Remember my Cooking and Baking Marathon last month? Encouraged by Jessica and Crystal, I’m at it again (although this time my list is quite a bit shorter).

Based on many emails and comments I receive regarding your desire to eat healthier foods…I’m convinced that more of you would take the plunge if preparing healthy food was more convenient for you. So, I’m working hard to figure out more healthy meals and treats that can be prepared ahead of time, frozen, and pulled out to eat in a hurry. Scroll through these posts to read through the ideas and recipes I currently have on my site.

Hey, as nice as it may sound that I’m doing this for you…really and truly my family and I are the ones benefiting. ALL the food I made and froze a few weeks ago has been SO nice to have on hand on days we have places to go and people to see. I actually STILL have Pizza Pockets, Cheesy Beef and Rice, Beef and Cheese Burritos and Whole Wheat and Honey Zucchini Bread  in the freezer from the last Cooking/Baking Marathon. I also have three bags of Chicken Fried Steak Strips made up and ready to cook up quickly! 

My favorite benefit of having convenience foods in the freezer is how it helps with the challenge of trying to get school work done and feed hungry boys at the same time. Ready-to-heat-up healthy lunches have been WONDERFUL to have on hand!!

So…Here’s my new list of freezer foods to try:

• Mini Apple Pies  (These are now done and in the freezer already. The boys LOVED these!)

• Pre-made Turkey Sausage Patties  (Now that I know that it’s okay to thaw and refreeze raw meat one time…I’m going to make up several batches of this sausage to make for some easy breakfasts/lunches.)

• Breakfast Burritos  (I make lunch type burritos…why not make some sausage-egg-cheese burritos while I’m working up the sausage?)

• Whole Wheat Tortillas  (Okay, these aren’t new for me to try, but if I’m going to make burritos…I’ll need to make a batch or two of tortillas. Also, it’s ALWAYS nice to have extra tortillas on hand for quesadillas – especially these Melting Snowflakes this time of year! Therefore, I’ll probably go a little Tortilla Crazy and make four or five batches of these awesome tasting tortillas this weekend.)

Beyond these foods…I’m planning on making Peanut Butter to have in the fridge for next week. (If you haven’t ever made homemade peanut butter, you HAVE to try it and see how EASY and DELICIOUS it is!!). 

I’m also going to keep working on making homemade ketchup. I’m still not entirely pleased with the recipe I’ve come up with…which, if you have been wondering, is why I haven’t shared it yet! I’m still tweaking. And tasting. And tweaking some more.

I’ll share with you early next week how the weekend of cooking and preparing went!

Are you doing any cooking/baking this weekend?

We’re gonna talk about flash freezing Chicken Fried Steak Strips. This is fantastic!

Right after I posted my Chicken Fried Steak Strip recipe last week, I ran into my friend Brenda. Always, after a visit with her I’m usually wishing I would have brought a notebook and pen to take notes. This girl knows stuff. Brenda doesn’t have a blog…so I get to share the stuff I learn from Brenda on mine. Then I get to look smart. Cool. For the record, I have several more “Brenda Tips” for you…most of them involving potatoes. (You’re intrigued aren’t you?)  I’ll share them with you as soon as I get a round tuit.

So here’s the tip Brenda shared with me about the Chicken Fried Steak Strips:

When you get cubed steak on sale (or when you buy several packages of cube steak from a farmer, like I do) make them all up into strips at one time, bread them, flash freeze them, then fry them as needed.

I love this tip, but my first question to Brenda was, “WAIT!  I can’t thaw and refreeze raw meat, can I?” I mean, that’s what my mama always told me.

Nope, Brenda said. That’s an old wive’s tale. (Hey, are you calling my mama an old wife? Just kidding.)  Thawing and refreezing raw meat is okay and it is safe, and Brenda, who’s done it time and again was alive and well and able to stand there in the church foyer telling me about it.

Well, if I’d have known that, I would have been flash freezing these Chicken Fried Steak Strips a long time ago, along with Chicken Strips and Nuggets and Popcorn Chicken. Funny that I never knew WHY it wasn’t safe…I just thought it wasn’t. Makes me wonder what else I’ve been believing to be true that really isn’t. (Is there any chance dusting isn’t necessary? My mama told me it was, but if anyone wants to tell me that it really isn’t important…)

It just so happens that I had a meat order delivered to my door the VERY morning after I had that conversation with Brenda…and it included five packages of cube steak.

Flash Freezing Chicken Fried Steak Strips

I got my big bowl of flour mixture and a big bowl of milk and got very busy making a big mess. See, that’s the point. If you’re going to make a big mess when you’re making these strips, you might as well make a big mess all at once and save yourself the trouble later! Love it!

I cut each cube steak into three pieces then started double and triple dipping.

I laid the breaded strips all out on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper,
then put them in the freezer overnight.

The next morning, I popped them off the cookie sheets and into gallon sized freezer bags. Yay! Now I have five batches of Chicken Fried Steak Strips ready to cook up for quick meals. One mess…five meals!  Thanks Brenda!

So, what have you all heard about refreezing raw meat? Am I the last to know this information?

I did it. Everything on the list…I got it done. By Friday late afternoon, I started to feel completely wiped out and didn’t think I could do it. Then I remembered that I needed to eat something.  Somehow because I’d been in the kitchen all day around food, my brain figured I had already eaten dinner even though I hadn’t. After I ate, I got a second wind and checked several more items off the list. Saturday I finished up and well…I’m still alive and able to tell about it.

Let’s start with a few picture highlights shall we?

Here we have a box of frozen meat, butter and fruit. As I took this picture, one of the boys asked me if I was making a movie of the meat. I said, no of course not, because making a movie of frozen meat would just be weird. Taking a still picture? That’s not weird at all.

 Here was the result of round one of cooking/baking. I made the Chocolate Chip Cookies into bars to save time. I browned up all eight pounds of the ground venison and beef at the same time. We sliced into some of the Strawberry Bread because how could we not? The Corn Dog Muffins turned out ugly with all of their hot dogs exposed. The Cheesy Beef and Rice, Lasagna Casserole and Beefy Enchilada Bake went together easily. And that bowl with the cloth? That’s Whole Wheat Tortillas soaking for burritos.

This is a picture of what I got done Friday night after I got my second wind. I already had the meat browned, so I cooked my beans and put some of the meat into a jar of chili. I stirred up three jars worth of Sloppy Joes. I stuck Graham Crackers into the oven. Then I made my Tortillas and finished up a big pan of Meat and Cheese Burritos. I was happy to have leftover tortillas for quesadillas. I put everything away and staggered up to bed.

Saturday, I baked Zucchini Bread and Honey Whole Wheat bread. One of those loaves up there was made into Cinnamon Swirl Bread. Oh dear…which one is it? Last but not least, I put together Pizza Pockets and one batch of Popcorn Chicken.

Based on the assumption that you may have several questions for me about how I did all of this…I took the liberty to interview myself. 

Me:  How long did it take you to make all of this stuff?

Me again:  I started on Friday afternoon about 1:00 and cooked/baked/wash dishes until 9:30 that night (with a two hour break to run a couple of errands and feed the boys). Then, I started Saturday morning again around 9:00 and finished the last of the list around 3:00. 

Me:  What were your boys doing the whole time you were working in the kitchen?

Me again:  You mean besides asking me 34 times each if they could eat all the food I was making? Well, I had a list of several house cleaning chores I needed them to do, which they did ever so cheerfully and whistling whilest they worked. Yeah. Beyond that, both days we had extra kids here to play…so they all spent hours running through the house shooting nerf guns and playing hide and seek and making lego movies and eating the food I actually let them eat. Remember, my kids are five, eight, nine and twelve…I don’t think I could have pulled all this off in two days with littler ones.

Me:  When you put all the food into the freezer, how’d you do it? Have any cool storage tips?

Me again:  You mean besides standing on my head with my foot in the freezer trying to hold the frozen hamburger in while I stuffed one last loaf of zucchini bread in before everything fell out? I first tried Amy’s/Tammy’s frozen casserole method…except that I used parchment paper and it didn’t work very well. I then just resorted to using up most of my pyrex casserole dishes with lids. Matt surprised me with these for Christmas, so I had plenty.

I used freezer bags for the quick breads and cookies. Also, for the popcorn chicken, burritos and pizza pockets…I flash froze them on cookie sheets, them transfered them to freezer bags to save space.

Me:  How long will all of this food last you?

Me again:   Hard to tell. We’ll be eating quite a few of these items this week, since we have quite a few activities that will require warming up a quick meal before we leave or as soon as we get home. I’d really like to just leave a couple of the casseroles and loaves of quick bread in the freezer for a time when I’m in desperate need for a quick meal. Plus, it’s nice to have items like this on hand for a time when company comes over unexpectedly or when I need to take a meal to someone else.

With the amount of time it took me to make the food I made this weekend…and the amount of food my family can consume in one week…I can’t IMAGINE trying to pull off the OAMC (once a month cooking). Maybe I just don’t know enough about it, but trying to cook the majority of our meals for one entire month within a couple of days time…I think I’d pass out cold. 

Me:  How would you rate your bulk cooking/baking experience overall, 10 being the best?

Me again:  I’d give it an eight. I mostly loved it. It was a VERY productive two days and I actually feel like I got ahead a little bit. One thing I struggled with during this whole thing:  I have a tendency to be very task-oriented. I get into “get-it-done” mode and forget to stop and smile at my children and husband and say nice things because “oh my word, I have so much to get done so don’t bother me”. I caught myself doing that and had to make a real conscious effort to remember that my “to-do-list” was just a “try-to-list” not a “have-to-list”. 

Me:  So, did you actually get around to experimenting with homemade Catch-Up (ketchup) ?!

Me again:  Why yes as a matter of fact I did. Would you like to hear about it sometime?
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Be sure to check out the Once a Month Cooking Festival at Moms in Need of Mercy.

I’ve been needing to do this for months. 

The problem with trying to get ahead is that before you can get ahead, you have to catch up first. But I’ve been behind, so trying to catch up has been tough, which means that getting ahead has just been a far off dream.

Oh, and that reminds me that I’ve really been wanting to experiment with making my own catch up (or ketchup or however you want to spell it). Maybe once I’ve figured out how to make homemade catch up I will feel caught up?

Is this anything like getting a round tuit?

Is this conversation making anyone else tired, or is it just me?

So here’s my point:  This weekend I’m going to attempt to get ahead in the kitchen. The idea has been in the back of my mind for weeks now and I truly love having big cooking marathons. Once I saw that Crystal and Jessica were challenging others to join them in their Freezer Cooking Days, I decided that caught up or not, I was going to try to get ahead.

I really want to put some food in the fridge and freezer to make our school days easier. Oh, and the snacking. Lately I have felt like there are not nearly enough “easy to grab” snacks available. 

This weekend I plan to let the house fall down around me while I make a huge mess in my kitchen. Actually, I plan to have my boys clean the rest of the house while I make a big mess in the kitchen. They don’t know that yet. But I have a list for them, oh yes I do.

Here’s my list for this weekend:

• Cheesy Beef and Rice (x2)
• Beefy Enchilada Bake
• Sloppy Joe Meat (x2)
• Corn Dog Muffins
• Chili
• Popcorn Chicken (x 2 ready to rewarm for quick lunches)
• Beef and Cheese Burritos (x 2)
• Lasagna Casserole
• Homemade Pizza Pockets
• Cinnamon Swirl Bread (2 loaves + 2 regular loaves of Honey Whole Wheat Bread)
• Whole Wheat Tortillas (x 4 – some for burritos and some to have on hand for quesadillas and tostadas)
• Chocolate Chip Cookies (3 batches for upcoming church activities)
• Whole Wheat Graham Crackers
• Strawberry Bread (x2)
• Whole Wheat and Honey Zucchini Bread (x2)

And now forgive me while I think out loud about some of the things I need to do before I can pull off this big “cooking ahead weekend”. I’d spare you, but it needs to be done and since Matt and I have very limited conversation time these days I hesitate to use up our precious minutes to tell him how much hamburger I need to thaw for my burritos. 

• Thaw five pounds of ground beef.
• Thaw three pounds of ground venison.
• Thaw a package of hot dogs.
• Grind flour for baked goods.
• Thaw strawberries for bread.
• Thaw zucchini for bread
• Thaw two pounds of butter for cookies and tortillas.
• Thaw two pounds of cheese for burritos, pizza pockets and casseroles.
• Soak beans for chili.
• What am I forgetting?
• Hey did you fall asleep?

That’s okay…that was a boring list. But it was helpful to me, so thank you for putting up with it.

Okay, well I’m pretty excited about getting all of this done! Think I can pull it off? I’ll share a report and pictures on Monday to show how it went! 

Want me to have the boys take a picture of all the flour that will be in my hair?

Oh, and after all of this…if I’m still standing upright…I REALLY AM going to try to make homemade catch up….ketchup. Maybe?