Having a few extra food items ready to warm up quickly to feed the family is helpful during any time of the year.  But during soccer season, I find it especially helpful.  Therefore, last week, I spent a few hours each day working to get ahead.  As a result, I’ve got a freezer packed with healthy, easy to grab and heat meals.

In case you’re interested in seeing a few photos to document my efforts (and some recipe links to motivate you toward getting some food in your freezer too!), here you go:

I made a double batch of Taco Corn Fritters for lunch one day.  We ate half, then I froze half.  These will warm up great in our toaster oven.

I made two Green Bean Casseroles (using a recipe in this holiday ebook), but I added some hamburger meat to make it an “all in one meal”.  These will be perfect to throw into the oven before or after a game.  (And by throw, I really mean “carefully slide”.  Please do not throw casseroles into your oven, especially when they are in glass dishes.)

These Creamy Chicken and Rice Casseroles didn’t make it into my freezer, as I served them all for High School Huddle on Sunday.  But since I put them together during my “extra cooking days”, I decided they would feel left out if they didn’t have their opportunity for a photo shoot.

I prepared seven pounds of Chicken Fried Steak Strips, froze them on parchment paper, then put the frozen strips into freezer bags.  These are wonderful to have on hand to grab out and cook up quickly.  I was lazy and put several layers on one cookie sheet just to see if it would work.  Yay!  It worked.  (Good thing too, or I would have had seven pounds of chicken fried steak in one huge rectangular chunk!)

We all love these Raw Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites – which sound like a dessert – but are really a high protein, healthy snack.  They freeze well, or store well in the fridge.

The following picture is not meant to be motivating at all, but rather posted so that you can feel very sorry for me and say nice things about how awful it is that a mess like this happened in the middle of my hard working cooking time.  (Woe is me.)  I had a pint of cream sitting on my counter that I knocked off with my elbow while grabbing a spoon.  It was so very sad.  :(  And for the record, cream really does splatter quite a long distance across a kitchen.

In happier news, I made Chocolate Chip Cookies for “just in case”.  It’s always great to have a batch of cookies in the freezer to grab at a moment’s notice.  However, these never made it to the freezer.  I ate all 24 of them while consoling myself after I knocked the cream off the counter.  Just KIDDING.  I packaged them up and sent them with Matt to give to some college students.  I think I did eat one or three first – just to make sure they tasted good.

I put my boys to work scrubbing 10 pounds of potatoes, which we baked and turned into frozen hashbrowns.  Wow, it’s nice to have these in the freezer for a quick addition to meals.

I put together two big Lasagna Casseroles, which freeze very well and can be baked on a busy day.

Malachi was hanging out with me during one of my cooking times and asked me to take a picture of him doing his math.  Hey, if a casserole dish is picture worthy, I’d say my seven year old deserves some camera time too.  And no, we don’t require our children to wear fancy button-up shirts while they do their school work.  But Malachi absolutely loves his shirt and tie combo and would wear it every day if we let him.  Shucks, sometimes we do.  Although I do try to wash it occasionally.

Here you see 48 Pigs in a Blanket.  They are put together, but unbaked and now in freezer bags waiting for a day when I need something fast to throw into the oven.  Oh dear – there I go throwing things into the oven again.  Disclaimer:  No pigs will be thrown into my oven at any time during soccer season.  After soccer season is over, no guarantees.  Kidding.  I’m kidding.

Last, I made a double batch of Chewy Granola Bars.  These are awesome grab and go snacks.  Shucks, if you need to throw these, it’s perfectly fine.  Throw them into your purse or a bag, or even throw them across your mini van at your kids.  Carefully, of course.  Here is a picture of the bars right after I poured them into a pan, before refrigerating and slicing them.

Been throwing anything into your oven lately that we should know about?  What are your favorite freezer meals?  Do you feel sorry for me that I spilled all that cream?

Well actually, the chicken no longer had legs, as it had already fulfilled its glorious life purpose and had been cooked and made into a rich broth and good healthy meat for my family.

Regardless, legless though he was, the last little bit of cooked chicken in my fridge was indeed on its last leg.  It needed to be eaten. It could no longer be left alone…neglected, unused, and unwanted.

(It would appear that, apparently, I felt the need to create some chicken drama when all I really needed to say was:  ”I had leftover chicken- so I used it.”  I can’t just be normal.  What fun would that be?)

So the chicken - it was begging to be used.  I needed a quick lunch for the family.  But I needed to make the meal in the morning and have the capability to reheat it quickly at lunch time.  Therefore, I decided to play with my Three Cheese Garlic Chicken Pasta recipe and make it into a “Make Ahead Meal“.  The chicken and I are happy to report that my idea worked, and the meal was delicious.

Actually, the chicken has nothing at all to report because not only is he not on his last leg anymore, he is officially gone.

Why?  Why do I say these things? I’m going to just give you the recipe already before I say anything else ridiculous about the chicken.

Baked Three Cheese Chicken Pasta

2 cups cooked chicken, cut into bite sized pieces
2 1/2 cups whole wheat pasta
3 cups whole milk
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (add more if you like)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
4 ounces softened cream cheese
1-2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

In a large cooking pot, combine cooked chicken, uncooked pasta, milk, garlic powder, and sea salt.  Cook and stir over medium-high heat until pasta is tender and the starch from the pasta has thickened the milk, creating a creamy sauce.  Remove cooking pot from the heat.  Stir in parmesan cheese and cream cheese until it is mixed throughout.

Pour pasta mixture into a casserole dish.  (A 9×13 inch pan works well, or any variety similar in size.)  Sprinkle shredded cheese on top and bake in a 350° oven for about 15 minutes or until cheese is melted.

If you make this ahead of time, you may need to adjust the baking time so that the casserole will be heated through and through.  Also, you can freeze this dish!  Simply thaw and bake in a 350° oven for 30-40 minutes.

All this talk about chickens and legs kind of has me hungry for fried chicken legs, which pretty much makes no sense - unless you are in my brain and then it does make sense.  Oh people.  Be glad you are not in my brain.  It is not pretty.

So tell me, what do you do when your chicken is on its last leg? (Yes, I think I am actually talking about leftovers here.)

The ingredients in a can of Campbell’s Cream of Celery Soup, according to the Campbell’s Food Service Website are (and do try not to scream when you read this):

Water, Celery, Vegetable Oil (Corn, Cottonseed, Canola, and/or Soybean), Wheat Flour, Modified Food Starch, Contains less than 2% of: Salt, Soy Protein Concentrate, Monosodium Glutamate, Cream Powder (Cream [Milk], Soy Lecithin), Yeast Extract, Flavoring, Beta Carotene for Color.

Well, at least the first two ingredients are water and celery.  ;)

There are all kinds of recipes which share how to make homemade cream soups.  I’ve tried some of them, and I’m thankful that the recipes are available.  For some reason though, I just haven’t had a loving enough relationship with cream soup to try to keep the homemade varieties on hand.

The question is then, how do you make a casserole without a cream soup?  Ah, very simple:  I use cream.

Cream of what?  No, just cream.  Cream. The stuff that rises to the top of your raw milk.  Or the thick, white liquid you can buy in the dairy department of the store, usually labeled Heavy Whipping Cream.  If you use cream, along with a few spices that enhance your casserole, your dish will be tasty, easy and surprise, surprise:  creamy.

Here is how I now make my Creamy Chicken and Rice Casserole with real, whole food ingredients:

Creamy Chicken and Rice Casserole

4 cups chicken broth (I avoid canned broth or bouillon because they are also loaded with MSG.  Here’s my easy homemade chicken broth recipe, which includes frighteningly ugly pictures of a chicken carcass.  Again, try not to scream.)
4 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 medium onion, diced
2 cups brown rice
2-3 cups cooked chicken, cut into bite sized pieces
1/2 teaspoon (or more) garlic powder
Sea salt, to taste
1 1/2 cups cream (heavy whipping cream, or fresh cream which has risen to the top of whole, raw milk)

In a large pot, bring chicken broth, carrots and onion to a boil at high heat.  Add rice, stir, and place the lid on the pot.  Reduce heat to low and cook the rice and vegetables in the broth for 45 minutes.  (To avoid sticky rice, don’t stir the rice while it’s trying to cook – just walk away and ignore it for the entire 45 minutes.  You can do it.)

When the rice is done, stir in cooked chicken, garlic powder and cream.  Shake in liberal amounts of sea salt for best flavor.  (I use Redmonds Real Sea Salt, which is unbleached and full of natural minerals.)  Cook ingredients for about five more minutes to heat the chicken and cream.  Serve directly from pot, or pour into a 9×13 inch baking dish.  This meal can be prepared ahead of time, refrigerated and reheated in the oven at serving time.  Cover and heat in a 350° oven for 20-30 minutes or until hot through and through.  Serves eight.

(You can also freeze this meal.  To reheat, simply put the frozen, covered casserole into the oven, turn the oven onto 350° and cook for about 1 1/2 hours or until it is heated thoroughly.)

Cooking your rice in the chicken broth gives this dish a wonderful, naturally delicious flavor.  And in case I didn’t mention it before, the cream makes this dish…creamy.

Where have you landed on the Cream of Fill in the Blank issue?  Have you given them up yet?  Have you ever screamed out loud when reading the ingredient list on a can of soup at the store? Do you make your own cream soups?  Or do you use another substitution? (Sour cream works well too, in some recipes!)

I put my boys on the task of scrubbing 10 pounds of potatoes (the amount that fits well in my big roaster).  We baked them to turn them into Hashbrowns.

If you’ve not tried making Hashbrowns this way – you’ve gotta try it!  These are so easy, delicious and make for a great quick breakfast or dinner side dish.  I freeze them on cookie sheets, then transfer them to freezer bags.  Having frozen hashbrowns ready to grab and cook quickly is so nice!

I mixed up a batch of Honey Oat Crunch Cereal that is great to have on hand for a quick breakfast or a snack.  (This recipe is in my Think Breakfast Outside the Box ebook.)  I wish I remembered to make this more often - it’s great to have on hand.  I just stick it in a jar and put it on top of the fridge.  We eat it with raisins and other dried fruit, plain or with milk or cream.  So good!

I guess I was on a roll with breakfast foods last week!  I made a batch of Giant Breakfast Cookies.  We ate half and froze half.

I made six pounds of Turkey Sausage, freezing it into eight meal sized bags.  I LOVE having this on hand to use in my Pancake Sausage Muffins and Easy Breakfast Casserole.  Plus, since I now have frozen hashbrowns, I can throw some of this sausage in with the hashbrowns, scramble eggs into it and we’ve got a meal.  Easy!

I had ordered a big box of strawberries from Azure Standard which arrived last week.  We ate as many as we could while they were fresh, but the rest needed to make their way into the freezer.  I like freezing them on cookie sheets first so that they don’t stick together in freezer bags later.  Aren’t they purty?

I’ve already shared about how I made Homemade Beef Bologna – we ate some and froze some.  I also made Tammy’s Homemade Spicy Beef Pepperoni, but if we thought my bologna pictures were not pretty, my beef pepperoni pictures were even worse.  Come to think of it, I didn’t even take pictures of the pepperoni.  The pepperoni itself was so very ugly, I hid it from my kids before they could see it and decide they didn’t like it before they’d tried it.  BUT, when I sliced it and put it on pizza, it was very delicious.  So, I now have ugly bologna and ugly pepperoni in my freezers too, but I’ll spare you the agony of having to see pictures of them.  ;)

Have you made anything healthy and tasty for your freezer lately?

In case you’re wondering, here’s a post on How I Freeze Food.

Here is my very boring post:

Today I cleaned my ceiling fans and dust bunnies fell down onto the math books below.  It was gross.  When I got the mail this morning, most of it was junk mail so I put it directly into the recycling.  We can’t find Malachi’s left tennis shoe.  Today I’m wearing a brown shirt.  I have a lot of brown shirts.  I like brown.

I gouged my thumb on a kitchen cabinet yesterday.  It hurts.  Today I bonked it again.  That hurt worse.  The weather today is nice.  Tomorrow it might get cooler.  I need to pick green beans.  And tomatoes.

I picked up our Azure Standard order today.  We got a box of strawberries.  They are good.  Somehow we got strawberry juice on our kitchen floor tonight.  I wiped it up.

I did four loads of laundry yesterday.  They aren’t folded yet.  Asa’s jeans are all too short.  So are Elias’.  So are Justus’.  Kids grow fast.

We have crickets in our house.  They are loud.

Here is a burrito recipe.  These taste good.  They are pretty much exactly like the Bean and Cheese Burritos and Beef and Cheese Burritos I’ve already written about, except that instead of using beans or beef, you use chicken.

(Told ya it was boring.  Although that part about the weather was really pretty exciting.  Except for not really.)

Easy Chicken Burritos

10 whole wheat tortillas (one batch homemade)
2 cups cooked chicken
1 cup shredded cheese (I use white cheddar)
1 cup salsa
Sea salt and/or chili powder to taste

Chop cooked chicken into tiny pieces or run it through a food processor.  Stir together shredded chicken, cheese, salsa and spices.  Spoon mixture into a warm, soft tortilla.  Wrap and serve.

We like freezing these burritos, then rewarming them for quick lunches.  To rewarm:  Place desired number of burritos on a baking stone or cookie sheet.  Heat in a 350° oven for about 15 minutes or until slightly brown, crispy and hot.

What’s the most boring thing you can think of to tell me right now?  Or maybe the most exciting?  (If your laundry is folded and put away, I don’t want to hear about it.  Over-achievers.)

I didn’t do all of this cooking at once.  This is the result of 14 days of off and on work in which I simply made one extra batch of food to put into the freezer, whenever I could find a spare moment.  Sometimes, I just doubled what we were making for dinner and froze half.  This is the best way (in my opinion) to do freezer cooking without stress!

I feel like it’s possible that I’ve broken some sort of tortilla making record during the last few weeks.  I lost track of how many tortillas I rolled out and cooked.  I think I made at least five double batches, in which we ate or made into burritos.  We now have loads of frozen burritoes and around 18 plain whole wheat tortillas in our fridge for easy quesadillas next week!  (Just doing some quick math, I think this means I may have made 120 tortillas between last week and this week.  Not that you cared.  I just felt like multiplying it out.  Why do I do these things?)

I was excited to try making Chicken Burritos and will be sharing the recipe soon.

And, not that you can tell them apart, but because I somehow feel the need to prove my tortilla making madness, here is a big batch of meat and cheese burritos.  (Are you bored with my tortilla picture parade yet?)

I hate to disappoint you, but the rest of the pictures have nothing to do with tortillas.  Instead, we have a pan full of lovely pizza pockets that are now frozen and ready to bake for a quick lunch.

I made a batch of homemade hamburger buns and didn’t let us eat any of them.  Buns in the freezer means easy burgers, sloppy joes or even turkey/cheese melts.

I made a quadrupal batch of Whole Wheat Waffles – these are the BEST for toasting in the morning when we need a fast breakfast.

One of my favorite main dishes:  BBQ Meatballs.  I intentionally made way more than we needed for one meal so that I could freeze the leftovers.  Meatball subs anyone?

I needed a batch of homemade rolls for something last week.  Therefore, I made bunches.  I have no idea what happened to the rolls in the upper right-hand corner.  Mysteries like this happen in my kitchen regularly.  We may never get to the bottom of it.

I surprised the boys one morning with homemade donuts, then because we had quite a few leftover, I froze them for another breakfast soon.

Last but not least, I shook up a jar each of Taco Seasoning, Ranch Dressing Mix and Italian Dressing Mix.  I LOVE having these in my pantry to grab and use in a moment’s notice.

And that, my friends, is the result of the intentional extra cooking I have been doing in an attempt to get ahead before August begins.

What are your favorite ways to get ahead in the kitchen? (Yeah, yeah…I know.  Getting ahead in the kitchen is almost like getting ahead on laundry – next to impossible.  But still.)

In case you’re curious, here are a few posts that might help answer some of your questions about how I freeze foods and try to get ahead in the kitchen:

• How I Freeze Food
• Two Simple Ways to Get Ahead in the Kitchen
• All of my Make Ahead Meals posts and ideas

1. Pick a recipe (or more) from Once a Month Mom or from here at Heavenly Homemakers.
2. Find some time this week to make the recipe(s) for your freezer.
3. Blog about your cooking experience, if you have a blog, so that you can come link up with us here on Friday when we’ll all report back to share how our freezer cooking went. If you don’t have a blog, you’ll be given the opportunity to share about your freezer cooking in the comments section of our round up post, so please join the fun whether you have a blog or not!
4. Each person who links up or leaves a comment on the Friday Freezer Cooking Round Up post will be eligible to win a free recipe ebook of choice ($7.95 or less) from the Heavenly Homemakers Shop.
5. The more recipes you make and share with us, the more chances you have to win!  (But don’t over-do…we would like to keep this fun.  Please, we don’t want any reports that women across the world fainted from Freezer Cooking Exhaustion.)

Share what you accomplished!  Any link or comment (that follows the rules above) will be included in a drawing for a free recipe ebook in the Heavenly Homemakers Shop.  I’ll draw a winner Monday, May 16!  Can’t wait to hear what you’ve been up to this week!

You know how I mentioned that we go through a lot of eggs at our house?  Six dozen last week to be exact.  This week I was able to get my hands on 11 dozen farm fresh eggs and I am so very excited.  It’s obviously the simple things in life that make me happy…proven by the fact that having 11 dozen eggs available this week for my cooking pleasure has made me almost giddy. 

What do we do with all those eggs you ask?  Well, there are six of us, five are male and four of those five male people can’t seem to get enough food right now.  We also have extra people eating at our house quite often, so our six turns into eight or more on just about any given day.  I bake a lot, so I stir them into whatever I’m baking.  We easily go through an entire dozen for breakfast if I’m making scrambled eggs or a casserole, and more than a dozen if I make crepes.  These Coconut Flour Muffins are incredible…and they take up quite a few eggs.  And, I often put eggs in our smoothies or “milkshakes” for added protein and nutrients.  (Again, let me reinforce that we ONLY eat them raw if they are organic, free range, farm fresh…otherwise I’m afraid of them.)

If I have lots of eggs available to me, I go for it and I don’t hold back!  Eggs are brain food.  I pay between $2.00 and $2.50 for a dozen farm fresh eggs, depending on my source.  For the quality of eggs I’m getting, I consider this to be a great price.  So even though we go through a lot of eggs…what an economical source of nutrition!!!  How else can I feed my family an entire meal for just over $2.00???  (Okay, yes, they eat fruit and stuff with their eggs…you see my point though, right?)

If you haven’t tried our Easy Breakfast Casserole, please go get yourself some eggs and try it.  It’s the simplest little breakfast casserole I’ve ever made and my family eats the whole pan.  Actually…they don’t eat the pan.  Hungry boys though they are, they do have their limits.

I  have now adapted the Easy Breakfast Casserole recipe to become an easy, make-ahead Mini Crustless Breakfast Quiche recipe.  You can make these and serve them fresh, or you can bake them the night before and re-warm them in the oven the next morning for breakfast.  You can even bake them and freeze them to have available for future grab and go meals.  You can make them for lunch or brunch.  These little quiches are super versatile!

Mini Crustless Breakfast Quiche

12 eggs
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1  cup shredded cheese (I use white cheddar, but you can use whatever cheese you want!)

Begin your quiches by whisking together the eggs, cream, salt and cheese in a large mixing bowl.   Sprinkle in any “add in” ingredients you wish (a total of 1 cup of add-ins).  Stir them around with a fork.  Scoop mixture into 24 well buttered regular sized muffin tins.  Bake in a 350° oven for 20-30 minutes, or until the middle of each quiche doesn’t jiggle.

Add In Ideas:

Cooked sausage (I have a wonderful recipe for turkey sausage here.)
Chopped ham
Chopped and cooked bacon
Leftover baked potatoes, cut into chunks or shredded into hashbrowns
Sauteed veggies
Raw spinach
Cooked chicken
Taco seasoned meat

Obviously, you can cut this recipe in half to make 12 regular sized muffins sized quiches!

I’m curious, just because I’m fairly certain some of you might be shocked about our egg consumption…how many eggs does your family go through in a week?

This recipe is gluten free!  I’m planning to add this little Gluten Free button to all of the Heavenly Homemakers recipes that are naturally Gluten Free, so you’ll know with one quick glance!

I couldn’t help myself.  After being sick myself and taking care of a family of sickies for the past four weeks (that influenza stuff is a BEAR), to have energy again and healthy children with appetites is truly delightful.  I’ve been spending extra time in the kitchen, trying to make up for lost time it would seem.  I loved every minute of it.

Okay, maybe not the dirty dishes part.

Dirty dishes aside (and really – I shouldn’t complain about the blessing of having so many people to dirty up dishes at my house), I loved being able to bake and cook a little extra this week in order to have healthy convenience foods in my freezer.  Two things occurred to me as I was participating in this mad flour grinding, recipe mixing up, dough kneading, cooking ahead extravaganza this week, and I would like to share them with you.

Here are two of the simplest ways I’ve found to get ahead in the kitchen:

1.  Cook or bake just one extra thing each day, if at all possible.  This might mean that you brown up several pounds of hamburger to have on hand for an easy casserole, tacos, sloppy joes, etc.  Or it might be that you whip up some snacks to have on hand for the kids.  Or maybe you could cook up some brown rice to have for simple meal prep the next day.  It doesn’t have to be complicated or time consuming.  But if you happen to be home and have a few extra moments during the day, utilize it for cooking up a little something extra to make for convenience on those days you barely have time to cook at all because you’re running around crazy-like. 

2.  If you’re mixing up one batch, you might as well mix up two (or three) batches.  You’re already making a mess.  You’re already getting out the needed ingredients.  Why not double or triple up the recipe and make plenty of extra of whatever it is you’re making, then put the leftovers in the freezer for a busy day.  I love doing this with Whole Wheat Waffles, Easy Lasagnas, Muffins…whatever freezes well and reheats easily.

Here are just a few pictures of the food items I made this week in my efforts to get ahead.  Let me clarify something though:  Not every week is this productive for me in the kitchen.  I happened to be home most of the week without many outside engagements, allowing me to really focus on teaching my kids and working in the kitchen.  Now I  have several quick foods in the freezer to easily warm up on those days where we’re running to ball games and practices, or dentist appointments or any other event that makes it difficult to spend time cooking.

Chocolate Chip Cookies and Easy Lasagnas

Honey Whole Wheat Bread (x2)

Whole Wheat Waffles (x2)

Homemade Whole Wheat Rolls (recipe found in Heavenly Homemaker’s Guide to Holiday Hospitality)

Whole Wheat Tortillas (x4)

Meat and Cheese Burritos

Sloppy Cornbread Muffins

Banana Muffins (x2)

Whole Wheat Vanilla Wafers (x2)

What did my kids do while I was doing this extra cooking?  Most of the time, they were sitting in the kitchen with me, doing their school work.  They also spent a fair amount of time playing with a huge box, shooting things, and eating the food I was making. 

What did my dust and clutter do while I was doing all this extra cooking?  Let’s not talk about it.

I am happy to report that I was able to make everything on my list (except for the Ranch Dressing), plus a few extras.  What I’m not so happy to report is that with some of the cooking…I got a little bit lazy.

Take for instance these Corn Dog Muffins.  They’re so easy to make and are great to have in the freezer for a grab and go meal.  My problem though came when I just didn’t feel like taking the time to cut the hotdogs to the right size.  I was in a hurry and just cut them all in half (instead of into thirds).  This means that the dogs did not fit into the muffin cups at all and instead just sort of sat on top of the cornbread. 

Thankfully, my family doesn’t mind eating ugly little Corn Dog Muffins, but let’s just say these fellas wouldn’t win any prize at the fair.

Nor would my Honey Whole Wheat Bread this time around.  Want to know what happens when you’re too lazy to knead your bread for as long as you should knead your bread?

It get’s all funky in the oven and comes out looking like this:

Again, my family doesn’t mind funky looking bread, especially if I slice it before they notice.  While making our bread, we took a little extra time to make some loaves of Cinnamon Swirl Bread – always a favorite.  My kitchen helper loaded it up with cinnamon…the more the better right?

And again, I have to say…if the bread is ugly, slice it up before anyone can see it.  It doesn’t look nearly so ugly when it’s toasted and has butter melted all over it…

For a snack while the boys were having an art lesson (because drawing and eating at the same time is a great way to creatively sketch animals), we had Cream Cheese Apple Dip with sliced apples.  That stuff tastes SO good.

I made six pounds worth of Turkey Sausage, browned it and bagged it up for future use with Pancake Sausage Muffins and Easy Breakfast Casseroles.  I can’t tell you how nice it is to have pre-made Turkey Sausage on hand to grab out of the freezer for a quick meal!!

Of course, while I was at it, I went ahead and made two batches of Pancake Sausage Muffins.  We ate a batch the next morning and froze a batch for later.

Again, my lazy side took over and instead of making Mini Apple Pies, I made one big apple pie and an apple crisp.  The boys decorated the top of the pie using cookie cutters with the leftover pie crust dough.

I made a batch of Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns, which is probably one of my favorite foods to have in the freezer!  They’re great to have ready to pull out for Sloppy Joes or Ranch Burgers or just plain sandwiches. 

Because I had talked about stretching one chicken to make six meals…I decided I’d better cook a chicken to prove it to myself and to experiment with the best way to get six great meals from one chicken.  After eating some of the chicken and broth, we still have some chicken and broth in the fridge for future meals.  I’ll be working on the “How to Stretch Your Chicken” post, and in the meantime, I hope you are all picturing us in the kitchen with a raw bird, seeing how far we can stretch him…kind of like a tug of war.  Just kidding…don’t picture that.  And please, whatever you do, do NOT give my children any ideas.

I made Warm Vanilla Soother one morning to go with our breakfast, so with the leftover egg whites, I made a batch of Coconut Macaroons for a friend who can’t have wheat.  We did a little “quality control” before sending the cookies off, and we declared that the cookies were certainly fit to eat.

The Poptarts finally got made toward the end of the week…and there is exactly one left.  These Poptarts are a hit…and I’m just sure they freeze well…but in my house, they have yet to make it to the freezer.

So what do you suppose is the loudest activity in our kitchen?  Give up?  It’s making Homemade Peanut Butter.  Peanuts flying around in a food processor is really, really loud.  Of course, then it gets even louder because my kids tend to like to try yelling over the noise.  It’s a highly effective way to communicate.

With our fresh Peanut Butter, we made some Healthier Rice Crispy Treats for snacking.  Then we made more (loud) Peanut Butter to fill our jar for the fridge.

So let’s see…what did I learn from my week of cooking?  Don’t be lazy.  Cut the hot dogs smaller, knead the bread dough longer.  Don’t try to draw animals while eating apples and dip because you’ll end up with a very sticky horse.  And never tell your kids you’re going to see how far you can stretch a chicken, or they’re likely to grab the bird and yank the legs off.