I’m happy to report that I was able to cross off everything on last week’s Make Ahead Healthy Foods list, plus a little extra! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If you want to get ahead in the kitchen, just do a little extra every once in a while. Here are a few pictures showing what I worked on during the past seven days:
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.