Cooking Class: Week 1

Due to popular demand, I've decided to post the slideshows I use during my freezer cooking/oamc/canning/etc. class that I teach on Thursday nights. We've barely finished week one, so if you're interested in coming, browse through this presentation and do the homework! You're welcome to come over this Thursday at 7 for week two where we dive straight into freezer cooking!

Freezer cooking

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Freezer Cooking Menu: June 2010

The meals in our freezer are dwindling, which means it must be time for OAMC! I'm hoping to have my major cooking day on Saturday, but it may get pushed to Monday, so my mom can help. She'll be in town all week! I'm so excited to see her!

Our month is going to cost next to nothing because I already have about 10 pounds of chicken and 4 pounds of ground beef that I found on sale last month. I also found dry milk on sale at Smiths for a dollar, so I bought 6. Now I can afford to buy dehydrated fruit for the oatmeal! I can't wait.

Here's what's going down:

Dinners

• Buffalo Chicken Pizza


• Stuffed Hamburgers [Jalapeno Cheddar this time.]


• Italian Chicken Rolls


• Lasagna


• Taco Salad


• Cream Cheese Chicken


• Sweet & Sour Chicken Bowls


• Barbecue Chicken Sandwiches


• Chicken Enchiladas


• Tamale Pie


• Pineapple Chicken


• Macaroni Chicken Bake


• Divine Crock Pot Chicken


• Teriyaki Stir Fry

Sides

• Crystal's Butterhorns

Lunches

• Brown Bag Burritos

Breakfast

• Instant Oatmeal

Need some recipes? Check out my Recipes page!

Note: I've also had requests to come see a Freezer Cooking day in action. I'm happy to open up my kitchen to those who are interested. Contact me for more information.

Leave a comment with a recipe you'd like to see. I'll post a recipe as soon as it receives 5 votes!

Finish It Friday: Under Construction

So, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not a very good example of Finish It Friday. I planned our OAMC day [and will post it later], but did absolutely no scrapbooking. On a happier note, I did get a Gold's Gym membership through my work, which is a step in the right direction to my goal #2 from last week.

How did the weekend turn out for you?

Finish It Friday

Signing off for the weekend again!

Here's my list:

1. Plan Freezer Cooking Day


2. Work Out


3. Scrapbook 5 Pages

What's on your plate?

Make Ahead Stuffed Hamburgers

No, really. C actually grilled the burger like that. Impressive, eh?

These burgers were a brand new recipe for us, but we're 100% sold after just 1 bite! I'm excited to try different combinations of fillings.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds of ground beef


• 1 T. oil


• an onion


• 1/2 c. sliced mushrooms


• 1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese


• 1/4 c. parmesan cheese

The How-to:

1. Make 10 super thin patties out of 1 pound of ground beef and lay them on a cookie sheet


2. Sautee the mushrooms and onion in the oil until onions are translucent and everything smells awesome.


3. Throw in the cheese until it's melty


4. Spread equal amounts of the mixture on the 10 patties


5. Cover the patties with another layer of ground beef


6. Freeze uncovered for an hour, then bag

On Cooking Day:

1. No need to thaw, just throw these on the grill!

Alternative Fillings we're planning on trying: Jalapeno Cheddar, Bacon & Cheese, and Mushroom & Swiss. If you come up with any other ideas, I'd love to hear 'em!

Poppyseed Chicken

This recipe has been C's favorite since the very first time I ever made it. It used to be the meal we ate on the major cooking day, but since converting it to a freezer cooking recipe, we can have it whenever we want!

Ingredients:

• 2 chicken breasts, cooked & cubed


• 1 can of cream of mushroom soup [we also like this with cream of chicken. depends on what we have on hand most of the time!]


• 1 cup sour cream


• 2 cups crushed Ritz crackers


• 3 tablespoons melted butter or margarine [margarine kind of makes the crackers soggy, but it's up to you!]


• 1 heaping tablespoon poppy seeds

The How-to:

• Put chicken in the bottom of a casserole dish


• Mix soup & sour cream; spread over the chicken


• Combine crackers, poppy seeds, and melted butter in a zip lock and mix


• Spread cracker mixture over the sour cream & soup


• Cover & freeze!

On Cooking Day:

• Thaw


• Bake at 375 degrees [uncovered] for 30 minutes

May 2010 OAMC: Spicing Things Up!

C helped me with OAMC this weekend! It was wonderful to not be alone in the kitchen all day. Happy Saturday to me! We only had 16 meals to make and I grossly miscalculated how much chicken we already had, and so we're left with an extra Costco bag for next month. True to form, I definitely modified almost every recipe from the cookbooks I told you about in my plan. So stay tuned for my version of these delicious freezer meals!

We made:

• 2 Barbecue Chicken Sandwiches* [Homemade BBQ sauce that made our mouths water every time we opened the crock pot to stir it. YUM!]


• 2 Chicken-Asparagus Pot Pies [More on this later.]


• 2 Poppyseed Chicken [YES. C's favorite dish gone freezer style. I was giddy when I figured out this could be frozen!]


• 2 Italian Chicken Rolls*


• 2 Cheese Mushroom Burgers* [Really excited to try different combinations of fillings for these! Jalapenos are next on our list!]


• 3 Lemon Chicken Marinades*


• 2 Souvlaki Marinated Skewers


• 1 Buffalo Chicken Pizza*


• Homemade Refried Beans*


• Homemade Baked Beans


• Lemon-Dill Rice Mixes*


• and 20 Whole Wheat Brown Bag Burros

We finished in just a couple hours so we decided to go ahead and make up the salsas we'd planned for Sunday. Holy Cow they're INCREDIBLE. We like things spicy! These salsas are about a 5 on a 1-8 scale. [The book's scale, not mine. Who makes a scale up to 8? Really.]

• Tomatillo Salsa Verde


• Salsa Mexicana

Still to make:

• Blackberry Jam [Got a good recipe that uses Sure Jell? Please send it my way!]


• Strawberry Jam [These were on sale $4.44 for 5 lbs. Jam time it is!]

The [*] indicates that the recipe will be up soon! I realize that almost the whole list is marked, but the [*] is more for my own notes than anything else. I have to remember what I promise! If you see one you'd LOVE the recipe to that isn't starred, just let me know in the comments and I'll add it to the list. The starred ones are just my favorites for now. If you need more ideas for OAMC recipes, be sure to check out my recipes page!

Also, be sure to come visit later this week for a series on realistic money management and a Dave Ramsey giveaway!

Tomatillo Salsa Verde

This salsa was easy, smooth, spicy & delicious! If you've never used tomatillos before, don't stress. We hadn't either. They're right by the chilies in the produce department and cost about $1 a pound. They often have a little husk on them, but it peels off really easy. For this recipe we washed and quartered our tomatillos and then threw everything in the blender.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound tomatillos [husked, rinsed, quartered]


• 3 serrano chilies with seeds


• 3/4 cup cilantro leaves


• 2 tablespoons lime juice


• 1 teaspoon sugar


• 1 teaspoon salt

The how-to:

1. Throw everything in a blender and go for it!

We had this with taco salad on Saturday night. This salsa + sour cream made for some serious magic on top of those chips! [So much so, that C requested taco salad for dinner on Sunday night, too. Yep. It's that good.]

Freezer Cooking Menu: May 2010

Beth at Penny Pantry gave me the great idea to check out OAMC cookbooks from the library during the #oamc twitter party yesterday. I found 4, but only 2 are usable because apparently the idea of cooking for convenience is a *new* idea... Let's just say that when I'm busting out 30 meals in one shot, I'm not exactly going to have time to perfectly mold a "Layered Salmon and Cucumber Mousse" or a "Savory Chicken Cheesecake." [Do either of those even sound edible? blech.]

The two I'm trying out this month are: Girlfriends on the Go by Suzie Roberts and Betty Crocker's Do-Ahead Cookbook. I rarely follow a recipe 100% through, so if I change a recipe enough to honestly claim it as my own, I'll post it on here. Otherwise, check your local library for a copy of the book!

C requested that I prepare meals that he can grill. [You bet I can do that! Lol. I love "not having to cook!"] We're at the point where we really need to eat up the meals in our freezer, so I'm starting out with 14 meals done. I'll be making 16 dinners and some sides.

Here's what's on tap:

Dinners

• Buffalo Chicken Pizza [C's Request. And 1 of the 2 things I make better than Chef Jessica. I'm gonna hold on to that for as long as I can! Recipe to come!]


• Mushroom Cheese Burgers


• Italian Chicken Rolls


• Chicken Asparagus Pot Pies


• Barbecue Chicken Sandwiches


• Lemon Chicken


• Poppyseed Chicken


• Souvlaki Marinated Chicken Skewers

Sides

• Old-fashioned Baked Beans


• Twice Baked Potatoes


• Dill-Lemon Rice <--Dry Mix! Super excited to try this one. :)


• Whole Wheat Brown-n-Serve Rolls

Lunches

• Brown Bag Burritos [If I can con C into making his amazing refried beans. That recipe is coming too!]

Need some recipes? Check out my Recipes page!

Planning Your Freezer Cooking Day: Pt. 2

Part Two: Your Battle Strategy

Note: this will be a four part series consisting of the following. Part One: Plan Your Meals. Part Two: Your Battle Strategy. Part Three: Assemble The Troops. Part Four: Your Freezer Cooking Questions Answered! If throughout this series, you have a question, or find something I didn’t really explain too well please leave your question in the comments! I’ll be answering these questions in part four. If you’re reading this after the series has ended, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I’ll do Q&As in the future too, or if you need an answer like, now, because you’re driving to the store as we speak-which is shamefully dangerous…worse than texting…-park the car, then e-mail me at k.call.design {at} gmail {dot} com and I’ll get back with you asap!

Note #2: If you missed part 1, check it out here!

The idea of cooking 30 meals all in one go can seem a little daunting. With a little bit of [minor] planning, you can save yourself a ton of time.

Here's a few things that I learned by not doing them in the first place:

1. Leave all the meat in the refrigerator the night before. Your little microwave's defrost feature will thank you. Besides, our microwave can only handle two chicken breasts at a time. That's a lot of excess work!


2. Gather/Print/Organize ALL of your recipes. My last freezer cooking day was not the best due to my lack of organization. I kept running upstairs to get recipes off the computer. [After the first one, I realized we were out of ink, so it resulted in me scrawling recipes out and hoping nothing was burning in the kitchen. Not good.] I recommend getting every recipe together BEFORE your cooking day, making sure everything is printed and/or easily accessible and then organizing them in the order you're going to cook them.


3. Organize Your Recipes by Meat. It's a lot easier to brown all the ground beef in one go, slice up chicken in one go, etc. Plus, you don't have to worry about contaminating your cutting board. When your recipes are already in order, this will happen naturally.


4. Check for Time-Consuming Recipes! There is nothing more frustrating than flipping to the next recipe on your list and reading the words "...in the crock pot on high for 3 hours..." If you know what recipes call for a slow cooker before hand, you can set them to cook right when you start cooking then bag and freeze them when you're finishing up. [This mentality also pertains to recipes that have to bake, rise, marinade in the fridge before freezing, etc.]

This is how I do it, it's not necessarily THE way it should be done, but it definitely works for me! Only 4 steps to a quick and successful OAMC day? Trust me, the 30 minutes or less that it takes is well worth it. Do you have a quick trick that makes your OAMC day a breeze? I'd love to hear about it!

Tales From An Ill-Equipped Kitchen: Jam

One of the left-over recipes from my April OAMC day was strawberry jam. I love this recipe! C took a break from studying to help with it. It took about 30 minutes start to finish and resulted in a lot of giggling. My sister, Jessica, is in culinary school. I'm 99.9% sure this post is going to make her cringe.

Sliced Strawberries.

It was C's job to mash the berries. The recipe said to use a potato masher for best results. I'm thinking they meant the old fashioned metal mashers. I doubt they even make those anymore. Our plastic one made a good effort, but was pretty pathetic and just slopped berries over the sides of the bowl. We actually found that the pizza cutter did some serious damage. The beater was it's right-hand man and the potato masher ran the anchor leg. We did end up with a really nice puree with fruit chunks. Yum.

We combined the pectin & everything and it was time to put the jam into jars. Do we have a funnel? no. In the past, we've rolled up a piece of paper, but we figured this needed something a little more sturdy. A while back, we found sobe lifewater for free. So now we have 30 of them. We cut open one of the empty bottles, rinsed it out & voila! funnel! [We'll wait while Jessica finishes crying. Sorry, Jess. At least you know now what I need in my stocking!]

However, right tools or not, the jam is delicious! We let it set on the counter over night & I made myself a sandwich with it for lunch today. Considering the cost benefit & how easy it was [no, really. Despite everything, it was super easy!] we probably won't be buying jam again, just looking for clearance berries.

I'm sorry for the poor quality photos. I'm still trying to figure out the settings on our new-to-us camera.

Here's the recipe for those interested:

Freezer Strawberry Jam

2 pints strawberries, hulled (2 cups crushed)
4 cups sugar
1 box fruit pectin (Sure Jell)
3/4 cup water

In a large bowl, crush one cup of strawberries at a time, use a potato masher for best results. If using a food processor, pulse to a very fine chop. Do not puree. Jam should have bits of fruit.

Measure exactly 2 cups of the prepared fruit. Place into a separate bowl. Measure exactly 4 cups of sugar into another bowl. Stir sugar into prepared fruit.
Mix well.

Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. In a small saucepan stir together one box of pectin and 3/4 cup water. Pectin may start out lumpy. Bring the mixture to a boil on high heat, stirring constantly. Boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat. Stir the pectin mixture into the fruit mixture.

Stir constantly until the sugar is dissolved and no longer grainy, about 3 minutes. A few sugar crystals may remain.

Pour into prepared jars or containers, leaving a 1/2-inch space at the top for expansion during freezing. Cover with lids.

Let stand at room temperature for 24 hours.

— Source: Sure Jell recipe

Guilty as Charged: OAMC April 2010

I know I said this OAMC day was going to have to wait until next weekend, but I was so excited to try out some of my new recipes that I dragged [drug?] C to the grocery store until 1 am on on Thursday night/Friday morning and got my A game on for Saturday. Here's the final product:



I'm kind of glad I didn't do too much research before I started doing OAMC. It never occurred to me that I might need an extra freezer, or that going all out and doing 30 meals in one shot might be harder than I thought, or that there are so many different ways to organize and plan your cooking day they'll make your head spin.

I kind of just went for it. And I'm so grateful I did! Since then, I've stumbled upon blog after blog of ways to get past the "Major OAMC Hang-ups." I guess if you don't think about the hang-ups to begin with and just decide you're going to make it work, it will!

Try it. You'll never go back.

This month was the first time I tried doing anything other than the main dish for dinners. It took just as long, but I got 32 crescent rolls out of the deal too!



I've also received some questions as to what my mixes look like. To clarify, I don't open the cans and pour them in. I just keep everything together [and measure out spices/rice/etc.] so it takes about a minute to get the meal in the oven. This also saves space in the freezer and makes for a great solution for those "oh my gosh I totally forgot to thaw out dinner" days.



Final tally: 28 dinners. 2 potato casseroles. 32 dinner rolls.

Still to make: Strawberry Jam. Artichoke Dip. Bagels. Instant Oatmeal. C's also planning to do his famous, incredible refried beans so we can make some brown bag burros.

For not planning on doing this at all this weekend, I'm pretty thrilled with the results.

Have any of you tried OAMC yet? I'm happy to answer your questions!

Make Ahead Chicken Tortilla Soup

One of my favorite ways to knock out three meals for the month in about 10 minutes is to make my own mixes. This also saves freezer space, but takes the same amount of time [or less!] to prepare on cooking day.

Make Ahead Chicken Tortilla Soup

Snack Baggie 1:

• 1 cup of rice [white or brown, you pick! In an effort to be healthier, we'll be opting for brown]

Snack Baggie 2:

• 2 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules


• 2 teaspoons sugar


• 1 teaspoon lemon pepper


• 1 teaspoon dried cilantro leaves


• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder


• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 1/4 cup dried minced onion

Gallon Sized Bag:

• 1 can of chicken


• 1 can of corn (15.5 oz)


• 1 can of tomatoes and green chilis (10 oz)


• tortilla chips

The How-to:

1. Label Ziploc Bag


2. Place Can of Corn & Can of Tomatoes & Green Chilis in bottom of Gallon-Sized Ziploc


3. Put snack bags next to cans vertically-nice & snug


4. Put Can of Chicken sideways in top of bag.


5. Stuff remainder of bag with tortilla chips. Slightly crush them and zip tight!

On Cooking Day

1. Pour everything except tortilla chips into a pot with 10 cups of water. [Drain the chicken & the corn first!]


2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, & simmer for 20 minutes.


3. Throw half the chips in, remove from heat, cover for 5 minutes.


4. Serve with remaining chips.

Making this soup from scratch takes forever because you have all the spices to measure out, but if you make 3 at once... catch my drift?

Enjoy!

Freezer Cooking Menu April 2010

It's going to be a yummy month! I'm still building my freezer cooking year supply rotation, so even though I've got over two weeks worth of meals already made, we're still looking at a 30 meal Saturday.

Breakfast:

• Bagels


• Instant Oatmeal

Lunch:

• Brown Bag Burritos


• Freezer Strawberry Jam

Sides:

• Crystal's Butterhorns


• Artichoke Dip [This is a surprise for C. If you see this, love, hope you're as excited as I am!]


• Cheesy Potatoes

Dinners: [The Motherload]

• (3) Chicken Azteca


• (2) Sweet & Sour Chicken Bowls


• (3) Tamale Pie


• (2) Cream Cheese Chicken


• (2) Tortilla Soup


• (2) Lasagna


• (2) Caribbean Jerk Chicken


• (1) Stroganoff


• (3) Chicken Cordon Bleu Bake


• (1) Pork Roast


• (2) Oriental Chicken


• (2) Ranch Chicken


• (3) Lake Powell Chicken


• (2) Crab Pasta

I"m so excited to get this one underway. Since this weekend is General Conference, though, I'll have to wait until next week. What's on tap for your OAMC day?

http://amysfinerthings.com/brown-bag-burritos

Planning Your Freezer Cooking Day: Pt. 1

Part One: Plan Your Meals

Note: this will be a four part series consisting of the following. Part One: Plan Your Meals. Part Two: Your Battle Strategy. Part Three: Assemble The Troops. Part Four: Your Freezer Cooking Questions Answered! If throughout this series, you have a question, or find something I didn't really explain too well please leave your question in the comments! I'll be answering these questions in part four. If you're reading this after the series has ended, please don't hesitate to leave a comment and I'll do Q&As in the future too, or if you need an answer like, now, because you're driving to the store as we speak-which is shamefully dangerous...worse than texting...-park the car, then e-mail me at k.call.design {at} gmail {dot} com and I'll get back with you asap!

The idea of OAMC or Freezer Cooking can be a lot to take in. I remember reading about it on a number of blogs and maybe an "about" article or two before just making up my mind to try it one Saturday. I work 9-5 every day at a pretty draining job. In an effort to reduce the number of nights we eat out every month, my approach to Freezer Cooking was born.

I'm a planner. I like lists, calendars, deadlines, etc. So I pulled up a calendar in trusty Microsoft Word and went to town. Our family [of two] typically eats two chicken breasts, or 1 pound of ground beef per dinner. (Because meat is the most expensive part of our diet, we try to minimize this by having a couple side dishes every meal in addition to the main course.)

I googled "Freezer Cooking Recipes" and found this site, where the bulk of February's meals came from. Additionally, I had a couple of family favorites to include and/or modify. If I could turn the entire thing into a dry mix, I did. I placed everything into a ziploc bag and labeled it in our pantry. Otherwise, I figured out how far I could possibly prepare each meal before freezing it was no longer an option, and put that into the freezer cooking plan. If this doesn't really make sense to you, I apologize. :) heh. I'll do better!

So, using my knowledge of 2 chicken breasts per dinner, I was able to calculate how many different dishes each recipe would account for. Then, I filled the calendar with that dish, making sure that there was a good amount of time between each night we were planning on eating similar meals. I try to shake it up a little bit between chicken, ground beef, and the occasional seafood or veggie dish. It's not too difficult when you've got the entire month in front of you.

A lot of places recommend only cooking for 2 weeks at a time. If that works for you, by all means go for it! In my opinion, two weeks doesn't give you enough time between similar meals and your family might get bored with the recipes you choose. Also, I'm really REALLY tired after every freezer cooking day, and the thought of doing it every two weeks doesn't sound too great. I'm a 100% or nothing kind of girl, so I'd jump in head first and just give it a go!

You don't have to do everything the first month. Sometimes just boiling, chopping and freezing chicken is all you need to make a 45 minute meal into a 10 minute one.

My first month, I focused on main-dish dinners only. By my freezer cooking, we really didn't have anything for lunches and no snack food to speak of. Side dishes were completely absent. We didn't go hungry, but I didn't have my leftovers [that I love!] for lunch the next day.

The second month, I found ways to score snack food for next to nothing using coupons and scenarios from my fave coupon blogs. Lunches were much MUCH better.

This month, I'm figuring out how to do all of the above and adding freezable dinner rolls, homemade tortillas for frozen burritos using my husband's famous [and AMAZING] homemade re-fried beans, and various freezable side dishes. We're doing all this on the same budget as before so my couponing is going to have to be in top form. :) I'll keep you posted.

To get you started, I've created a Freezer Cooking Calendar just for you!

Click Here to Download

Note: You'll notice the option to check "extra" on each day. One of my favorite parts of freezer cooking is that while you plan for 30 meals, you rarely eat all 30 meals. Someone will invite you over for dinner, you'll have a wedding to attend, etc. The un-used meals can then be used for the next month, or in place of a night where you're "just not in the mood" for what's planned! I'm building my year supply this way, though we'll have to get a bigger freezer!

Blondies that will Knock Your Socks Off!

So, I've recently stumbled upon a Freezer Cooking recipe that is absolutely ridiculous. How often can you pull soft, delectable, chewy bar cookies out of the freezer? At our house, the answer is about once a day for 4 days. They don't last long! [Though, we don't really have any will power either. heh.]



Blondies
2 3/4 c. brown sugar
15 TB butter
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking pd.
3 c. flour
5 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. chocolate chips
1 1/2 c. walnuts

1. Combine butter and brown sugar in heavy sauce pan.


2. Cook until sugar is dissolved and mixture begins to boil remove from heat.


3. Mix butter, brown sugar, with spoon, until cool


4. Add eggs and vanilla mix on first speed


5. Sift dry ingredients.  Add to mixer. [Or for those of us without a Kitchen-Aid *sob* elbow grease it is!]


6. Add nuts and chocolate chips till combined.


7. Spread batter in greased/sprayed/floured rectangular pan.


8. Bake @350 approximately 25-30 minutes. (Jessica calls this-until GBD-golden, brown and delicious)

Note: This recipe is courtesy of Jessica McGuire, an extremely talented chef attending JWU Culinary Institute. It is also adjusted for altitudes around 7000ft, but I made it at around 4500ft. The extra butter & brown sugar are what make them chewy and wonderful even when they're cold. The only change for lower altitudes is reducing the butter a little bit, but it's up to you!

Sidenote #1: When we were down to one last bag of these blondies, C looked over at me in desperation and said, "K! Make me stop!" Then, the entire bag went down the chute. Sometimes I think willpower is over-rated.

Sidenote #2: This may be the only treat that makes it past our becoming-a-chiropractic-family lifestyle change. (More on that later.)