I’m currently 3 days from my due date, bouncing on my bouncy ball in the “nurffice” (nursery/office), feeling pretty uncomfortable, trying to remain present and calm and go about life as if everything is COMPLETELY NORMAL but gosh it’s hard not to obsess about every little twinge in my uterus.
The cliche “nesting instinct” that supposedly hits women at the end of their pregnancies is so real. All last week I had this desperate need to deep clean the apartment and stock up on food, Ben keeps joking that we’re preparing for nuclear winter but honestly that’s how I feel! As if we don’t live in the age of Amazon Prime and aren’t surrounded by an incredible village of friends and family who will take care of us...the fact that my shower gel bottle is half empty is legit stressing me out and I needed to purge the house of every last speck of dust. Like, NEEEEEEEEDED!!!
Ben has been a great sport about it all and has fulfilled all my deep cleaning whims. I love him!
My mom came to visit a couple weeks ago and deep cleaned the freezer and grossness behind the fridge which was the best pregnancy gift ever.
And this weekend I re-filled the squeaky clean beautiful freezer with several crockpot dump meals and batches of baked goods! This sight literally gives me a hit of oxytocin warm fuzzies, can you hear the angels singing?
Baby Locke, we are ready for you!
I’ve read that warming, nutrient rich meals are best for postpartum recovery. Even though it’s August I figure we’ll be keeping the air conditioning cranked, and I know I’ll be drinking alot of smoothies too because they’re easy and I’ve been craving them, so all the meals I prepped are frozen crockpot dump bags. The crockpot also makes life easy and doesn’t heat up the kitchen!
If there’s meat involved, it will take a little bit of forethought to partially thaw in advance (for food safety it’s discouraged to slow cook frozen meat) but I didn’t feel up to actually cooking food to freeze. I’ll leave that to our friends and family!
I found my biggest inspiration from this blog post from Eat, Live Run, and this post from Pinch of Yum. Ben’s manager also shared this epic assembly line style crockpot meal prep spreadsheet.
Here are the crockpot “freeze and dump” meals I ended up making! I used a sharpie to write any cooking or serving instructions so anyone else in the house can make the food for me:
White chicken chili (follow the instructions for freezing)
At ALDI we grabbed a couple boxes of bone broth to add to the crockpot recipes before cooking because it has more protein and nutrients than water or regular broth. We also stocked up on dry goods like pasta, brown rice, and some crusty bread to keep in the freezer to serve alongside the meals. I figure we can use Instacart or have my mom or a friend make a quick run to the store to pick up any fresh foods we need.
The baked goods I made:
Zucchini oatmeal muffins (increased oat/flour ratio to 1 c oats and 1 c whole wheat pastry flour)
Corn muffins (haven’t made these yet but we have all the ingredients and they look easy so I”m going to print the recipe and have it on hand for whoever is available to whip some up to go with the chili and soups)
Bran muffins:
The bran muffin recipe is from my mother in law Pat and it’s one of my family faves. It’s the best because you make a giant batch of batter that keeps in the fridge for several days, so you can either scoop some out and bake a few muffins on demand, or else bake them all and pop them in the freezer. I decreased the sugar to ½ cup because the cereal has sugar as well, and they end up very sweet. Next time I might even omit added sugar altogether. I’d rather bake less sugar into my muffins and add honey if needed. They also have TONS of fiber, which I imagine I’ll appreciate ;)
Pat also made us an enormous batch of tortellini soup and is planning some breakfast burritos, so we have those on deck as well!
And in the meantime as we wait for my uterus to call time and eject bebe, I whipped up a batch of these raw brownie energy bites because I’m trying to eat as many dates as possible to soften my cervix.
WE WILL NOT STARVE!
Hope this is helpful if you’re prepping for a new baby or want to help out a preggo friend!
xo Anna
