Ready meals...

When I was a busy working mum who hated fast food as much as I hated wasted food, I got into the habit of freezing leftovers or I specially cooked extras into single portion meals. This proved to be so useful when the children were young and needed their dinner long before Hubby got home, or in the teenagers stage when I never knew who was home when. And now even though I'm retired with supposedly all the time in the world, I still cook massive dishes of certain foods even when there are just two of us eating so the rest can be boxed and labelled for the freezer.

This weekend these home cooked ready meals were a perfect solution again. On Saturday Daughter was going to a party with the girls and O was having a special daddy day with M, however, E and O needed to sleep here at my house because R had another dancing competition on Sunday that was a really early start and M was working so he couldn't have the children.

So the plan was M and O coming here late afternoon having had a big cooked lunch. Daughter would come here after the party (which didn't start till 4pm and was an hours drive away). Hubby was also out all afternoon doing charity collections at a local supermarket. So planning a meal was tricky, so I didn't even try lol. Turned out I fed three adults and a three year old with three shepherd's pies, microwave thawed then popped into the oven to crisp up the potatoes on top.

M took O up to bed and altho we heard a bit of story telling it went quiet for so long we realised they must have both been fast asleep. Daughter arrived just after 10pm and swapped E for M and went straight home. E was very soon in bed, she had promised O she would sleep with him in the double bed, but when we went up he was sprawled out over the middle of the bed and on top of the duvet so that took a bit of rearranging but finally both snuggled comfortably.

O woke at about 5am a bit upset because he'd forgotten where he was so I carried him into our bed and altho neither he or I actually got any more sleep he did settle for a good hour so we came down just after 6pm. Breakfast, tv and amusing ourselves went on for three hours before hubby and E got up. Hubby spent quite some time outside with O, E spent the afternoon at a local event with a friend, thanks to her friend's parents for providing the transport. Daughter thought they would be back late afternoon but a few text during the day let me know it was going to be nearer 7pm.

Then once again it was dinner time.....so out of the freezer come lots of little boxes.
E chose a vegetable casserole, hubby took the bbq chicken dinner and O and I shared a tuna pasta. Ping ping ping of the microwave and as we all sat with hot dinners Daughter and R arrived who instantly chose another tuna pasta and a shepherd's pie ping ping.
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