Archive for Make Ahead Meals
Always Label Your Frozen Food – UPDATED! :)
Posted by: | CommentsWe are having an unidentified casserole for lunch today. Sounds delicious doesn’t it?
I made it during one of my recent freezer cooking days, but I didn’t label it. Why didn’t I label it? Good question. I think I didn’t label it because I figured we’d eat it within a couple of weeks and I’d remember what it was. But we didn’t eat it within a couple of weeks and my brain has blocked out that memory and now I have no idea what it is.
Any ideas?
I’m thinking it might be beef enchiladas, but I’m not sure.
So, my encouragement for you today is to always label your frozen food. It helps you know what you’re eating. Duh.
Now, I also recommend that you re-use your freezer bags if possible. The labeling of freezer bags, however, can become an issue when you re-use them.
Case in point: I once filled a freezer bag with bean and cheese burritos. I labeled the bag “bean and cheese”. Later I re-used the bag store zucchini bread. I knew what it was, but of course no one else did. My husband got ready to slice some for breakfast the next day and glanced down at the bag to see what kind of bread he was to be eating. He looked at the label and of course it said, “bean and cheese”. I think he might have jumped back in shock. Sorry, Honey.
I hereby resolve to become better at labeling my frozen foods.
Would you like an update on the identification of the unidentified casserole after lunch today?
——————————————————–
UPDATE!!
Sure enough…it was beef enchiladas. Once I could smell what it was while it baked in the oven, I had just enough time to make a taco salad and lunch was served. Hey, sometimes surprises are fun, right?
Cooking Ahead for August
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s coming…and I’m bracing myself. I’ve been doing everything I can to prepare and be organized so that I won’t be stressed and short tempered with my boys. Not that I would ever be short tempered with my boys. Ugh, I do try not to be short tempered with my precious angels who leave their stinky shoes in the middle of my kitchen floor so that I can stub my toe on them while I’m trying to cook and fill their constantly hungry bellies. I try.
So what’s coming, you ask? Just a very busy couple of months, that’s all. August and September are two months of very,very hard work while I do a lot of canning and preserving in the midst of beginning our school year and running to lots of soccer games. I absolutely love this time of year, but it can sometimes get hectic.
As soon as I finished writing and putting together Learn Your Letters, Learn to Serve Curriculum Kit, I saw that I had about three weeks before we were going to start our school year. (We like to start in early August at our house.) I decided that during the last part of July, I would prepare a bunch of freezer foods, stock up on items like canned salmon and tuna for easy meals and order meat from our local farm source so that I’d have a full freezer and plenty of meal options. I even pulled out Do the Funky Kitchen and read it again so that I could get my kitchen organized an in order! Anything that I could do ahead of time to prepare for this busy season, I did. I think. I’m pretty sure I forgot a few things.
Anyway, my pantry and freezers are well stocked so that putting meals on the table during the next few weeks will be easy and quick. I am excited now to begin a new school year with the boys! (More details on our school year coming soon.)
Here are some pictures of the food I prepared and froze during the last part of July:
Strawberry Bread - Pictured above is the unbaked version. Isn’t it a pretty pink?!
Mini Pizzas, using this Pizza Pockets recipe…
I’ll be able to just pop a few of these into our toaster oven to bake up while we finish our morning school-work.
Whole Wheat Waffles - ready to be re-heated in our toaster oven for a quick breakfast or dinner.
Whole Wheat Sourdough Biscuits - I may use these for turkey/cheese melts…or I may grab some turkey sausage I have pre-made in the freezer to make some quick gravy to pour over them. NOBODY would complain if I made biscuits and gravy. :)
Sloppy Joes and Meat and Cheese Burritos
Whole Wheat and Honey Zucchini Bread
In addition, I’ve got these items stashed in my freezer:
- Soft Pretzels
- Giant Breakfast Cookies
- Lasagna Casserole
- Bean and Cheese Burritos
- Popcorn Chicken
- Turkey Sausage
- Hashbrowns
I also started a new gallon sized batch of Homemade Vanilla, which as you can see, will be finished “extracting” in January! I didn’t get “carded” this time when I was buying my gallon of vodka. Sniff. Do you think that means I look older than 21 now? ;)
Call me a nerd (go ahead – you know you want to), but I purchased a whole bunch of canning lids and put all of my canning supplies into a basket and put the basket on top of my fridge. That way, I know where everything is and I have it all ready to go each time I’m ready to can a new batch of something. I may be one of the only people who think that canning supplies in a basket is…cute.
Okay, so food (lots and lots of food)? Check. Schoolbooks? Check. Canning supplies? Check.
Oh good grief…where are the soccer cleats?
I knew I forgot something.
How I Freeze Food
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve had many requests to show you how I freeze food. Silly me. I tell you all about what foods I make and freeze. Perhaps I could also tell you how I freeze the food. That would be nice of me wouldn’t it?!
I use these basic supplies:
- Cookie sheets and parchment paper
I often “flash freeze” food on parchment paper lined cookie sheets. Some examples would be Chicken Fried Steak Strips, Popcorn Chicken, Burritos, Meatballs, Turkey Sausage, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls or Pizza Pockets made into mini pizzas: - Freezer Bags
I mostly use the gallon sized freezer bags. Unless I’m freezing raw meat, I wash out the bags and reuse them over and over. Beyond the food mentioned above, I usually use gallon sized freezer bags for baked goods like hamburger buns, breads, muffins and cookies.
Once the food is frozen, I transfer it to…
- Pyrex Dishes
I have six or seven pyrex dishes with lids, most of them are 9×13…but Matt surprised me with this last Christmas, so now I have a nice variety of other sizes too. I LOVE freezing food in these dishes as they stack so nicely in my freezer. If I make a casserole, this is what I freeze it in.
- Jars
Are you surprised? Don’t I use jars for everything? Just be sure if you freeze food in jars, you only fill it 3/4 full, or it will expand in the freezer and crack the jar. Also, be sure the food in the jar has completely cooled before you put them into the freezer. Cracked jars are sad. :(My favorite jars to use are wide mouth quart jars (for cooked rice and beans and hamburger meat) and half gallon jars (for broth and soup). -
One last thing I’ll tell you about is something I use A LOT this time of year while I’m freezing produce. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine bought me a Seal-a-Meal. I LOVE this thing. With the volume of strawberries, peaches, corn and green beans I freeze each year (usually a year’s supply of each), this Seal-a-Meal has been a wonderful way to make my freezer food last longer (cuts way down on freezer burn). Plus it is a HUGE space saver!! The Seal-a-Meal sucks all the air out of the bag so that I can get WAY more food in my freezer than I used to be able to when I just froze the food in freezer bags.
See how the air is all sucked out of the bags!?! So cool!!
I’ll try to do a video tutorial of this process sometime!
I think that if you just do a small amount of freezing foods…a small hand-held vacuum sealer is a great option. (I think Ziplock has a $5 variety at Walmart!) But if you do a large amount of freezer preserving like I do a Seal-a-Meal is the way to go! By the way, I buy rolls of bags and cut them to the size I need them. They are a bit pricey (again, worth it to me since I am able to freeze SO much food and keep it good in my freezer this way). Lately I’ve been using my Swagbuck earned Amazon cards to buy big rolls of bags!
Hopefully, I have now answered many of your freezing questions…but did I forget anything?!
Food I plan to freeze this month:
Freezer Cooking For July Wrap up
Posted by: | CommentsWell now, here we are…many, many days after my original post telling you about how I was going to cook and bake to get ahead in the kitchen for July. I’m sure you were waiting on pins and needles to hear how it all went.
Want to know my husband’s reaction when he saw my list? First let me say that usually when Matt sees my cooking-ahead lists, he gets excited about the food in his future. This time however, since I was working so frantically on finishing the curriculum kit, he looked at the list, then he looked gently up at me (beautiful, haggard me…with hair drooping pitifully into my face and contact lenses strewn about the table) and said not so confidently, “Really?”
I smiled weakly and said uh-huh, because we still needed to eat and occasionally I wanted to take a break from the computer, you know? What better therapy after being on the computer for hours than being able to go into the kitchen to cook?
Lest you look at these pictures and think I am really cool for getting all this done…do be made well aware that all of this took me no less than NINE days. I did not do it all at once. I did not do it very quickly. I just cooked a little extra each day when I was making our regular meals. And now, we have some lovely convenience food in the freezer.
And let’s all do appreciate the fact that having these lovely cooking breaks in between writing did much for my sanity.
Oh, and the children and husband also appreciated my sanity being provided with something to eat.
Take note that I did not get everything done on my list. However, I added a few things to the list so it all balances out.
I cooked a whole chicken, made broth from the bones and the whole nine yards, but I must have forgotten to take a picture. Forgive the lack of poultry pictured below.
I made some butterscotch bars for a reunion. And for breakfast that day, I made applesauce bread into applesauce cake. Note to self: applesauce bread makes good applesauce cake and a fun breakfast treat. Just spread bread batter into a buttered 9×13 inch pan and bake at 350° for 35 minutes or so.
I mixed up chocolate chip cookies, but instead of baking them, I just froze scoops of dough. Now, I can bake a few at a time as needed. Check out the red stained parchment paper. That was from freezing strawberries last month. I like to reuse parchment paper. The kids thought the cookies were bleeding, but that’s just because they’re boys and they like to think of gross things.
I made a batch of breakfast cookies one night, froze half of them and we ate the other half for breakfast the next day. Sorry about the poor quality of that picture. That happens late at night.
One day I got a whole bunch accomplished: frozen chicken fried steak strips, tortillas for burritos…
There are the finished bean/cheese burritos. With tortillas leftover. I love it when tortillas are leftover.
Another day I made a batch of buns.
Here’s your chance to say: “Wow Laura…nice buns.”
I made ice cream one evening and we ate it for dinner. That’s it. We just had ice cream for dinner. But it was this recipe and I felt like we were having quite a nutritious dinner. Minus any vegetables. It’s okay, we had green beans for breakfast Wednesday so that made up for it. We’re weird, aren’t we?
Somewhere in there I made a jar of peanut butter.
These weren’t on the list, but I was making lasagna casserole one night, so instead of one, I made three. Didn’t take any longer and now I have two in the freezer!
Now, as we approach August…I’ll probably just continue to make and freeze food as much as I can. August is very full with school starting, the garden exploding with food to preserve and soccer season begins again.
Bring on the freezer food.
Freezer Cooking for July
Posted by: | CommentsUm, first let me say that it felt very weird typing “July” just now. Really? July already? Weird.
Anyway, Freezer Cooking for July.
I’ll be doing a little extra cooking this week to try to stock pile some grab and eat foods.
Here’s a list of food I’m hoping to make and freeze (or eat) during the next few days:
- A Whole Chicken cooked and deboned/Very Veggie Chicken Broth/Rice Cooked in Broth
- Hamburger Buns
- Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Vanilla Ice Cream
- Homemade Peanut Butter
- Taco Seasoning Mix
- Whole Wheat Vanilla Wafers
- Chicken Fried Steak Strips (using this freezing method)
- Bean and Cheese Burritos
- Honey Whole Wheat Bread
It may take me a few days to get all of these foods made up. I just so happen to be in the middle of a huge, very big, gigantic, enormous project that I hope many of you will find interesting. If, that is, I EVER in my long leg-ged life get it finished! Matt is helping me. The boys are helping me. I’ve been getting very little else done but hours and hours of sitting at the computer…
I’m excited to tell you about it within the next few days if I can at least get one more tiny (big) thing finished enough to show you.
But let’s just say that having some of the above foods prepared ahead would be a good idea so that as I’m working away on the computer, the boys have something besides watermelon chunks or bread crumbs to eat.
Anyone care to take a guess about what I might be working on? I’ve mentioned it here before, but it’s been a while. ;)
Laura, Are You In the Kitchen ALL the Time?!
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s a question I’m asked frequently. Especially from women who: a) are new at working to feed their families a healthy diet…or b) don’t enjoy cooking at all.
Does eating a healthy diet mean that I am now going to be a slave to my kitchen?!!
It’s a fear that makes complete sense if you’re transitioning toward eating more whole foods. Do I have to make EVERYTHING from scratch? Isn’t there ANYTHING convenient about eating healthy? How am I supposed to find the extra time in my already full schedule to make healthy meals and snacks? And what if I hate cooking?
I addressed this topic quite a while ago in this post entitled Getting it All Done. In that post, I discuss the importance of menu planning, keeping food simple, cleaning the kitchen as you go, making breakfast while you’re making dinner and a few other helpful tips.
Today, I’d like to talk more about freezer cooking as a way to get ahead and save yourself some precious time in the kitchen. And, to answer the original question, nope…I’m not in the kitchen all the time. I do happen to be one of those people who loves to cook…so I may spend more time cooking and baking than the average person. But that’s just my choice. I love to feed my family, and I love to feed extras. I could spend less time in the kitchen and still feed my family a healthy diet…I just choose to tinker with recipes and hang out with my bowls, spoons and grain mill a little more than others. It’s my hobby.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to fill my fridge and freezer with healthy convenience foods. I spent a few extra hours in the kitchen over the course of three days. The result of my efforts? All kinds of healthy, grab and go foods! Hours of time saved! Dirty dish messes out of the way!
Did it take a few extra hours of time during those three days? Sure. I was in the kitchen a lot during those days. But now all I have to do is go snag something out of the freezer and re-warm it for a quick meal. I LOVE it!
Here are the results from my last “cooking ahead” days and the time it took me to prepare each item…
I baked up several pounds of potatoes one night (10 minutes of scrubbing), then chopped them and froze them overnight for future fried potatoes (following this Frozen Hashbrown method). The next day, I mixed up a double batch of cornbread and made Corn Dog Muffins and Sloppy Corn Muffins (20 mintues). Both went into ziplock freezer bags. Somewhere in there, I also mixed up and baked some Chocolate Chip Cookies (15 minutes, not including bake time). It seems like we always have events that I need to take cookies along. Having some already made in my freezer is so helpful!
The next day, I made a big double batch of Whole Wheat Tortillas so that I could grab them out for an easy lunch of quesadillas or tostadas. I also baked a double batch of Orange Muffins and a bunch of Porcupine Meatballs (the recipe for which I will share as soon as I perfect it). It just took me a little over an hour to do all of this (not including baking time)…and look at all the time it saved me for later!
The next day I made about four pounds of Venison Sausage – using this Turkey Sausage recipe (15 minutes, not including cook time). Because it takes so many different spices to make the Turkey Sausage, I love making it ahead like this. I froze it in about six small baggies to pull out for a fast breakfast casserole, or for biscuits and gravy. This pre-cooked Sausage is a great combo with the pre-made Frozen Hashbrowns, by the way!
I also mixed up a quick batch of Mudballs. Although, since one of my boys can’t have peanut butter…I used sunbutter to make these this time. (about 15 minutes)
Later that afternoon, I decided to make some Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns to freeze and have on hand. (about 30 minutes of work time) Those will last us for about two meals worth of Hamburgers or Sloppy Joes.
Last but not least, I made some homemade peanut butter (3 minutes)…
And used it to make a pan of Chewy Granola Bars to have in the fridge. (10 minutes)
It was fun. It was productive. I was exhausted. :) But the few extra hours I put in preparing the extra food has saved me more than a few hours of work during the past few weeks.
What are some of your favorite foods to prepare ahead of time?
Sloppy Cornbread Muffins
Posted by: | Comments
I’ve decided that I love sloppy joes more than any 36 year old mama ought to love sloppy joes. (Sloppy joes aren’t just kid food, right?) I’m a little crazy when it comes to my hamburger meat. I like it a lot. Bring on the beef.
As you may recall, this Sloppy Cornbread is a very fun way to eat Sloppy Joes without buns. Over the weekend I experimented making the Sloppy Cornbread into muffins….and YUM!
To make Sloppy Cornbread Muffins you will need:
1 recipe of Cornbread
1/4 recipe of Sloppy Joes (which is 1/2 pound of meat)
which will make 12 Sloppy Cornbread Muffins
These freeze and reheat very well…which means you may want to use:
a double batch of Cornbread
1/2 recipe of Sloppy Joes (which is one pound of meat)
which will make 24 Sloppy Cornbread Muffins
Is this getting confusing? If you make up the full Sloppy Joe recipe, you could just make some of it into Sloppy Cornbread Muffins, then freeze the remaining Sloppy Joes mixure. Or, you could just bring it over to me and I’ll get a fork and eat it right out of the pan.
First fill your muffin cups half full (or half empty depending on the kind of day you’re having) with cornbread batter.
The muffins do tend to stick a little to paper muffin liners…so you may have better success just buttering each muffin cup very well.
Spoon about a Tablespoon or two of Sloppy Joe meat into each muffin cup.
Bake in a 400° oven for 20 minutes.
So, what kind of day are you having? Would your muffin cups be half empty…or half full?
Freezer Cooking for May, Calling for Back-up
Posted by: | CommentsIt was bound to happen. With all the soccer games going on, and the musical, and the company, and the soccer games. Sorry, but there have been a LOT of soccer games. Oh, and the pollen count has been sky high.
Anyway, I got completely worn out. Exhausted. I’m really not sure how I lasted as long as I did actually. When I started losing my voice last week, I thought it was from trying to yell and coach soccer games. But it didn’t take long for me to realize, “Um Laura? You’re sick.”
I was finally able to take some time off on Tuesday and rest. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday. Wow, I think I was more exhausted than I thought I was. I’m still not back to 100%. I’m getting there though. I’m focusing on eating nourishing foods (and lots of it), drinking water like crazy, getting a chiropractic adjustment every few days, taking Congaplex to give my immune system some help (per my Chiropracter’s instruction) and resting. Ah, rest. Where have you been? I’ve missed you so.
My husband has been a rock star and my boys have been learning from their daddy. They’ve kept the house from falling apart and they’ve done a great job helping to put meals on the table.
However, we’ve depleted all of the prepared food in the freezer and the healthy “convenience” foods I normally make to have on hand. We have no tortillas. No bread. No burritos. It’s starting to look scary in the freezer. (Well, we have a lot of frozen meat, but I wanted to give my boys something easier to make for lunch than say, fried chicken.)
Knowing that I didn’t have the strength yet to pull off a freezer cooking day, but knowing that we HAD to have food on hand that would be simple to prepare…I enlisted the help of the boys on Saturday.
I can not tell you how proud I am of my boys.
I started them on these homemade frozen hashbrowns. I figured if we had a bunch of frozen hashbrowns ready to pull out…we could fry them up with some hamburger meat, or with some turkey sausage, or stir them into a breakfast casserole, or fry them and put cheese on top, or scramble them with eggs…
There are so many possibilities with these hashbrowns. And so, my biggest boys set to work.
They scrubbed, stabbed and baked TEN pounds of potatoes. All by themselves. I had them just throw the potatoes into my big roasting pan for baking:
They went and played for a few hours while the potatoes baked, then cooled. Then, they set to work peeling and shredding. All of them. Without my help.
There was a bit of a mess on the floor when they were done, but I didn’t care. (Well actually, I made them clean it up.) Then they put the shredded potatoes into the freezer overnight.
We bagged them up (and ate some of them) the next day!
While the big boys were working up the potatoes, Malachi helped me make a double batch of Whole Wheat Waffles. (Don’t worry, I sat down between rounds of pouring batter.)
Now, we can just pop these into our new toaster oven
and heat them up for a quick and easy breakfast (or dinner).
Today, I’m hoping the boys can help me make a couple of Pizza Casseroles and some Chewy Granola Bars. We’ll see how far we get though. They’d have to make some Peanut Butter before we can make the Granola Bars, but since making Peanut Butter is so easy (and because the boys like making lots of noise), they should be able to handle it.
Have I mentioned lately how much I love my family?
Freezer Cooking Diary of the Week
Posted by: | CommentsI’m gonna just admit to you that I bit off more than I could chew this week (so pardon me while I type with my mouth full).
This was not a good week for me to try to make extra food. This would have been a good week for me to HAVE extra food in my freezer ready to pull out and warm up quickly. But what did I do? I cooked extra food. In the midst of running around like a funky chicken taking my kids to soccer and musical practices…putting the final touches on all of our LTC projects…preparing for a short trip…working on costumes…going on a field trip…sorting through spring/summer clothing…and doing school work.
WHAT was I thinking?
I think I was thinking that having extra food on hand in the coming weeks will be very handy, and I’m right…it will be very handy. But I’m whipped.
I am NOT whining. No ma’am. I’m just saying that maybe next time I should make a better judgment call on when I should do extra cooking.
And also, I’m letting you know that every single room of my house looks like a bomb went off. There were apparently separate bombs for every room and some bombs were larger than others and had a flying clothing effect.
Ah, but at least I have lots of prepared food in my freezer now, eh?
Here’s a run down of the week:
Sunday night I started a pan of beans to soak and mixed up a double batch of tortillas to soak overnight.
Monday morning before schooltime, I started cooking beans and rolling out tortillas. I put together the Bean and Cheese Burritos and got them into the freezer by noon. I then mixed up a double batch of dough for Homemade Pizza Pockets and Beefy Enchilada Bake to soak. I also made a batch of Homemade Ice Cream for the Ice Cream Experiment. That was it for Monday.
Tuesday was the biggest cooking day as the only extra thing we had going on was one soccer practice.
I got five pounds of meat cooking before breakfast. Once I got the kids started on their math and other individual work, I mixed up a double batch of Corn Dog Muffins and got those into the oven.
The meat was then finished browning, so I stirred up three pounds of Sloppy Joes and put them into jars for the freezer. The remaining two pounds of hamburger helped make up two big pans of Beefy Enchilada Bake.
I then set about putting together Homemade Pizza Pockets and Mini Apple Pies. I had to take a break somewhere in there and feed us all lunch. Everyone was disappointed that we weren’t having pizza pockets and apple pie for lunch. (Ah, but what they didn’t know what that I had secretly stuck a big apple pie in the oven for later!)
Here’s a look at a very adorable five year old, along with the finished
Beefy Enchilada Bakes, Homemade Pizza Pockets, Corn Dog Muffins and Sloppy Joes.
And here’s a closer-up picture of the food…but without the five year old..
so this picture may not be as fun to look at.
Finally, I got the Mini Apple Pies finished and put into the freezer.
Those will make a wonderful breakfast some morning soon!
I finished Tuesday off by mixing up a double batch of Giant Breakfast Cookies to soak for the next day.
Wednesday I spent the morning baking Giant Breakfast Cookies. While each round of cookies was in the oven baking, I’d go tackle some homework help or spring clothes sorting.
I took some time to shake up some Ranch Dressing Mix, Italian Dressing Mixand Taco Seasoning Mix. I LOVE having these mixes ready for when I need to make dressing or dip or tacos or…all the other things I use making these mixes.
And there you go. I didn’t quite finish everything on my list, but that’s okay! I think we will be using many of these convenience foods next week while we CLEAN UP the war zone that is our house.
Has anyone seen my broom?
Freezer Cooking Plan for April
Posted by: | CommentsCrystal and Jessica are at it again, working to inspire all of us to save time and money by preparing some foods in advance with an April Freezer Cooking Day.
This is going to be especially important for me to do right now with all four boys being involved in our home school musical in April. Plus spring soccer season is just about to come into my life at full force. Meal times are likely to be rushed many nights this month as we head out to practices, games and rehearsals.
Therefore, I must be organized. I must plan ahead. I must put some ready to grab food in the freezer. I must not panic.
Ugh, but I must make four animal costumes in the next 3 weeks.
Okay, I can do this. I have a plan (for the cooking, not for the costumes). Do you want to hear about it?
Each day this week, I’ll be making a little extra food to freeze. By the end of the week, I should have all kinds of food in the freezer to keep me from panicking while I attach black spots to white sweat pants so that I can make my eight year old look like a dalmatian puppy.
Here’s what I’ll be working on:
Corn Dog Muffins x 2
Sloppy Joes x 3
Here’s what I need to do to prep:
- Soak oats/flour for breakfast cookies
- Soak dough for apple pies and pizza pockets
- Soak beans for burritos
- Make whole wheat tortillas for burritos
- Thaw five pounds of ground beef for enchilada bake and sloppy joes
- Thaw/grate cheese for burritos and pizza pockets
In addition, I’d like to also prepare the following to simplify my life:
- Homemade Chewy Granola Bars
- Ranch Dressing Mix x2
- Italian Dressing Mix x2
- Bunches of carrot sticks
I’ll post the results of my efforts (again, for the cooking, not the costumes) at the end of the week!
