Allyson's Chinese Sweatshop That Cranked Out 200 Meals In One Day

On Thursday my mom and I drove to Brigham City to go to a class Chef Tess was teaching about her 52 week meal in a jar plan. She uses freeze dried food and puts it in canning jars and adds all the spices and ingredients you need to make a meal. When you are ready to eat it you just add water and cook for about 20 minutes and eat. We decided we wanted to do it so we gathered all the supplies Thursday and Friday. We enlisted our dear friend Carla to do it with us. And since Sam and Teresa came down from Idaho for a visit, well, we enlisted them too! We were like, oh yeah, it will just take a few hours on Saturday for all of us to put the meals together. HA! More like a few 12 hours.

I did get a little sweatshopish on them. My mom and I have two totally opposite ways of doing things and I had to put my foot down when she just wanted to jump in and start throwing stuff in the bags all willy-nilly like. (we decided to put our meals in mylar bags instead of jars) I insisted on some organization. My mom sent Emily to turn on some music and I nixed that idea. So yes, my mom did say something about my sweatshop overlord ways. A few times. Oh well, it got the job done. Eventually. We were all dead tired when we finally finished up the last of the clean up at 9 pm that night, after starting at 9 am. I can't tell you how excited we were when we realized we had to set the clocks up one hour.

We had an assembly line where we each had our ingredient for each recipe and we put the right amount in the bag and passed it down to the next person.

Here's a picture of my mom writing on the bags. This is what I know she is thinking:


-I can't believe Allyson is making me divide my meals in half instead of putting enough food to feed 6 people in a bag when it is just me and Lauren at home to eat it.... (FYI: She did call me today and tell me that she and Lauren ate one of their 1/2 meals last night and there was plenty left over and she was glad she only did half meals.)(mmmhhhmmmm....)

-I can't believe Allyson is making me put my meals in these practical mylar bags when the jars would be so much cuter on my shelves.

-This would be so much better if we could turn the music back on. Dang overlord. Who does she think she is?

About 6 hours into the whole long process Lauren had pretty much had it.

We borrowed the mylar bag sealer from our church dry pack cannery. Sam was in charge of sealing the bags. Addy was in charge of bag transport.

Our meals that we ended up with. I have 40 complete meals (just add water) to feed my family. Carla and my mom (since they have less people eating at their house and since my mom has a bossy daughter who thinks she is in charge of everything and everybody) went home with 80, yes EIGHT-EEE meals each! Each! My mom sent half of her meals home with Sam and Teresa so she has 40 and they have 40. Pretty good haul for a days work, I'd say. The meals packaged the way they are will last 4-5 years (Yes I know mother, they would last 5-7 in the jars. That can break in an earthquake. Or in a kitchen with 200 glass jars and kids running around. And that are hard to transport.) I plan on throwing a few in our 72 hour kits.

We did take a short break in the early evening. Emily went to a Birthday party. Sam and Teresa and Lauren took Zac, Aubrey and Addy to see The Lorax. I worked on stuff I had to do for church and my poor sweet dear mother finished the meals and started the clean up. Then we grilled hamburgers and did a little Kinect Zumba. I have a picture of Zac and me doing Zumba but that is a picture that I will not be posting. So you will have to make due with this one of Sam and Teresa.