Weekend Rewind: Pre-Cooking Saves The Day..er...Dinner!

To go along with our freezer cooking focused recipe hops this month, I've been sharing past freezer cooking posts with you for my weekend rewinds.

This post was originally posted on November 14, 2011.  It is a great example of how even just pre-cooking and bagging the meat (if you don't have time to create entire freezer meals) is a huge time saver!  Pair that with a fully stocked pantry and a little imagination, and the possibilities are endless!


Here is the original post:


Yesterday, my houseguests left and I was all alone with the kids.  They were going nuts, and I needed to feed them.  I didn't want to eat any of the complete meals that were in the freezer because we'd eaten them all recently.

I wanted something different. Something fresh.  But, also something easy that I had all the ingredients on hand.  So I started digging around in my freezer, and I found a pack of pre-cooked ground beef that I had forgotten about.  This could work, I said to myself, and I went to the pantry.

I had already decided against anything spaghetti-esqe.  I had a bag of that in the freezer I could have thawed.  But one kid doesn't like spaghetti, and the other kid does everything the first one does, so I wasn't feeling that fight tonight.

In my pantry I had egg noodles, and cream soups, so I decided to toss together a quick beef stroganoff type meal.  I put my thawed, cooked ground meat into the skillet with a can of cream of mushroom soup.  (I seasoned the meat when cooking it so I didn't need to add any seasonings now.)  I decided to toss some frozen peas into the skillet just to make it a one dish meal.  I also added a bit of my fresh basil and rosemary to add a little flavor to the sauce.  Tossed it over whole wheat egg noodles, and dinner was served.

My girls both loved this and ate without complaints, so that was a big win in itself.  The other plus was how easy and inexpensive this meal was to make.  Having the meat already cooked was a huge time saver, and all the other ingredients were right there in my pantry.  The pasta I had gotten for FREE I think.  No more than $0.20 for sure.  The cream of mushroom soup was $0.30, and then half a bag of $0.95 Aldi frozen peas.

I write this post to show you (but mostly myself) than pre-cooking, even if its just the meat and I don't have time to create an entire meal for the freezer, is still worth it!

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Weekend Rewind: 26 Meals From One Turkey

This month's weekend rewind post are focused on freezer cooking to go along with our recipe hop theme.

The post I have for you this week was originally posted on April 16th, 2011.  I had bought an extra turkey around Thanksgiving, and it had been taking up freezer space ever since.  I thought it was high time that I thawed and and made some useful meals out of it, but I thought I would never see the end of it!

Here is the original post, which I had titled "Adventures in Turkey...Or The Neverending Story?"



I now fully understand why turkey leftovers have for so long been the bane of post-Thanksgiving existence.  It's not that we were tired of eating turkey.  I think I did a pretty good job of shaking things up so it didn't seem like we were eating the same thing all week, and I was able to put a lot of meals in the freezer which was looking pretty bare.  But seriously, I did not think I was ever going to come to the end of this turkey meat.  Quite honestly, I'm glad I have so many turkey dishes in the freezer, because I surely do not wish to mess with one again for a long time.

So, what did my 16 lb. turkey that I bought on sale back in November for $4.81 make for us?

Meal # 1:
On Monday, after my husband injected the bird with a homemade marinade (he loves to play around in the kitchen), we baked it in an oven bag, and we could not resist having a nice turkey and stuffing dinner, with a little spinach salad on the side.

Meals #2-7: (plus a couple lunches for the hubby)
Tuesday, I took the rest of the turkey and boiled it a bit so the meat would fall off more easily, then I pulled the meat off.  I ended up with a huge bowl full of meat.

After that, I boiled the bones for a few hours to make a huge pot of turkey stock.

 I used half of this stock and added water to it as the base for a soup.

 What I love about soup is that you can add pretty much anything you have on hand and it will taste great.  For this one, I had left a good amount of meat on the bones in the harder to reach places, so that cooked off into the stock and I didn't need to add any more meat to the soup.  I dumped in a couple cans of green beans, a bag of frozen corn, a bag of frozen peas, a can of diced tomatoes, and the rest of the pack of spinach from the night before.
Half an hour before we ate I tossed in a pack of ABC and star shaped noodles I've had in the pantry for some time.

After we all ate (my husband and I each had two bowls), I froze 5 more containers for dinners, and sent a couple smaller bowls with my husband for lunches this week.
*Tip*:  To cool it down quickly, I put the whole pot into the sink and run cold water around it.  Drain and refill the sink when  the water gets hot.

Meal 8: (and still have some leftovers)

Most of the day Wednesday was spent trying to figure out what meals to make and making a shopping list (I intended to do this on Tuesday, but after 8 loads of laundry, I was not feeling it).  I still had those Philly Cooking Cremes that I had gotten for $0.49 at the Kroger Mega Sale a few weeks ago, so I decided to use the recipe on the back of the Italian one to make this delicious Florentine recipe.  It called for chicken, I had turkey, so be it.

I tossed in a pack of steamed broccoli and some pepper strips and then stirred in the cooked spaghetti.  It called for fettuccine, but again, its what I had.

Meals 9-10:
Thursday after my Aldi trip, I started preparing some meals while my youngest was napping.  This recipe came out of my favorite cookbook, and it is one I have not tried before, but sounds good.  (I will share the actual recipes soon, I just do not have the time right now.)  This one was called Colorful Chicken Casserole (again, I used turkey instead).
It was made much like the previous recipe, only using peas and corn.  It also called for mushrooms, but we do not care for them, so I left them out.

 This is what it looked like cooking.  There are some onions, celery, and chopped green bells in there as well.

I then mixed the pasta in, poured it into my pans, and covered with shredded cheese.  I cover these in foil, and put them into a freezer bag with a note card telling what it is and cooking instructions.

Meals 11-12:
The little one woke up early, so that put a stop to my extra food preparation, so the next thing I got around to was that night's dinner.  I used another of those Philly Cooking Cremes, this time the Santa Fe flavor.  The back of it had an enchilada recipe that I had seen in a magazine and it looked delectable, so I wanted to try it.

My husband was working late and then had some errands to run, so let me just say that I got pretty good at balancing a tortilla on one hand while stopping a toddler from *fill in the blank* with the other hand.  Needless to say I forgot to take a picture.  But here is a shot of the leftovers, which are unexpectedly another whole meal in themselves.

Meals 13-15: (and some side dishes)
After dinner, I mixed up another easy recipe out of that cookbook.  This one was called Chicken Potato Casserole.  I think you get the idea that you can put turkey in anything that calls for chicken.  I have not tried this one before either, but I like it because it hides nutritious things, like chopped up spinach and shredded carrots in the mashed potatoes.  I made three of these.  Here is a shot of the finished product.  You can see the little specks of green and orange in there.

I had some of the potatoes left over, so I decided to try another idea out of that cookbook:  freezing the potatoes in muffin pans so you have single portioned side dishes ready to go!  Here's my husband scooping them in.

And this morning after they were frozen, I popped them out and put them into a freezer bag.

I liked this idea so well, I decided to try it with some mac & cheese after lunch.  I'll let you know how that turns out.

Meals 16-17:
Tonight's dinner was another recipe I had not yet tried from my cookbook (obviously, I was getting a bit tired of the ones I had tried).  It sounded interesting.  Chicken (turkey) Taco Quiche.  I imagine this would be quite good with ground beef as well.  Now I have never made a quiche before, but I had bought too many eggs, and this intrigued me.
My husband,however, hates eggs with a passion.  Unless there is so much other stuff in them that they don't taste like eggs.  I was a little worried about this one because the only "other stuff" mixed with the eggs were half and half and a packet of taco seasoning.  It turned out excellent.  He loved it.  The girls loved it.  Even though the one with the aversion to red things picked out every chunk of salsa that she found.  Seriously...the child will not eat pizza?!?!  Anyway, I forgot to snap a picture of it fresh out the oven, so here it is half eaten.

I made two, and learned an important lesson in the process.  The second was to be frozen uncooked.  I thought it would spill if I tired to bag ii unfrozen, so I carefully carried it to the freezer (dripping along the way) and gently sat it down on an empty upper shelf.  When I went to grab the mac & cheese to bag a bit later, I noticed this:

It had dripped down onto all three lower shelves and pooled in the bottom.  Lesson learned.  Next time it goes on a baking sheet.

Meals 18-20:
This recipe I have tried before.  It is one of my new favorites.  I had just enough turkey left over to make three of these, and I had three boxes of stuffing on hand.  It is called Chicken Stuffing Casserole (this cook book is not very creating with the naming of the dishes, is it?)  But it is so easy to make.  Stuffing on bottom, corn, meat, cream of mushroom soup on top, and cover with shredded cheese.  I had ran out, so I improvised.

And that was the last of the meat.  But I'm still not done...

Meals 21-??:
I still have the other half of the turkey stock sitting in the fridge.  I am going to make a recipe that I sort of made up last time we cooked a turkey.  A meatless soup with lentils and split peas, and whatever else I happen to have.  It will be a clean out the freezer sort of day.  It turned out really good last time, and my girls love soups.  We don't care if it's getting warmer out.  I expect this will make another 6 meals like the last soup did, so that should get me up to 26 meals just from this one bird.

Phew!  If anyone is still with me, I'd love to know if you do any freezer cooking, or if you are thinking about it starting.  I find it to be not just a great time saver, but also a great money saver as well.

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Weekend Rewind: A Couple Hours Of Freezer Cooking (17 meals)

Since our recipe hop topic this month is going to be freezer cooking, I am continuing to focus my weekend rewinds around freezer cooking.

This is a combination of two posts first posted on June 5, 2010.  Incidentally that happens to be my wedding anniversary, so I have absolutely no idea why I was in the kitchen making 17 freezer meals on my wedding anniversary, but apparently that is what happened.  This post was originally in two parts, and I'm going to put them together in this rewind post (so it's a little bit long), but this is a typical freezer cooking session around here. Nothing too overwhelming  (in fact I pretty much did this exact same thing a couple weeks ago!)

Here are the original posts:  (I will leave current notes in italics).

Part 1--

Today I did a bit of impromptu freezer cooking.  I often multiply a single recipe if I'm cooking a nightly meal. That way my effort on that one day will not only feed us that night, but it will also put a few more meals into the freezer as well.

Today we were having a dinner guest, and I was making a large (crock)pot of red beans and rice for dinner--easiest, yummiest thing to make-- with some sausage I had gotten on sale at El Rancho (I still stock up on sausage when I find those sales...typically $3.99 for a 3lb package!).  Actually, in this photo the sausage has not even been added.  You can see it thawing on the side.  The beans swole up so much that I had to split it up and put some of it into my smaller crockpot in order to get the sausage to fit  (Now I put only 2 lbs of sausage and 2lbs of beans in that crock-pot...makes about 4 meals for us).  I do not yet know how many meals this 3lbs of beans and 3lbs of sausage is going to make because I have not bagged it up for the freezer yet.

I also had the 12 lbs of ground beef that I had bought last Monday still sitting in my fridge, so today I decided that I either had to freeze it all raw and deal with it later, or fix up something.  I decided upon the latter.  To me, ground beef is probably the easiest thing to cook in bulk because the prep work and inital seasoning can be the same for so many recipes.  Today, I split my beef into two equal 6lb portions.  One part went into a pot on the stove and was turned into a spaghetti sauce.  That part is sitting in the fridge for the night (along with the rest of the red beans) and tomorrow I am going to use some to make lasagnas and freeze some just as sauce for spaghetti.  Then, all I will need to do is heat it up and make fresh pasta and a side.

The remainder of the meat went into a large bowl and was seasoned up like you would for hamburger patties.  I personally use onion soup mix to season (I used 4 packets for the 6 lbs of meat) and 6 eggs and some bread crumbs. 

Once this was all mixed up, I shaped it into three meals worth of burgers: 2 sets of 5 for just us, and one with 8 for when we have company, 2 meals worth of meatballs  (I now have the cutest little helper for this task--I use a mini muffin pan to hold these while they freeze and it works perfectly, and a small meat loaf--for this I line a small loaf pan with foil and then put the meat in.  Once it is frozen I pop it out of the loaf pan and put it in a freezer bag.  I freeze these raw on the pans laid out flat and then when they are frozen I place them into freezer bags.  I cook them later, on the day we plan to eat them, but the messy portion of it is all done at the same time (and that's the part I hate).

Hey, we just replaced that dishwasher! ^^^

Once I get everything bagged up and into the freezer I will post an update on just how many meals my little bit of effort today created.  I had let my freezer get pretty bare, so I'm going to be doing a lot of cooking in the near future. 

I started cooking this way before my baby was born so I would have food ready and it would save me time, but I have found that it also saves a lot of money, too.  I am able to shop with coupons and buy things on sale for very low prices and then find recipes that use whatever I have been able to purchase for cheap.  I also keep watch for awesome sales on meat, and purchase large quantities at the discounted price.  I have picked out several favorite recipes as well as several new recipies that I plan to cook this month using the meat that was already in my freezer, and there were very few things that I did not already have on hand to make them with.

Probably the largest extra expense to make this weekends meal was a large bag of shredded cheese that I had to purchase today.  Yes, I know I just bought 8 bags of shredded cheese at Kroger.  Sadly, I was not very organized that week, and I did not have the foresight to buy more than one bag of mozzarella.  So before our guest arrived today, I made a quick trip to the stores.  I noticed that Tom Thumb had 32oz bags of shredded cheese on sale for $4.99 as part of their Mix and Match Sale (more on that later), so I stopped by there armed with a few coupons, and they were stocked up on all flavors of cheese EXCEPT mozzarella.  I needed to get one more item in order to get the discounted prices, so I called my husband to ask about other flavor possibilities.  He told me he usually mixed monterrey jack in when he made lasagna.  So, tomorrow I am going to perform a little kitchen experiment...using only Monterrey Jack cheese in lasagna.  Could be good!  Or not.  We shall see.



Part 2--The follow-up:

As promised, here is an update on my freezer cooking.  I bagged up the remaining food today to put it in the freezer.  I also assembled the lasagnas.  To do that, I used the sauce that I prepared yesterday, and layered it with cheese and OVEN READY lasagna noodles.

These are great because you do not have to cook them ahead of time.  My husband actually discovered them.  They soak up the liquids from the food while it cooks and soften up in the oven.  Simply lay them out on the pan.  *NOTE:  One box actually made all four of these.  I bought two, and didn't even need to open the second one.*  Here is a shot of the lasagnas I made in different stages of prepared-ness.

I make them in square aluminum pans (they call them cake pans and come in packs of 3 for around $1.50 if you find the ones without the lids), and then wrap with foil, place the whole thing into a gallon sized freezer bag, and pop them in the freezer.  Try to lay them out individualy until they freeze, but once frozen they stack nicely.  These types of dishes are great to grab and take to a friend in need of a meal too!

We had one of those for dinner tonight and they came out REALLY good with the monterrey jack cheese.  Actually, when I went to put what was left away in the fridge I noticed the top layer of cheese was missing from the remaining piece.  I questioned my husband about it, and he said he had no idea what I was talking about...his usual response when he's been caught. ;)

Getting back to the food.  In all, I put away 4 more bags of red beans, 4 lasagnas (3 went into the freezer), and two bags of spaghetti sauce.

Add that to the 3 sets of burgers, 2 sets of meatballs, and 1 meatloaf I froze last night, as well as the meal of red beans we ate, and that makes 17 meals that were prepared yesterday.  My husband helped out some, but I would say it took the two of us maybe 2-2 1/2 hours total to do all that.  That is including the time spent bagging them up today.  Not too bad for a few hours in the kitchen.  I know some people map out a whole day for cooking and get a whole month's worth of meals knocked out.  It wouldn't be hard to do at all, but I prefer to go at a bit more of a relaxed pace and work with one type of meat at a time.  This time I did two, but one I just tossed into the crockpot so I don't think that really counts.

I will be cooking up some chicken soon, so I'm on the look out for some tasty sounding recipes.  I'm also kind of in a lunch food rut.  I want to make some freezer lunches, especially since school is out and my husband will be home during the day now.  I just don't know what kind of lunch items freeze well.  I just know I'm sick of hot dogs and chicken nuggets...So if anyone has done lunches, or has any ideas or recipes, I would welcome them.  Thanks!

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Weekend Rewind: Freezer Lunches & Appetizers (Or Great Game Day Snacks)

Since our Dishing It Up recipe hop this month with focus on freezer cooking, I am going to have my weekend rewinds focus on freezer cooking as well.

This post originally was posted on September 14, 2010.   It shows how to make some delicious mini pizzas.   These are great to freeze for easy lunches, but they would also make great Superbowl snacks.....


Here is the original post:


Its hard to believe, but I have been cooking all day long and had no idea what we were going to have for dinner come 5pm.  What, you might ask, have I been working on?  I made a bunch of English muffin pizzas to start off with.

Here's what you need:
12 pack of English Muffins (makes 24 small pizzas)
1 jar of pizza sauce
1 package of pepperoni (or whatever topping you want)
shredded cheese --I bought an 8oz bag of pizza blend, but as you can see, I ran out and had to switch to cheddar, so I would suggest getting 16oz or 2 8oz bags.

Here's what you do:
Separate the English muffins on baking sheets.  Spoon some sauce on them.  Add the toppings.  I put the cheese on top, and then baked them just until the cheese melted (so the toppings would not fall off in the freezer), then I let them cool, and stacked them up in a freezer bag for easy lunches.  I ate a couple of course.

I figured up how much these cost me to make, and it came out to about a quarter per pizza.  That's not too bad, and they are tasty and quick.  I like to keep these in the freezer, but I had not made any in quite some time.

I still had some pepperoni left over, and I still had my bread machine out on the counter from yesterday when I made dough for dinner rolls.  I shaped them and let them rise in muffin pans.  Then I baked what we needed for dinner, and froze the rest of the dough.  The frozen ones will turn out a little bit more dense than the freshly baked ones, but they are pretty good to grab in a hurry.  We love fresh bread, but never have the foresight to get it going in time for dinner, so this way we can just thaw and toss in the oven.

Since, the machine was still out, and I had seen a recipe in the bread machine cookbook that called for pepperoni:  soft pretzels,  I decided to give it a shot.  Now, I am not a great baker, and I have never in my life made a pretzel, so I decided that pretzel twists would be more in line with my abilities.  Even still, they were not a lovely thing to behold.

They were really soft, though.  More like bread sticks, in fact.  I brushed them with some garlic butter, and we had a few with our chicken soup that I grabbed from the freezer.  They were good.  I hardly noticed the pepperoni.  I hope they freeze well, because the recipe made a lot.

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Weekend Rewind: Want FREE ECBs?

This post was first published on 4/30/10.  I'f since mentioned this program here and there in passing, but I love it and I still get survey invited from them every 2-3 months.  They no longer give ECBs if you do not qualify for the survey, but I usually do qualify for the ones I get now.


Here's the original post:

CVS has made a consumer panel called the CVS Advisor Panel.  They send out email survey invitations and reward you with Extra Bucks.  I have been a member of it for about a year (3 now!), and I've received about 4-5 surveys from them.  The survey will ask a few questions at the beginning to see if you qualify, and I have only qualified for one of the shorter surveys they have sent.  For that survey, I was awarded $5 Extra Bucks.  Some of the longer ones, that I did not get to complete, would have awarded $10-$15 Extra Bucks.  But, the best part is that even if you do not qualify to complete the survey, you will always get awarded $1-$2 Extra Bucks just for trying.  I just received an invitation in my email, and did not qualify for it after answering only two questions that took me about 10 seconds, and I was able to print out a coupon for $2 Extra Bucks which is valid for a whole month.  I love this program, and I wish more stores would do this.  If you would like to register, click here.

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Weekend Rewind: Freezer Pancakes

I am almost out of these, so I will need to be making up another batch very soon.  In fact, I'm almost out of the boxed batter as well, so if I don't find a stock up price on the mix, I may have to try out a from scratch recipe to save even more money!

This post was originally written on April 15, 2010:


I will admit that I am not a big cooker of breakfast.  I am very much a pour it in a bowl or pop it in the toaster/microwave type person.  My daughter is absolutely fine with this.  Except for the past two days she kept going on and on about pancakes.  She loves mini pancakes.  I used to buy the frozen ones in a box because it was simple, but those things cost A LOT of money for just a few pancakes.  For the price you pay for one box of those that has maybe a couple dozen in it, you could buy a whole box of pancake mix.  But, then you have the whole hassle of actually cooking them and dirtying up the mixing bowls and griddle, etc.

Well, I'm not quite sure when the idea came to me.  I believe it was long before I started freezer cooking my dinners.  I noticed the package of pancake mix had directions for larger batches of pancakes printed near the bottom.

I thought, if they can sell pancakes frozen, why can't I freeze my own pancakes?  So I decided to give it a shot, and it worked really well.  So, I thought I would share this with you guys.  I will make up the largest batch.  I could even go larger if I wanted to double the ingredients listed, but the one using 3 cups of mix lasts us quite a while.  I mix up the batter in a large mixing bowl.

Then I pour them out in small circles onto the pre-heated griddle.  You can do this on the stove too, it will just take a little bit longer.

There is the messy picture, because of course the neat looking one wouldn't upload =P.  It takes a few batches like this on the griddle.  As I take them off, I pile them up on a plate or something and let them cool off while we eat some fresh ones.

Once they are cool (but don't let them sit out too long), I place them in a large freezer bag, date it and pop it in the freezer.  Now when my daughter asks for pancakes, I can pop a few into the microwave. =)  Saves me time and money, so I definately love that!

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