Well, I've compiled a list of meals my husband either "doesn't mind" or "could live with eating once in a while" and figure I'll make some of those, along with some new recipes, to make the baking/cooking day go smoother. I'm figuring on doing it this Sunday (or Saturday if we go out Sunday...plans for the weekend are somewhat up in the air at this point).
The list is as follows. First the complete meals...
Breakfasts!
Cranberry Cream Cheese French Toast I'm going to take the idea of filling some french toast slices with cranberry sauce and cream cheese mixed, but not doing the nuts. I'm going to make home made bread over the next couple of days to make these recipes calling for "thick cut bread" work better for me.
Freezer Baked French Toast This is a "maybe" in my spectrum.
Bacon Brunch Bites I have bacon in the freezer and crescent roll dough in the fridge, so I figured what the heck. I'm going to omit the onion and use crescent roll dough (just pinching the seams shut) to make the dough work right, instead of the "recipe creations".
Cinnamon Rolls These will actually be for Christmas. I want to make them up, flash freeze them on a cookie sheet and then freeze them. Christmas Eve I'll take them out, put them in the fridge and let them defrost and then bake them Christmas morning. We'll see if I do this now, or end up doing it Christmas Eve *laugh*.
Pancakes (made with good ol' Bisquick)
Breakfast Smoothie I have blueberries in the freezer, banannas on my counter and TONS of yogurt in my fridge. I can't WAIT to try this!
Lunches!
Home Made "Uncrustables". I'm just going to make PB&J and some grilled cheese, cut them out with a biscuit cutter, flute the edges, freeze on cookie sheets and throw into freezer bags. I think this will work SLICK if I can make the cookie sheets sit right in my block freezer.
Individual things of Spaghetti, frozen in baggies for lunches later.
Mac N' Cheese Casserole Cups Really this is just home made Mac N' Cheese in muffin tins, but it works! This link is to the full "July" menu on Once a Month Mom because the recipe is no longer available for link up, so I wanted to warn you about that!
Beef and veggie stew (I'm going to use some of the carrots and the turnips I bought at the store as well as some dehydrated veggies and what not I have to make a really nice thick stew for cold fighting food).
DINNERS
Pizzas (I'm going to make them with the pizza dough I have frozen in the freezer). I'm going to make some regular ones and then I'm going to make a variation of Veggie Pizza. I'm not going to use the crescent dough for it, but instead use just regular pizza crust and mess with the recipe a bit. We'll see how it turns out.
Mini-Meatloaves I'm going to mix these up with beef and maybe make some with some frozen turkey too, but we'll see.
Chicken Tetrazzini
Farmhouse Chicken
Meatballs (for meatball hoagies or for sweedish meatballs, etc.)
Lasagna This is for Christmas Eve Dinner...it's a tradition in my family :). I'm going to use a LITTLE bit of sausage we have in the freezer to mix in with the beef.
Chicken Cheesy Casserole I think I'm just going to mix all the ingredients together and freeze it. Then when we're ready to eat it I'll just defrost a bag, place it in an 8x8 pan, put cheese on top and bake. I think it'll freeze in freezer bags flat pretty darn easy.
MARINADES/MEATS/Misc
Rosemary Chicken I'm hoping to bake it and then just place the whole kit n' kaboodle into a freezer bag and then I can defrost it, thicken the sauce, and voila instant meal!
Taco Beef (beef just browned with taco seasoning for you guessed it! Tacos!)
Cooked and Cubed Chicken (for use in recipes later)
Hamburger Patties
Bread (in breadmaker) for French Toast dishes.
Tupperware Bread for dinner rolls and just for some general bread.
SIDE DISHES
Sweet Potato Casserole
Freezer Mashed Potatoes
Deserts
Cranberry Upside Down Cake I'm going to mix in a little cranberry relish we have here left over from Thanksgiving and see how this turns out.
And there you have it. One tentative "master list". We'll see how it goes this weekend. Here's hoping I can get it all done!
3 comments:
That is ambitious. I hope you'll let us know how it turns out. I was wondering how you do your pizza dough. I've never made dough for the freezer. I've always cooked it before freezing. Do you alter the recipe or just freeze regular old rolled out dough?
I just make up plain old pizza dough and just freeze it before the second rise. Then I take it out of the freezer and let it defrost on the counter in the morning and usually it's just great by the time dinner rolls around to actually make it :).
I've also just made pizzas and froze them too after par baking it (or whatever you'd call it) and just done it like that and it's always come out good too.
When I freeze pizza DOUGH it's really just for the versatility. I can make bread sticks, pizza, calazones, etc. depending on what we want to eat that night =).
Holy cow, girly! That's quite the plan you got there! I also wondered about the pizza dough too, thanks for explaining. Boboli's just don't cut it and we love homemade pizza, but I don't usually have time to make the crust, so freezing the dough seems easy enough...
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