Freezer Cooking

I will be the first to admit that the "me" in my head has it all together.  The real "me" does not.  I am the person that thinks about what I'm going to make for dinner at 8am.  Then I get busy with my life. (Children have to be bathed AND dressed you know) I think about it again later,  "Oh, yeah, I need to get that meat thawing right after I......"  Soon enough its 6pm and I'm scrambling to get some sort of tasty goodness on the table before Husband gets home.  I need a plan!

I love those people that cook once a month.  I love the IDEA of cooking once a month.  I've even bought books on cooking once a month.  This week, I used them. Please don't ask me how long I've owned them.  The answer would be truly embarrassing.  Since Mattie recently announced that she really enjoys cooking and would like to be my kitchen helper I enlisted her help in thumbing through this book......

and we picked a few recipes we thought would work for our family.  For the sake of being first timers we only chose recipes that used beef.  Well, that, and we buy beef by the cow so we happen to have more of it on hand.  We decided on four "recipes" from the book......sorta.  We used their Salisbury sauce as a stroganoff sauce instead of on meatballs.  Then, we basically used it for ideas.  Lasagna, mozzarella meatballs, bean, beef, and cheese burritos....We used the leftover lasagna sauce to just put in bags for spaghetti.  We made our own "refried" (actually, just cooked and slightly mashed with seasoning) beans for the burritos and added cooked rice to help thicken it up.  Much less expensive than buying it by the can.

We started with 22 pounds of ground beef, and about 10 pounds of misc. cuts for stroganoff.  We also purchased 2 #10 cans of spaghetti sauce and one #10 can of diced tomatoes as our base for the spaghetti sauce.  I always start with store bought and then doctor it up! LOL  I bought several other items as well but this gives you a general idea of HOW MUCH cooking we did!!!

So, here's a few pics......

Mattie, ready to throw her bread in for rising.

We use an artisan bread recipe for dinner bread around here.  It's so easy.  Just look it up....Artisan bread in 5 mins. a day.  All it requires are flour, water, yeast, and salt.

I used cottage cheese that was 50% off instead of ricotta this time because, well, we still own two houses and we're broke. LOL  None of the kids even knew the difference!

The kitchen in the midst of the cooking mess.

Meat balls!  We stuffed each ball with a piece of mozzarella cheese stick that Joslyn cut up for us.

 For the meat balls I use ground beef, minced garlic, minced onion, eggs, evaporated milk, chili powder, and oatmeal.  Don't bother asking me how much.  I'm a dump and pour kind of cook!
(That said, would you believe that it DRIVES ME CRAZY when I call my mom to ask her how much such-and-such to put in something and she says, "Oh, about as much as would fit in the palm of your hand."  LOL  I'm so random!)

The sauce consists of ketchup (a #10 can), minced garlic and onion, brown sugar, and liquid smoke.


Two of the finished lasagnas.

It's now the end of the day and I am utterly EXHAUSTED.  I hear my bed calling my name.  We ended up with........

 5 lasagnas (minus one for dinner tonight)
4 meatball dinners
2 spaghetti dinners
6 burrito dinners
5 stroganoff dinners

in the freezer
 5 loaves of artisan bread baked and half eaten.  LOL

 

All in all, I think the day was successful.  I have several turkeys in the freezer yet that I would like to do something with so we won't be eating beef every day but this was a great start!