I’ve been so thrilled about freezing meals in preparation for lil’ Alice and the first few weeks of her life, during which (I’m told) I won’t want to cook. At all. And I believe it! I think I’ll be too busy figuring out how to feed my brand-spanking new baby to think much about how to feed myself, so I wanted options in stock, ready to go, that just needed to be defrosted and reheated.

Plus, as I’ve mentioned before, there’s that whole childhood fantasy I’ve always had (based on the “Little House” books) of stocking the home with food in preparation for the winter. So even though I didn’t slaughter a pig or string onions along the rafters like Laura Ingalls Wilder did, over the past weeks I’ve built up a reserve of Split Pea Soup, Chicken Marsala, Italian Beef and Peppers, Indian Curry and French lentils, all stacked in freezer bags, labeled and dated.

And then on Saturday (glory of glories) I pretty much doubled what was in there thanks to . . .

. . . Julie and Annie!

They came over around 3pm with large bags of groceries. The idea was that each of us would choose a freezer-friendly recipe and provide enough ingredients to make one giganto batch of it. Annie made chicken and sweet potato burritos . . .

. . . 30 of them.

I made egg rolls . . .

. . . 65 of them.

Julie manned two huge pots of chili.

There was chopping, there was wine, there was good conversation with these two sweet girls, there was music, there were wasabi-coated peas, there was frying and assembly-line burrito wrapping and egg roll-rolling. There was cast iron cookware all over the place, a brief moment in which Julie’s oven mitt was on fire, a short struggle with the Kitchen Aid attachments which ended in a rollicking cheese-grating success, and so much snacking along the way that by the end of the experience, I was stuffed.

We cooked for about 4 hours, and around 7:30 split the results. We each ended up taking home 9 meals for two.

It was fun!

It made my back hurt.

It made my heart happy.

It made my freezer full.

Thank you, ladies, for spending your afternoon/evening with me! It was lovely and we absolutely must do it again, whether or not there are babies imminently arriving.

Here are the nicely stacked bags, with the two new Ziplocs of chili added to the mix:

And the burritos and egg rolls live in the bin at the bottom of the freezer:

Our apartment smelled like egg rolls for the next 48 hours . . .

. . . but my man didn’t seem to mind one bit.

He’s already looking forward to eating those egg rolls, I can tell you that much. Hurry up Alice! We can’t eat ’em until you get here!