Preparing for baby: Recipe Exchange?

Definitely a great idea! I wrote my to do list the other day and this is a major item for me, a life saver over the first 2 weeks. As I gather my recipes I will share here but as a starter items that I always cook in big batches and freeze part for use later are spaghetti sauce, chilli, lasagna, roasts (chicken, turkey, ham, beef), meatballs, soups, bake a batch of chicken breasts and slice and freeze them for quick use (ie sandwich, quick stirfry w/ frozen veg, etc), any baking (muffins, cookies). All of those items freeze and reheat amazingly! I will look and see if there is a link I can post for a magazine that I have that is all about cooking in advance and freezing.

I am starting this now - mostly doubling meals and freezing half. Here is my first freezer meal - the most tasty chicken soup I have ever made, rave reviews even from my kids tonight at supper. The only critisim was that we all wished we had some fresh rolls to have with it.

On the weekend I made a roast chicken  -a 9lb bird that I brined before baking simply with fresh thyme, summer savoury, rosemary, and oil rubbed on the skin and 2 carrots, 2 ribs of celery, 2 onions (skin on) in the bottom of the pan and baked at 325 for about 2 1/2 hrs until proper internal temperature was reached.

After letting the bird sit for about 10 mins (to let all juices redistribute into the meat) I stripped the carcass of all of the meat and put the carcass into my slow cooker, covered with cold water, and added fresh veggies - 4 carrots and 2 ribs of celery each cut into 1" chunks, 2 onions with skin on cut into eights, a few sprigs of thyme, and a bay leaf. I let it cook on low for approximately 24 hours. Strain all bones, veggies, meat, etc from the broth.

Put stock into a large pot to make soup (or reuse the crockpot if you want). Slice carrots (i used 8), celery (i used about 6 stalks), slice 2 onions, shred / cut remaining chicken meat. Add ingredients to the stock, bring to a boil, and cook until veggies are tender (about 20 mins). At this point I also added some frozen peas. You could add rice or noodles if you want but be sure to adjust cooking times accordingly. Fyi recipe was adapted from Chef Michael Smith (food network)

Done! A nice healthy meal for after baby arrives. Tomorrow will be a double batch of chilli (I think).