In the last few days I think I've begun to experience some nesting urges. Of course mine have nothing to do with cleaning, only cooking, which is a shame because my floors really need to be scrubbed. :) I made enough food today that I have at least seven main dishes in the freezer now. It really wasn't very hard. It took me less than three hours and during that three hours I also made lunch for the three us of and took a break to eat it. The kitchen is still a mess but we decided to grill tonight so at least I won't be dirtying a lot more dishes for supper. I've decided that I really do need to do this more often - it feels good to have stuff ready to go! Here's the breakdown of what I did.
I made three packages of boneless skinless chicken breasts into Crunchy Ranch Chicken Strips. The recipe is in my friend Laura's ebook (which you can find
here) so I can't really share it on my blog, but I would have paid the $4.95 for this recipe alone. It was a huge hit with Glenn and Olivia. They bake up quickly and are nice and crunchy. I froze the strips on a cookie sheet layered with parchment paper and then bagged them into gallon-sized ziploc bags. Now I can just pull out what we want for the meal and I should get 3-4 meals from it easily. Add a salad and a fruit or veggie on the side and it makes for a quick healthy meal!
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| Chicken strips ready to be bagged up! |
I also made a double batch of meatballs to freeze. It's my favorite easy baked meatball recipe that I found on Kraft.com that uses a box of Stove Top - I find so many good recipes there! If I know I'm going to use them for spaghetti I like to add a lot of chopped garlic and Parmesan cheese. The original recipe can be found
here. I love using my medium size scoop so that they are all at least close to the same size. Once they get out of the oven I let them cool and then put them in a couple of bags as well. They are really good thrown into a crock pot with spaghetti sauce for a few hours or even just warmed on the stove in some sauce. I didn't get any pictures of the meatballs, but they look like meatballs in a ziploc bag. :) I've been avoiding pasta since I found out I have gestational diabetes this time, so I'm looking forward to my favorite meal once Molly makes her debut.
Lastly I made two Cheesy Beef and Rice casseroles. This recipe is also Laura's and you can find it on her blog
here. The tweaks I made for us are that I used fresh chopped garlic (and lots of it) and I also used dehydrated onions instead of fresh because as I've said before, I never have fresh onion in the house. Because of my issues cooking rice I bought microwavable brown rice from the freezer section of Trader Joe's. In three minutes I have perfectly cooked rice and one package is enough for both casseroles. I still can't believe that I have such a hard time with rice of all things, but at least I found a quick way around it. It's funny because Glenn swears that he does not like sour cream, but he likes this recipe and beef stroganoff a lot. Maybe he just likes it with beef?
I decided to try I trick that I heard somewhere but for the life of me I can't remember where. I don't have a ton of extra freezer space (this freezer cooking has me longing for a deep freeze) and I'd like to be able to use the dishes other times so I tried it and it worked! I lined the glass dish with foil and froze the casserole. Then I popped them out of the dish, wrapped them well in more foil, and then wrote on them with a Sharpie. When the time comes I can just peel off the foil and put it back in the dish to thaw in my fridge before baking it for supper. This is another meal where I just have to add a side or two and we're good to go!
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| The popped right out of the glass dish like magic! |
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| Two casseroles stacked up and ready to go back into the freezer! |
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