30 meals in one day!

I have to start this post by saying that I did not actually cook 30 meals in one day. I only prepared 16 meals plus 14 lunches for my husband in one day...Oh and I set the oven on fire.

I read about a thing called the 30 day gourmet. It is a really neat idea of cooking up a months of meals in one day and then stocking it all up in your freezer so that you do not have to shop much or cook again for a few weeks. Sounds great to me! I bought the books and used the worksheets from the books and planned and shopped and yesterday was my cooking day. I was not feeling too well as I have a cold but I managed to get through it. I only planned for 2 weeks of meals and 2 weeks of lunches for my husband as I did not want to get overwhelmed by a days worth of cooking. I finished the cooking around 1:30pm and that was with a couple breaks and the fact I pre cooked some of the beef and the chicken the night before was a huge help.
It was not that bad. Half a day of cooking was pretty relaxing...Except for the fire. Oh, let me tell you about the fire. I was on the recipe for meatballs. I had made about 4 meals already (triple recipes so that it made more than just the 3 meals) and I was feeling pretty good as I was almost done. I know that you cook meatballs in a dish with a lip or a cookie sheet with a lip and I am not sure why I did this (maybe I was tired and the cold I have affected my brain), but I placed all the meatballs (all 60) on 2 baking stones and placed them in the oven. We have a gas oven and I did place some tin foil on the bottom of the oven to catch the drips of grease. (again, lapse of judgment caused by cold and tiredness...Really!!) The meatballs were doing well with the occasional sizzle of the grease hitting the foil once in awhile. I checked every now and then to see that there was nothing major wrong. There were about 2 minutes left until they were to be done. I saw that there was an unusual amount of smoke coming from the oven fairly fast so I opened the door to the oven and WHOOSH!, I was met with an oven full of flames. I quickly shut the oven door, told my son to get out of the kitchen and yelled FIRE!!!! My husband was upstairs and heard me yell. I ran t the basement door and grabbed the fire extinguisher and ripped it off the wall (it would not release easily) and ran into the kitchen. My husband was still not there so I yelled for him again. My son was screaming and yelling "Ken! Ken!" My daughter was in her room playing. (I told her to get out of her room and go to the front of the house) My husband finally came downstairs and opened the oven himself and took the extinguisher from me (he wanted to be the hero) and just looked at the fire. I was frantic as it is a gas oven and I was afraid the flames would somehow cause an explosion. I kept telling my son to get out of the kitchen and all my son was concerned about at this moment was that his sandwich from lunch was still on the table. He was screaming and walking further and further into the kitchen as I was telling him to turn around and get out. He had to have that sandwich before he got out. I was furious and upset but that is another issue. :)
Anyway, Ken had a bright idea to try and save the meatballs from harm and use a rug in the kitchen to try and put the flames out instead of just using the extinguisher. He took the rug and whipped it into the oven and of course that just made things worse. He then sprayed the fire with the extinguisher and put the fire out. He sat there looking into the oven at the ruined meatballs and then laughed. Once it was all said and done it all was kind of comical. Caleb yelling Ken instead of daddy and Kelly playing in her room as all the commotion was going on and Ken trying to put out a grease fire with a rug, oh and then there is Caleb trying to save his sandwich. Brother!
I was still able to use the stove top so I finished the rest of the meals and cooked dinner in the toaster over we have and later on that night cleaned the stove of the extinguisher powder. Today you would never know any of that happened. We are thankful for that of course. God is always with us and watching.
I am still planning on doing the freezer meal thing but I will not cook while sick and tired again and I will never put meatballs on a cookie sheet without a lip again!!
All in all we had a good dinner last night and I have a freezer of meals and it was all done by 1:30pm. Pretty good. :)