My Mother-in-Laws Birthday..!!

Lat week, it was my lovely mother in laws birthday. She does a lot for us, helps us out babysitting, and even cleans the kitchen after she has been round for tea!

But she is hard to buy for…

Last year, when asked what she would like for her birthday, she thought long and hard, and eventually came up with an idea…

Tupperware.

Really? Of all the things you could ask for, you went for tupperware..?

I baulked at the idea of buying such an everyday mundane thing for what is after all, supposed to be a celebration, but then I hit upon an idea. Why not fill said tupperware with meals to go in the freezer?!

My mother in law lives on her own and by her own admission, dislikes cooking, so this seemed like the perfect solution.

This was in the days BMMDAMY (before My Make Do and Mend Year), so we bought some lovely brand spanking new (shocked gasps) tupperware containers, and I duly did a spot of batch cooking and filled them with delicious and nutritious(?!) meals to go in the freezer.

She loved it!

And she would always gleefully inform me when she had eaten/was planning to eat one of the meals.

To the point that this year, she asked if we could do the same again, but obvioulsy re-using the previoulsy purchased tupperware.

So this is what we did!

I spent a couple of evenings doing a little gentle chopping and frying before filling the slow cooker and leaving it to do it’s thing overnight, and whizzed up a batch of pasta sauce at the same time.

It had the added bonus that the next day, I didn’t really have to cook , as we ate some of the meal too, and there was even enough left over after filling the tupperware for me to squirrel some away into our freezer too (sneaky hey?!)

So, my lucky mother in law for her birthday received:

• 1 pot of slow-cooked mustard chicken and bacon
• 1 pot of slow-cooked beery barley beef
• 3 little pots of roasted pepper pasta sauce

• 1 jigsaw from the charity shop
• and we updated her little photo album with some pictures of the Smalls

And I got some meals tucked away for another day.

Win win wouldn’t you say?!