Food Prep Sunday

I found a blog recently called The Lean Green Bean.  One of the regular weekly features showcases different bloggers and the food they prep on Sunday to make their weeks go smoother.  Being that I am terrible with meal planning this fascinated me.  The author has a page with over 50 links to food prep posts and I think I looked at almost all of them.  I loved seeing the different pictures of the prepped foods.  I decided this was something I needed to incorporate into my week pronto!  

So, I present my first attempt at Food Prep Sunday!  I made 4 batches of my homemade spaghetti meat sauce.  I always make 3-4 batches at a time with ground beef we buy in bulk at Sam's Club.  We have spaghetti once a week on average so I'm done for the month after a session of prepping these.  Once made, these go in the freezer, are thawed overnight and then cooked in the crockpot for 5-7 hours on low.  All I have to do then is cook noodles, bake frozen bread (for the family) and grate cheese (this sauce is extra yummy with shredded cheddar).  I love crockpot spaghetti sauce day!  

I also cleaned and chopped a bunch of celery and prepped a homemade taco salad dressing.  I eat taco salad at least twice a week for lunch with leftover taco meat and this dressing is also a great raw veggie dip!  It's from the Pioneer Woman's blog and so easy - 1/4 cup each salsa, mayo and sour cream.  I recently discovered the joy of actually using my mason jars.  I have tons of them for all those "gift in a jar" ideas I have pinned....oh I digress.  Anyway, I have found that they take up less space than my usual food storage containers, enable me to spot my ingredients more easily and now are no longer clutter....win, win, win!

Today I followed up Food Prep Sunday with I Wasn't Done Last Night Monday (ha!) by putting a pork butt in the crockpot all day.  I used a 6 lb chunk-o-pig so hopefully there will be enough to freeze several baggies for quick meals another night.  This is my very first pork butt!  I followed a recipe from Everyday Paleo and it turned out yummy.  I also plan to make Cowboy Chili Stuffed Peppers from All Day I Dream About Food later this week so I prepped the recipe halfway to save time the night I make it.  Since I am making so much from scratch these days anything that can be made simpler, in advance or in the crockpot is music to my ears.