Friday, February 26, 2010

My Freezer Cooking Plan: Fitting Around Life

Unfortunately, I won't have a bunch of time all at once to do a big Freezer Cooking event in the next few days. I have a few other things that I need to take care of, in addition to having friends over and finishing up my attempt at organizing my basement.
This doesn't mean that I don't want to cook and fill my freezer. I love having a small yet useful stash of food items on hand that I can pull out at the drop of a hat. For instance, I had a loaf of banana bread in the back of the freezer that I used earlier this week when I hosted a playgroup at the last minute. I also have meal prep items, such as bone soup and shredded chicken, that I can pull out and add into a meal when required.
My plan is to prepare some items to add to the freezer without spending much more time in the kitchen than I already have planned to cook our regular meals. Here is my strategy:

  • Soup of the Week: Next week's soup is Quinoa Vegetable Soup. What is supposed to happen is that I have leftover soup each week to freeze and eat at a later date, but that hasn't been happening! The other week I made White Bean and Kale Soup and we ate it all up. My husband and I actually had to negotiate who got the last 2 servings. This soup should be different, because my husband doesn't really care for this soup. More for the freezer!

  • Creamy Enchilada Casserole: I have the ingredients, so I might as well put one together one night while I am making something else for dinner.

  • Bouchons au Thon (tuna/salmon corks): Do I dare try to make these again after what happened last time?

  • Strawberry Bread: I'm making this on Sunday morning for a vegetarian dinner Sunday night. It makes two loaves, so one will go into the freezer for a future meal or gathering. (Finished!)

  • Lasagna: my recipe makes a huge pan, so I will put some in an 11x7 pan for the same dinner, then make an 8x8 for a future family meal. First I will need to extricate the Baked Ziti currently living in my 8x8 so I can use it for the lasagna. Did you know that an 8x8 casserole will fit in a gallon size freezer bag? (Finished!)

  • ETA: I need to mix up another batch of multi grain pancake mix (recipe from The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook)


When I'm ready to bake it, I'll peel the foil off and pop it back into the 8x8 pan.
So I have some ideas. It's definitely not a month's worth of food, but my freezer is too small to handle that quantity of food anyway!

And now, off to do a bunch of other stuff.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love the ideas to just do a few things. I don't have a large freezer either, but I like to have a few things on hand for those last minute meals. I've been batch-cooking a few things so that I now have some chicken spaghetti, baked ziti, enchiladas & chili in the freezer....but like you, I like having shredded chicken in there....there are so many options you can do with shredded chicken!