Freezer Cooking- Homemade Gravy

photo credit

I love gravy. When given the chance I slather everything on my plate in it, which is why I would say Thanksgiving is one of my favorite food eating holidays.

Now here is the thing, I absolutely refuse to buy the canned/bottled gravy from the grocery store. It tastes okay I guess but I don't like the ingredients and really try to stay away from processed food. This doesn't mean that I slave away over the stove every time I want to have gravy with a meal, it just means that I do a little freezer cooking so I always have some on hand!

This recipe for Make Ahead Gravy is my absolute favorite. It tastes really good and as the name implies  it can be made ahead of time and can even be frozen. Not only is it a good (and easy to make) recipe- it is also pretty frugal too!

When I made it yesterday I used some chicken legs that had been in my freezer for a long time (you can use the meat after making the gravy), homemade chicken stock (made from chicken carcasses and odds and ends veggies) and I didn't have any fresh carrots so I used frozen ones. Everything else is just stuff that you would normally have on hand in your pantry. The recipe makes about eight cups of deliciousness, so you do the math on how much cheaper it is to make your own gravy instead of buying the stuff from the store. Here is a hint: you come out way ahead making your own!

Any recipe that saves me money and is healthy/wholesome is a keeper in my book!

Freezer Cooking- Bean and Rice Burritos

The chili I made a couple of weeks ago is gone so I needed to make something else for my lunches.

To keep up the spicy theme, I decided to make bean and rice burritos. They are really good and freeze well- and gosh darn it, I suppose they could even be considered healthy!

First, I made a batch of homemade refried beans. Let me tell you something- refried beans from a can are total crap and have the taste to match. If you want some real refried beans that are utterly delicious then you need to make your own. I used dry beans for mine because they are cheaper and way more healthy that canned beans.

Once the beans were done cooking and mashed up into perfection, I popped them onto some whole wheat tortillas along with some brown rice I seasoned with chili powder, cumin and paprika and rolled those babies up.

I only yielded six burritos from my cooking session as I ran out of tortillas (my 3 year old has been snacking on them) but if I had more I could have made at least four more burritos. These will make a great quick lunch for me and are a great small portions size.

Tomorrow I hope to make a huge batch of waffles for the freezer- I will just have to keep the kids away because they literally try to scarf them down as fast as I can make them!

Kitchen Stuff...

Yesterday my daughter and I made a batch of waffles while my son was at school and the baby was sleeping. I only made one batch as this was a new recipe and there is nothing more annoying than making a triple batch of something only to find out that it tastes terrible. Well, the waffles were a huge hit and the one batch we made was gone by this morning.

Now, the recipe is not what I would necessarily call healthy but I am not one to tinker with a recipe until I know the original works. Now that I know my kids love the waffles, I am going to experiment with adding whole wheat flour and somehow cutting back on the butter. Maybe this will be a project for next week... I do have tons of flour in the pantry just waiting to be mixed up into deliciousness!

I also made meatloaf yesterday. I prepared the loaf earlier in the day when it was less hectic and then just popped it into the oven for an hour. Let me tell you- yum, yum, yum! This was a new recipe and it was perfect! The next time I make it I will definitely make a couple more for the freezer- the only thing that I would change about the recipe is to saute the onions to soften them before adding them to the mix.

I am really digging this whole menu planning and freezer cooking thing- I feel like I am getting back to the mom I used to be. Yes, it takes more time but it is so worth it! Plus, it is a great way to spend time with Alli (who is 3.5 years old) because she loves to put on her apron and help out. When I get my freezer full I know that I will start seeing the time savings and cost savings, but more importantly I know that my family will be eating wholesome food.

On Sunday I am planning on making burritos that can be frozen for me to eat for lunch. I did not have any canned refried beans so I decided to make my own- I only got as far as soaking and cooking the beans today but on Sunday I'll be able to follow this recipe. Then I'll add some brown rice, lots of spicy seasonings and whole wheat tortillas and have myself some yummy lunches!

Big Batch O' Waffles

Today my son had no school because of parent-teacher conferences so no dragging three kids out of the house at 8:20 am for me (yeah!).

I had a terrible nights sleep because Jilly Billy has turned anti-crib but managed to still drag my butt out of bed a 7 am, mostly due to the fact that my kids were moaning that they were starving to death.

Something came over me and I decided to make a big old batch of waffles. I used this recipe which I've used before but this time I didn't make them dairy free but I did use half unbleached flour and half white whole wheat flour. I doubled it so that I would have lots to freeze for mornings where I'm not feeling so Martha Stewart like (which seems to be almost every morning).

Yeah for cooking huge amounts of stuff and then freezing it!

Homemade Bean and Rice Burritos

I have been obsessed with burritos lately. First I was buying the cheap fifty cent ones at Stop and Shop but then realized there must be a reason why they only cost fifty cents so I started buying $1.79 ones at Whole Foods. They are delicious but a little expensive so I decided to make my own.

I made my burritos with brown rice, homemade refried beans, flour tortillas and lots of chili powder, onions and cumin. I based my recipe very loosely on this one, as in I completely abandoned the recipe and just started pouring spices into the pan (I love spicy food- love, love, love).

How did they turn out? I think they are very good. I overcooked the refried beans a bit so next time I will make sure they aren't as dry. On the opposite end of the spectrum I undercooked the brown rice so it was a tad crunchy so next time I will not be oblivious to the fact that I need to taste it to make sure it's cooked right before using it in a recipe. I think I may buy whole wheat tortillas next time to pump up the health factor and maybe I'll get crazy and add some corn.

I made six decent sized burritos which if bought from Whole Foods would have cost $10.74. From my estimations (don't hold me to this because I am not one for figuring out food costs) I spent about $4 on ingredients for a monetary saving of almost $7. The time it took to make this was not bad at all and I know next time it will take even less time as I sort of know what I'm doing now. It's also nice knowing exactly what is in the food I'm eating so that counts for something in the algorithm of making versus buying.

Meatloaf That Actually Tastes Good!

photo credit

When I did my freezer cooking I knew that I wanted to make meatloaf. I absolutely love meatloaf and especially love it when it is cold out with some homemade mashed potatoes on the side.

Usually when I make meatloaf I just throw a bunch of stuff together and cross my fingers that it will come out somewhat decent but this time, since I was making three pans of meatloaf, I wanted to use a real recipe. I found this one on All Recipes (I love All Recipes for easy to make recipes and Cook's Illustrated for more labor intensive special recipes).

I followed all of the directions exactly except for a few minor changes. First, I decided to soak the bread cubes in the milk before mixing them into the other ingredients. Why soak the bread, you may ask? Well, soaking the bread makes the meatloaf more moist- especially helpful when you are using lean meat in your recipe (I used 90% ground beef). This also holds true for hamburgers, meatballs, etc. The next thing I did a bit differently was that I sauteed the chopped onions in butter until they were softened. I did this because my family likes the taste of onions but not actual onions. By softening them I was able to make sure that by the time the meatloaf was done cooking that the onions would be fully cooked through and not at all crunchy therefore giving us the taste and not the texture of onions. Lastly, instead of the glaze that the recipe called for (I am just not into ketchup on top of meatloaf) I used brown gravy (not made from scratch- I used one of those seasoning packets because I am lazy and because it was cheaper than the canned gravy).

When I mixed up the ingredients I got a little (okay, a lot) worried about the amount of mustard that was called for because my husband is not a mustard person (I on the other hand could drink mustard out of the bottle I love it so much). But don't worry, once the meatloaf is cooked you can barely taste any mustard- the ingredients just seem to meld together into something very tasty.

I'm not sure how everyone else makes meatloaf to freeze, but I did not cook mine before freezing- I just mixed up all of the ingredients, put into loaf pans and froze. The only thing that my picky self will eat that has been cooked and then frozen are meatballs. Anything else would cause me to throw up. Picky? Yes, yes I am.

Both my husband and I really liked this recipe, which is good because I have two more in the freezer and I would have literally started crying if tasted like crap. The meatloaf came out moist and had a wonderful flavor. My kids did not touch it but that is because at the moment they are adverse to anything with ground beef- I wonder where they get their pickiness from?

I guess what I am saying after all of this senseless babbling is that this recipe is a keeper. No more dry, tasteless meatloaf for me!

Freezer Cooking

Between yesterday and today I did some freezer cooking in preparation for the baby's arrival (only one week away!).

I ended up making three pans of lasagna (one was eaten last night for dinner), one pan of stuffed shells, three pans of meatloaf (one will be eaten tonight for dinner) and three pounds of meatballs.

It really doesn't seem like much now that I look at this picture but I was so tired today and yesterday after all of that cooking! For all of you who do those marathon freezer cooking sessions I really look up to you! Hopefully these meals will make my life just a little bit easy once the baby is here and will make it so we won't have to get any last minute take out because I was too tired to make dinner.

I think I may make some pumpkin bread tomorrow to freeze but I'll have to see how I am feeling because right now I just want to lay on the couch with my feet up, but we all know that won't be happening! Too much to do and too little time to do it. I hate being such a total procrastinator...