Freezer cooking for November

Well folks, Dr. Bob and I have been busy this past weekend prepping our freezer for the coming month.

All last week I was scouring recipe blogs looking for yummy new recipes to try.

I really liked all the recipes we made last month, but it gets old after a while.  You can find all those yummy recipes here and here.

This month we are attempting to make more of a variety (without running out of freezer containers...proving harder than we thought!)

Too make this cooking weekend possible, we did the bulk of our basic shopping at Aldi, meat shopping at Kroger, and 2 quick back-up trips to Publix and a different Kroger (ask Bob about that story, you should get a giggle!).  We ended up spending $182.48 and we got this:

So far we have made:

~ 34 turkey meatballs

~ 7 turkey burgers

~ BBQ chicken calzone (leftover BBQ chicken in the freezer for later use). Dough recipe can be found here.

~ Sloppy turkey joes - in the freezer to be used later

~ 7 or 8 individual containers of turkey chili.  I will have Dr. Bob write up this recipe some time soon.  Sooo good!

~ 4 individual containers of Corny Chicken Bake

~ 8 individual containers of a Creamy Southwestern Chicken Soup.  Basic recipe can be found here but we made some modifications:
              added diced jalapeno to onions while sauteeing, and added about 2 tsp cumin, 1 tbsp paprika, 2 
              tsp garlic powder and 1 tsp cayenne pepper.  Chicken was cooked with garlic, cumin, paprika, 
              cayenne, salt and pepper.  Added a can of black beans with the potatoes.  During the final 
              boil/cook, added about 3/4 cup shredded cheese.  Note: increased all measures (in initial recipe; 
              what's written here was as used) by 50%, to use the full 12 ounce can of evaporated milk

~ 6 individual containers of Buffalo Chicken Lasagna (Good guess Leslie!) (And thanks for the recipe Susan!)

~ 3 turkey and feta quesadilla's (more to be made this week)

~ 6 individual containers of a Deconstructed Burrito Bake: Rice mixed with salsa, can of refried beans, some taco seasoned turkey chili and cheddar cheese- layered in that order and then baked at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until heated through and cheese is melted.

~ Teriyaki seasoned chicken - this will be packed with fried rice eventually.  (Our rice cooker died yesterday so we purchased a new one today and have yet to make the rice due to football...ugh!)

~ Cheesy chicken paired with Cheesy potatoes

Still to come:
~ Pierogie lasagna
~ Fried Rice
~ Cheeseburger soup
~ Baked pumpkin ice cream glazed donuts

Here's everything ready for the freezer....look at all those containers.

That's over 40 meals ready to go for this month.  I am so excited about all of the above!  We have been taste testing it all and I can't wait to dig in!

Luckily I found more recipes than we could possibly make this month so we already have a list going for next month.

Any recommendations or suggestions to add to our list??


How was your Halloween?  Did you dress up?

Freezer Cooking ~ Part 2

Hey Kids,

Sorry Part 2 is a bit delayed. I was going to write it up yesterday but spent most of my day fighting with our cable company. They have been nothing but hassle since we moved down here. It been frustrating. But I think we are set (for the time being) so I am glad that is out of the way. So due to all of that, I figured I should hold off on writing this up until I was in a better space! :-)

Before I get into all the yummy deliciousness that took place, I will mention that I was asked to make a little something extra for my book club taking place Sunday evening. So Bob was kind enough to whip up a delicious pot of Baked Potato Soup. It never disappoints!

Alright, Sunday consisted of enchiladas, orange chicken, apple crisp, apple dumplings, the 2nd pizza of the weekend, and some buffalo baked chicken. I don't have pictures of all dishes, but I will have recipes/descriptions:

1. Enchiladas - BAM! The sauce came from, you got it, Emeril Lagasse via the Food Network and can be found here. And the recipe/how to put it all together came from Recipe Girl and can be found here. Broken record warning - obviously we used ground turkey rather than ground beef, but you can use whichever you choose. This recipe is easy and delicious.

And here is the end result:

YUM-O!

*Side note - we made a double batch of the sauce because we like it "saucy" in "The Bob's" household. We used all the sauce we wanted and froze the rest for next time.

After all the enchilada's cooled, we put some brown rice (that we steamed in our Rice Cooker) in the bottom of our storage containers and then placed 2 enchiladas on top of the rice. These were then placed in the freezer.

We used small soft tortilla which allowed us to make 14 enchiladas = 7 frozen meals.

2. Orange Chicken - This recipe came from "The Everything Healthy Slow Cooker Cookbook" (which if you are looking for some great crock pot recipes, this is the book for you!)

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons dark soy sauce

2 tablespoons spiced ginger preserves

1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

1 large orange, sliced into 1/8 inch - thick slices

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 3/4 pound)

Instructions:

1. Whisk together the soy sauce, preserves, and juice in a small bowl.

2. Arrange the orange slices along the bottom of a 4-quart slow cooker. Top with the chicken breasts. Pour the sauce over the chicken. Cook for 3 hours on low or until the chicken is thoroughly cooked.

Per Serving

Calories: 170| Fat: 2.5g| Sodium: 560mg| Carbs: 10g| Fiber: 1g| Protein: 26g

Okay so thoughts on this recipe - I will admit I was not a fan of this recipe. Try as we might, we were unable to find the spiced ginger preserves. We used sweet orange preserves which ended up making it too sweet/orange-y. Dr. Bob thought it was too orange-y as well and wished he had added some more soy sauce and a little chili or sesame oil to round out the flavors.

We will most likely not make this recipe again -- Can't be perfect all the time right?! ;-)

3. Apple crisp - I am actually going to be a tease here and not give you the recipe yet because I intend to do a post full of apple recipes (soon, I promise). I will say that it was delish and my book club members that tried it, quite enjoyed it.

*Random side note - one book club gal actually skipped over it because she thought someone put beef (yes I said beef) on top of the apples and she doesn't eat meat. First of all gross, and second of all - who would do that?! Oh well!

4. Apple dumplings - Tease againq. Stay tuned!

5. Pizza - I was informed that because we were not going out to watch the Lions (Dr. Bob's team) play, he needed some football food so he kindly requested "delicious pizza." How could I turn him down?? If you missed it on Friday, you can find the recipe here.

6. Baked Buffalo Chicken - We were looking for some other football munchy food so we cut up some chicken, pan fried/simmered it in the buffalo sauce. We dipped it in some ranch. Yum!

I would ultimately like to get chicken *on* the pizza but we always seem to cook the chicken after the pizza goes in the oven. We will get there eventually.

That sums up our afternoon of cooking this past Sunday. Quite productive. We actually could not freeze everything we made over this weekend because our 2 freezers became over filled. So we made sure to plan our meals accordingly this week.

Question:

Have you tried any of the recipes we have posted? If so, which ones?

If you haven't but want to try one - which one(s)?

Freezer Cooking ~ Part 1

We here in the "Bob's" household has been tracking our food spending the past 2 months. It was started for 2 reasons:

1. To get an idea of what our food budget should be in our new city.

2. Give us the wake up call that we often spend too much money on food when there are just 2 mouths to feed.

It has been working. I am not going to give out numbers or anything but we have had some good conversations figuring out ways to cut back on groceries, portion sizes, how often we eat out, and other changes we can make.

Now before we really start talking about the changes, we should talk about our "eating out" habits. Like many of you know, we are social beings. We like to meet people. We like to make friends. Right now we are establishing our social circles in our new city. We are feeling people out. We are seeing if we like them and we're weeding out "the crazies." Obviously we are not going to invite complete strangers to our home until we have met and vetted them. This means we have to meet people in public places and this often revolves around food. Hence our pretty big "eating out" bill the past few months (however we have become excellent deal finders for restaurants). Hopefully that will decline in the coming months as we have been making friends and starting to have people over for meals rather than always going out to eat.

Okay enough of that, onto the good stuff!

Our plan for the month of October is to pick 6 or 7 meals, make them all at the same time and then freeze them in individual sized containers so that we have meals ready to go throughout the month. We wanted a variety so that we weren't sick of eating the same thing for 5 meals in a row. We have done a similar concept in the past but we did not make such the variety. So we did a BIG grocery shopping trip Friday after Dr. Bob got out of work and then we got to work.

Part 1 took part Friday night and we made the following:

Recipe #1: Southwest Rollups. I got this recipe from Money Saving Mom who does this same concept of cooking for the freezer. She has 3 little ones so she spreads the cooking out where she tries to do an hour of cooking a day where it is purposely made for future meals. Plus her blog has a team that helps comb the web for daily deals, coupons, etc. Check her out if you have the chance.

I prepped 14 roll ups with refried beans, chicken (from a roasted chicken found in my deli section), salsa, and cheese. Super EASY recipe. I will absolutely make this recipe again however I may add a bit more chicken next time. I only used 2 cups because that is all I had left after snacking on some of it before I got started (oops! I was starving though and dinner wasn't ready yet!). Next time I will make sure to have the recommended 4 cups.

I will also remember to warm the wraps in the microwave briefly so it is easier to roll them up and I won't end up with 2 busting open (hence the ones in the container).
And I am even able to be a bit "greener" and reuse my bags that the wraps originally came in.
Recipe #2: Chicken and Rice Soup. Dr. Bob developed this recipe by taking a few recipes and melding them altogether. Here is his "off the cuff" recipe (Megg, I know you love these!)

Combine:

~ 6 cups of chicken broth;

~ 3 cups of cooked rice that has been steamed off in the rice cooker;

~ a pack of chicken that is diced, pan cooked, and seasoned (salt, pepper, oregano, garlic);

~ a cup of finely diced onion;

~ a cup of finely diced carrots;

Cook on low for about 3 hours in a cock pot. (We used a 5 quart crock pot for this recipe)

If you like your vege's soft rather than crispy combine all of the above, minus the chicken, on low for 2-3 hours. Then add chicken and keep on low for an additional 30 minutes to an hour.

Make sure to keep an eye on the soup. If the rice starts to get too soft or the broth looks too "starchy," it is time to shut the crock pot off.

Yum!

Then package in individual containers, let cool, and freeze.
Recipe #3: Homemade pizza! While all of this yummy cooking was going on we had to eat some sort of dinner.

I have been wanting to find a good pizza crust recipe for a LONG time and I have finally been successful...YAY! I got the recipe from Ready, Set, Simplify. And you can find the recipe here. It is actually from allrecipes.com. I am a fan of this site. (Hint: always make sure to read the reviews of a recipe you are going to make because they have some helpful tips on what to add, how to tweak the recipe a bit, etc).

This pizza recipe has become a BIG fan favorite quickly.
Man, I'm drooling again just looking at this picture.

So that was our Friday night. We ended up with 7 helpings of Southwest Rollups, 8 servings of soup, and a big, delicious pizza!

Stay tuned for Part 2....lots more deliciousness to come!

Homemade Baked Potato Soup

I love baked, mashed, fried, twice baked, scalloped, any kind of potatoes. So when I found out you could make it in soup form, I was all in.

(Full disclosure here - there are 2 mainstays on my bucket list: 1. drive a Zamboni and 2. pick a potato in Idaho...that is how much I love potatoes!)

This recipe comes, yet again, from The Frugal Girl and you can find it here. It is absolutely delicious.

The only change that I made was pretty obvious if you know me, we left out the bacon.

(I prefer only chicken and turkey as my proteins of choice...this dates back to early on in the high school years and I have chosen to not go back...much to the dismay of my steak loving family and my pork loving husband)

Like I said, the hubby is a BIG proponent of bacon considering his latest purchase:

The funniest part about this bacon salt that he found at a great new store we discovered (Cost Plus World Market) that it is Kosher....meaning no little piggies were harmed in the process of making this condiment. I think this is hilarious!

But he loves me and has realized that it isn't going to happen. At least not anytime soon. We have made it in the past where he will prepare bacon and add it as he makes himself a bowl but not this time. We had other cooking things in mind. (Tune in later for that)

We made a pretty decent sized batch so after the soup was cooled, we portioned them into appropriate individual sized meals and stuck 2 in the deep freezer while 4 stuck around for meals this week.

A perfect meal as the weather starts to get cooler. I know it isn't as cool as some places where you live, but it is no longer 90 degrees on a daily basis and for that, I am thankful.

Reader Questions:

How do you prefer your potatoes?

What are some of your favorite fall cooking recipes?

Quick and easy

No, this isn’t going to be a dirty post :)

The Mrs. & I were looking for something different. Pasta has been getting boring, even with some delicious homemade meatballs or amazing homemade chicken parmesan (more about those another time).

So…we had a bunch of pasta from a recent BJs trip, and picked up some chicken when it was on sale at Kroger this week. Here’s where the quick part comes in – we also picked up a small jar of pre-made pesto. This has been one of the things I’ve wanted to try to make from scratch, but I also wanted Mrs. Bob to try it first before we invested time, effort and mess in making it.

Here’s what you need:

Boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into bite size pieces

Basic spices (or my “use it in everything” spice starter)

Balsamic vinegar

Olive oil

Pasta

Pesto

Boil the pasta, like you normally would.

While the water is coming to a boil, heat about a teaspoon of olive oil in a fry pan over medium heat. Add the chicken (we did about 16 ounces of uncooked chicken – this will give you about 12 ounces of cooked chicken), making sure the pieces are broken apart. Sprinkle with spices (salt, pepper, garlic, etc.), and dribble about ½ teaspoon balsamic vinegar. Let the chicken cook, undisturbed, for a while, until the bottom is cooked and starting to brown. Flip the chicken pieces, let cook on the other side until cooked through. Stir around when it’s finishing cooking, to make sure the spices and reduced balsamic are mixed.

After you drain the pasta, heat about 2 tablespoons pesto in another fry pan, add about 4-5 ounces cooked pasta and about 3-4 ounces of cooked chicken. Stir it around a bunch, until it’s all mixed together and heated through. Remove to a bowl, sprinkle with parmesan cheese, and serve immediately.

This is a great, quick meal to make, and it is easy to measure out nicely portion-controlled servings. If you use whole wheat pasta (we usually get Barilla whole wheat at BJs), the serving size I described above (depending on the type of pesto), will be about a 450-500 calorie, very satisfying dinner.

Slow cooker madness

Woke up this morning with a desire to get stuff cleared out of the fridge. We’ve been doing a lot of shopping for things we need and stocking up on non-perishable items (just wish BJ’s was a bit closer, but oh well); this led to a drawer full of chicken in the fridge and a bunch of random stuff calling my name. So, I decided to seriously overwork our little 3 quart slow cooker.

First task – BBQ chicken. No real recipe here. Just put some BBQ sauce on the bottom of the slow cooker, add a boneless chicken breast, more sauce, more chicken, until the slow cooker was about ¾ full. I let this go on low for about 3 hours, at which point the chicken was amazingly tender and moist, even though the internal temperature was about 180 degrees. A quick shred later, back in the sauce, and finished it for another half hour.
Side note: this is going to go great with the sweet Vidalia onion coleslaw that I made.

Next up – after cleaning the slow cooker, I basically repeated the BBQ chicken, except with salsa. This is currently being made into refried bean/chicken/cheese quesadillas as I type.

Finally – after another cleaning of the slow cooker, in went 2 cans of light red kidney beans, 4 strips of cooked bacon, half cup of ketchup, quarter cup of brown sugar, half cup of maple syrup, 1 cup of water, and about 2 tablespoons of mustard. That’s cooking on high for the next four hours.

Can’t wait for tomorrow’s lunch – BBQ chicken, coleslaw and “baked” beans.

Once the slow cooker is done, I’m gonna let it rest…at least for a little while.

Simple pot roast

I love my slow-cooker. That's not to say that the biologist in me didn't get freaked out about low temperature cooking of meat for a long time, but a little research put away those fears.

After our trip to the farmers market on Saturday, I decided it was time to make a bulk meal that could last me for a while. So, pot roast it was.

Ingredients:
12-15 new potatoes (the little ones, sometimes called creamers) poked a few times with a knife
1.5 cups carrots (either baby carrots or just chop up some regular ones)
1 can tomato paste
12 oz. Guinness
1 onion, roughly sliced
Worcestershire sauce
Olive oil
Minced garlic
3.5 pound chuck roast
Salt, pepper, oregano, parsley

Heat up some oil in a large pan, and add about a tablespoon of minced garlic. When the pan is nice and hot, add the roast, and brown about 3-5 minutes on each side (depending on how thick it is.




























After you take the roast out of the pan and place it in the slow cooker, add some roughly sliced onion to the pan and cook until the onion just starts to soften. Scrape the onion and the rendered fat and olive oil into the slow cooker.






In a separate bowl, whisk together one small can of tomato paste, one 12 oz bottle of Guinness, 2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce, and a nice coating of oregano and parsley. You can also add about 1/4-1/2 cup of red wine at this point. I didn't, and wish that I did, but it's not essential. Add about a teaspoon of pepper and a half teaspoon of salt.


Add the potatoes and carrots to the slow cooker.














Pour the Guinness mixture over the meat and veggies, and add water to cover (probably about 2.5 cups).


Cook on low for about 5 to 6 hours. Check the temperature of the meat (should be about 155).

Enjoy!

Buffalo chicken almost-calzones

This morning, I found a post from Merissa at Little House on the Prairie Living on how to make ranch chicken calzones. We tweaked it some to add a little heat to it (and use cheese we already had), and also found that we aren't used to working with dough in a high-humidity environment, so rather than pretty looking calzones, we finished with more of a "Hot Pocket" type meal.

Ingredients:
3 cups of shredded chicken (we used the meat off a store-bought rotisserie chicken)
1/2 cup fat-free ranch dressing
1 cup shredded mild cheddar cheese
1/3 cup Franks hot wing sauce
1 pack of refrigerated pizza dough




Note: we picked up two packs of dough (yes, we were being lazy, but we also haven't done homemade pizza dough yet) but only used one. The original recipe called for garlic powder, but we just relied on the spice of the wing sauce.






Preheat the oven to 450.

After shredding the chicken









we added the wing sauce, cheese and ranch dressing, and mixed it all up.



Here's where it got tricky. One, we're not used to working with pre-made pizza dough. Two, we recently moved to a much more humid locale. Attempts to roll the dough nice and thin and cut perfect rounds with the biscuit cutter were quickly abandoned.

Plan B - tear off a chunk of dough, roll it as even as possible, and just go for it. Once we rolled the dough, a handful of the chicken mixture was added




and we folded the dough over and pinched it closed like an oversized pierogie.



A quick brush with some melted butter and into the oven they went for 15 minutes.



We got six really good sized pockets out of the recipe, and probably could have made them smaller if we wanted to fight with the dough more. They apparently freeze well, and can be microwaved or re-heated in the oven easily. We plan on freezing them and having them handy for a quick meal.