Last month I posted my
introduction to how we eat, and eat well, without using boxed dinners or
depending on the drive-thru.
If you have two adults working
outside the home 40+ hours a week, it’s tough to get nutritious meals on the
table. If you have two adults working INSIDE the home, it’s tough to get
nutritious meals on the table. Single parent? Forget it. Let’s be real –
schedules are crazy for everyone. Kids and adults are all involved in lots of
activities, volunteer opportunities, full-time jobs, part-time jobs, the list
goes on…
Preparation is one of three keys
to getting real food, real fast, on the table. Next is using your freezer to
the MAX!
When I am planning meals, I
always consider if I can plan for leftovers and if those leftovers can be
frozen. If it can’t, that recipe likely won’t make it on the list. Most foods
can be frozen, but there are certainly some that don’t do so well like lettuce,
cucumbers, raw potatoes, and egg whites/meringues. There are others, but I have
faith that you know how to use Google.
This might
sound like a repeat from last month, but it still holds true for my freezing
technique: When cooking proteins such as whole roasts in the slow cooker or
ground meat in the skillet, I make sure that I prepare at least two meals worth of the protein. I hate doing dishes, so
the more I cook at once, the more time and effort I can save doing dishes and
preparing the meal for round 2 (or 3, or 4). My skillet can cook up to 4 pounds
of ground meat at a time. Our local grocery store will periodically put ground
beef on sale, but only if you buy it in 3+ pound packages. Since our kids don’t
eat like teenagers (yet), 3 pounds is a little excessive for one meal. I used
to split the packages when I got home and vacuum seal them. No more – I just
cook it all (likely adding some chopped onion near the end of the cook time),
drain, and then divide the cooked meat into one pound servings (2 cups of
cooked ground meat is about 1 pound pre-cooked weight). Frozen oooked ground meat
thaws quickly, so you can easily throw together spaghetti or tacos even if you
forgot to defrost the meat in the fridge overnight.Do you buy a package of onions because they are cheaper…but then they start growing before you have a chance to use them? Save yourself time and money by dicing up several of them at once. Spread them on a cookie sheet and freeze until solid. Scoop them into freezer bags and use them as needed – minus the tears! This same technique works for bell peppers, too. I like using these frozen onions and peppers on pizza night since we only need it on one side of the pizza. The kids haven’t discovered non-boring pizza yet. We’ll get there someday.
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| Freezer Friendly Twice-Baked Potatoes |
