Today ended up being (well today AND yesterday...the kids were sort of hard yesterday) the good old baking day. I have made a resolution the last little bit to try and prep as many meals as I can and throw them into my freezer so that I have go-to meals during the week when the kids don't let me cook so that we don't eat out anymore. I love to cook AND I have a small block freezer on top of my regular fridge freezer so I can make a huge bunch of stuff. Just a note: When I put things in the freezer I cover them with alluminum foil and take a permanent marker to A) Write what they are, and B) Cooking instructions if needed on the item to make my life easier (trust me you WILL forget what you have in your freezer...I'm a big believer in the "Bag it and tag it" philosophy.
One cardinal rule that I've found when baking and freezing is that for ME it is almost always easier to bake the item and then put it in the freezer so that you can just throw it into the micro-wave and heat it that way (it's quicker a lot of times). I'm a HUUUUUGGGE believer in Pyrex baking dishes for this very reason. They are versatile, nice looking, and go so easy from oven to microwave to table...who can't love them? I usually DO take the items out of the freezer and then put them into an oven at 300 degrees (a COLD oven mind you) for like 20 minutes sometimes to help the pan to warm up IF I didn't have time to defrost it at all (usually I can just pull it out and stick it on the counter an hour before preparing...it gives it just enough time to take some of the ice off the outside of the dinner).
So, here is what I made. I'll source other people's recipes as I make them (if I can remember where I got them...I literally have a cookbook's worth of pages that I've printed out of recipes).
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I bought some mini-loaf pans at the store for Christmas baking like almost two years ago on clearance. Well, I ended up making jarred bread (I'll explain that sometime) instead of mini-loaves, so I found those in my cupboard and thought "HEY these are the perfect size for two and a half people servings of meatloaf" (the 1/2 is Armina my two year old daughter). I have found that making meatloaf with ground turkey or chicken is AWESOME! It comes out very moist. Try it sometime (especially since 1 lb of Jennie O Turkey is only like 1.82 at Wal-Mart in their frozen food section). I made two of those and hope to make a couple more to stack in the freezer for later.
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1 Freezer French Toast This looks awesome and I hope it tastes as good as it smells and looks when it was put into the freezer. I went to the Hostess outlet and just bought some Texas Toast and then stacked them tight two-deep, but not super tight (since I was using a 8x11 instead of a 9x13 pan...I think...it was smaller let's just put it that way) and did everything like she said. The rest in the fridge is a definitely good idea as it allows the bread to absorb the milk and eggs. It looks yummy and my husband LOVES French Toast, so this will be GREAT for breakfast/brunch some weekend.
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1 Recipe for my favorite Lasagna
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Don't these look pretty :-). I was so proud when they came out of the oven. What are they, why they are...
1 Bannana Bread Muffins The recipe is actually for bannna bread, but we never eat enough of a loaf before it goes bad, so I made this into 12 muffins and froze them. I put the conversions in the recipe.
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1 Super Power Muffins (picture above) The Recipe is down with the comments on the blog. These are REALLY good. You'd never know they were good for you. They just taste like peanut butter. I didn't add the chocolate chips because I couldn't find mine, and I added a container of carrot baby food instead of the carrot puree (same difference I'm sure). They turned out awesome.
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Brown Bag Burritos (doubled) I'll tell you what, these are GREAT and they are even more awesome if you take them from the freezer, stick them into some 350 to 375 degree oil for about 7 minutes (make sure they are frozen and frozen well) until GBD (golden brown and delicious) and you have made Crispy Burritos like the restaurants serve. This takes burritos to a whole new level! My husband came up with the idea to fry them (he loves Crispy Burritos) and he was right...they do taste just that much better.
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Farmhouse Chicken Casserole I JUST put this in the freezer like two hours ago. Holy COW did it taste good when I taste-tested it to make sure it was right. I can't wait to eat this later! Although, I cooked my chicken first (it was a bit freezer burned) by putting it in a deep frying pan with about two cans of chicken broth and a good couple tablespoons of McCormick Montreal Chicken seasoning (I LOVE the McCormick Montreal chicken and steak seasonings...I use them constantly). I then diced it up and put it in the casserole like she said and added dried onion instead of fresh (since all of my onions came with mold on them...produce shopping in Alaska, isn't it fun?), but I didn't bake it. I just put it all together and threw it in the freezer (since everything is cooked I can now microwave it to cook it and then brown the stuffing in the oven...it'll be a great go-to meal).
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Home Made Toaster Pastries Alton Brown is my hero ;-). These actually tasted pretty good, although the chocolate filling was definitely more suited to pocket PIES instead of the toaster pastries...it doesn't taste like much when you use so little. These are better than the store generic pop tarts (I still have such a love of Smore Pop Tarts though, but can't afford them so I live without them now *sniff*), so I'll be making them again.
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I also made some home made Egg McMuffins (sort of) by putting some leftover easter ham (which was sooo good) that was still frozen but was frozen in such a way that I could chisel pieces off, in between two english muffins (I hit a B1G1 sale from Fred Meyer a while back on english muffins and froze one package of them for future use). I made a huge omlet (just scrambled eggs really, but I threw in a little bit of cheese too) and then cut it into pieces to put into the muffins too. I then sliced up part of my huge ginormous cheese block that I buy at Costco (I separate it into four blocks, put in freezer bags, wrap in alluminum foil and freeze. They keep forever that way) and added cheese. Wrapped them all in alluminum foil and froze them. This way we have a quick and healthy go-to breakfast item and it fits anywhere in your freezer that you have room. And it tastes really good.
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And that was that for the day. I'm sorry for the lack of pictures, but most of the casseroles and such don't really LOOK great at the prep stage. I'll work on taking pictures when I heat them.
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