will turn out crunchy doing it this way.

So, there you have it folks.  The results of my work for today.  I'm going to cut this post short and skip the check off list until tommorrow.  My husband came home and quickly got into a TERRIBLE mood so I've been fielding the kids and now the kids are getting just as cranky as the DH.  So, I think I'd better just go and pray that bedtime comes quickly.  Enjoy your evening!