Back to Freezer Cooking

Wow, it's been awhile, hasn't it?  Well, I'm not going to promise another post soon, but I wanted to share my latest batch of freezer cooking with you.  I tried some new things this go 'round.

1.  I froze mashed potatoes.  Some people say "Yes! Freeze mashed potatoes," and some people say, "No! Don't freeze mashed potatoes."  So, I tried it myself and it worked just fine.  (Oh, and by "mashed potatoes" I technically mean "whipped potatoes."  Mashed potatoes, whipped potatoes...I guess that's for another blog post.)

2.  In the spirit of decluttering my house this year and not wanting to spend all of next month's grocery budget on freezer cooking, I tried to find recipes to use what I had on hand.  Bring on the wild rice and lentils!  I found a recipe for Lentil and Wild Rice Loaf.  We ate it the other day, and you know what?  It was delicious!  And the bummer, oh, I should know better than this--I didn't follow the recipe and I didn't write it down!   AHHH!  But, what I think I did was replace the basil with 1T Montreal Steak Seasoning.

3.  And the reason I had Montreal Steak Seasoning on hand is for this recipe.  This is a rice and lentil replacement for ground beef, veggie crumbles, or textured vegetable protein.  Much cheaper, much healthier.  Again, I was quite impressed.  So far, I've only made it into taco "meat," but it worked great and we're big fans of "Mexican" style food around here!  Next up, I'll try it in spaghetti...



Until next time....

Happy Cooking

Filling the Freezer

One of the thing I love about OAMC cooking, is at the end of the day, something productive got done!  You know, instead of those days when everything is falling apart at the end of the day and you can't even name one productive thing that was physically accomplished.  None of that with cooking day!  You can lay out all your goods at the end of the day and see with your own eyes what was accomplished.  Love it!

Recently, my mom came to visit, so we took advantage of the extra pair of hands and spent a day filling the freezer.  We even got just a bit of prep time the day before.  Mom watched the kids and my husband and I worked in the kitchen.  He makes fabulous muffins!  The baby enjoyed some time in my sling and other times sat with Grandma.  Of course, I took breaks to nurse him too.

So, here's what we got done:  one pan of homemade granola, a double batch of oatmeal pancakes, two meals of enchilada bake, two meals of vegetarian crustless pot pie (this was an experiment), three meals of refried black beans and Spanish rice (to put in tortillas or whatever), a quadruple batch of "Balls," 6 batches of waffles, 8 meals worth of vegan burgers, 8 meals worth of soup, and almost a gross of muffins!

The freezer is FULL!