![\"bag\"](\"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Bag.jpg\" "\\"bag\\"")
<\/p>\nBack in January, I decided to jump in with a bunch of friends and fellow moms to form a meal swap group.\u00a0 One friend took the initiative and found a great cookbook full of freezer meals specifically designed for meal swap groups. \u00a0She organized our first meeting to discuss logistics, including how often to meet, likes and dislikes, types of recipes, allergies, cost, and so forth.\u00a0 We chose the date of our first meal exchange and our meal swap group of ten moms was born.<\/p>\n
I decided to make Black Bean Burritos, not just because I like them, but because I thought it was a fairly manageable recipe for my first foray into cooking\u00a0six family-sized (4 serving) meals at a single time.\u00a0 I had planned to make them earlier in the month, but life got busy as it always seems to do.\u00a0 So the night before our meal swap, after a weekend out of town, I finally headed to the store to buy all the ingredients, including\u00a0thirteen pounds of black beans.\u00a0 The original plan was to prepare the meals and eat one of them for dinner.\u00a0 That idea got tossed out the door at the grocery store when I realized cooking\u00a0six family meals may not be the quickest of all endeavors and it was already getting late.\u00a0 On my way to pick up seven onions in the produce aisle, I decided to call for pizza delivery.<\/p>\n
After we ate dinner and the kids were in bed, I finally got the kitchen ready for the big production.\u00a0 I cleaned all the counters, got out all the ingredients, set out cutting boards, knives, bowls, and other tools.\u00a0 As I was peeling off the outer layers of the seven onions, I realized it was going to be a long night.\u00a0 My husband laughed that next day when he described finally lying down for bed and being jolted awake by the food chopper banging against the cutting board over and over again.\u00a0 Two hours into the cooking process I wondered what in the world did I get myself into?\u00a0 With three big pots of beans cooking on the stove, I felt like I was back in my food service rotation at school.\u00a0 Then finally, I was rolling burritos and actually finding it somewhat relaxing.\u00a0 The meals were coming together and looking pretty tasty.\u00a0 I assembled each family\u2019s bag with their burritos, salsa, cheese and reheating instructions.\u00a0 When they were done, I was impressed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The next morning, I packed my cooler full of burritos and headed to meet up with the other moms.\u00a0 Any doubts about joining the meal swap group were quickly erased as I emptied my cooler of burritos and filled it with Broccoli & Chicken Quiche, Sloppy Joe filling, Beef Stroganoff and Chicken Chili.<\/p>\n
Thanks to my meal swapping friends, I\u2019m well on my way to\u00a0achieving my New Year\u2019s resolution of making more\u00a0home cooked\u00a0meals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back in January, I decided to jump in with a bunch of friends and fellow moms to form a meal swap group.\u00a0 One friend took the initiative and found a great cookbook full of freezer meals specifically designed for meal swap groups. \u00a0She organized our first meeting to discuss logistics, including how often to meet, likes and dislikes, types of Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":8094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,780],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e","category-nutrition-2","cat-42-id","cat-780-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Burritos-ready-for-the-freezer.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3020"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3020"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7984,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3020\/revisions\/7984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nutritionknowhow.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}