Baseball!

This is Sam. I love Sam. Sam is my youngest son. He is 16 and he loves to play baseball. His favorite position is pitcher although he also loves short stop and 2nd base. Isn't he cute? Don't tell him I said that.

My favorite sport is whichever sport he is playing. My favorite team is whichever team he is playing on. I'm glad his favorite sport is baseball. It is mine, too...because it is his...and because he is playing. =)

It is the end of the season and tournament time. His team has won the first two games of the tournament. Yay! It is double elimination which means that since they haven't lost yet, they still have at least 2 more games. I love this game. I really am sad for the season to come to an end.

It really doesn't seem that long ago that we were at the baseball field watching Sam's older brother, Scott, play ball. He started playing baseball when he was 8. We have been at the ball field every single spring since then. He is 23 now. That is 15 straight years of baseball.

Sam has also been playing since he was 4. And both of his sisters, Erin (24) and Lani (19) played softball. The spring of 1999, the first year that Sam played baseball, all 4 of my kids were playing ball. This means that we were at the baseball field every single night, sometimes 6 nights a week. I love it! We never missed a single game. Didn't miss an inning. Didn't miss a play! O my, what fun that was. Sometimes the kids would be playing 2 games at the same time. One kid on one field, while another kid was playing on another field. We'd sit at the top of the bleachers that were between the two fields and sit so that we could turn side to side to see both fields. So fun!

This is actually how 30 Meals in One Day was born. I loved loved loved being in the baseball stands watching my kids play ball. But I hated suddenly being lousy mom when the game(s) was (were) over. Why was I lousy mom? I felt lousy 'cuz there was nothing for dinner. Why didn't I have dinner ready? Well, because I was busy being good mom in the baseball stands. So frustrating.

Sure, we could have had baseball stand hot dogs or pizza or pretzels or whatever. But gee...how many days in a row can you eat that for dinner? Or afford that for dinner? Yikes. Remember we were at the baseball nearly every night of the week. Same thing with fast food. How many days in a row can you stand it? How many days in a row can you afford it.

I knew there had to be a better way. Take a stroll down the frozen food isle at the grocery store. Don't those boxes look beautiful? Don't they look delicious? Are they? Maybe...maybe not. Are they good for you? Maybe...maybe not. Can you afford them? Maybe...maybe not. I decided that if I could find them in the grocery store, surely I could freeze meals at home. Stuff we like, stuff that is good for us (anything you make at home is going to better for you than what you buy ready made at the store), and stuff we can afford.

The first time I attempted putting meals in my freezer, I chose 30 recipes and I was determined to put 30 meals in my freezer. Why 30? Because there are 30 days in a month and I had the entire month of June ahead of me. I knew we would be at the baseball field most of those days. I needed 30 days of sanity. So, I chose 30 recipes and I made them all. At the end of the day I swore I would NEVER DO THAT AGAIN! It was too hard.

I spent the next 3 years working on a way to put 30 meals in the freezer and not feel like hurling myself from a bridge when I was finished. The result was (is) the book Dinner is Ready. I have worked out the entire process, streamlined it, complete with tips and shortcuts that result in 30 meals in your freezer and a feeling of great satisfaction and relief. It really is doable. And if you pay attention to the tips and shortcuts, you won't dread doing it again.

Chapter 11 is a Sample Order of Events. It walks you through the entire process, from choosing the recipes to closing the freezer door. It shows you what is going on at the same time and what happens next. O, what a feeling to have a freezer full of great, delicious meals...meals you can put on your table in a very short period of time. Every meal in your freezer is a day of freedom in your future! Very much worth the effort to find a day (actually it takes me about 6 hours) to get them in the freezer. A fraction of the time it will take to make dinner every night, and it feels sooooooo much better than feeding your family baseball stand food or fast food or frozen pizza or mac and cheese or bleh cold cereal bleh. Family dinner time becomes a joy, not a stressful source of guilt.

The recipes are great and family friendly. My pet peeve of many cookbooks is the weird stuff. The book is beautiful and enticing but in the end I only find 2 or maybe 3 recipes in the entire book that I will actually use. Not this book. I only put in recipes that my family likes. Your family will like them, too. They might even love them. Not a single recipe calls for an unusual ingredient. No weird recipes, no strange ingredients. Only family friendly stuff and all freezer recipes. You can find some Sample Recipes here.

I'm off to the ball field with my favorite baseball player and my favorite pitcher who plays for my favorite team. I'm not worried about dinner, 'cuz it's already ready. We're having Apple Roast Pork Sandwiches, applesauce and French Onion Sun Chips. Better than fast food! Much, much less expensive than fast food. And, believe it or not, faster than fast food, too.

Take me out to the ball game....(singing...slightly off key)