I love seeing how many are grabbing the Let’s Do This! Getting Ahead in Your Real Food Kitchen eCourse and {Healthy} Make Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook. It is especially great to hear how some of you are already using the techniques described in the eCourse and the recipes in the eBook to get ahead. As one person commented this morning, “Because of your course, I now already have dinner made for tonight! That’s a first for me!” Awesome. :) It’s so exciting to me to see how many of you are saving yourselves so much time and energy in your kitchen!
Today, I wanted to share an additional tip that has helped me to get ahead this week. It’s been hot at our house the past several days – too hot to bake. In fact, I’ve hardly even wanted to cook anything on the stovetop because even that heats up the kitchen on hot days. But I still found myself with about thirty minutes of time yesterday that I could work ahead in the kitchen.
So what did I do? I mixed up items that could be frozen raw and baked later. It was the perfect solution to getting ahead without heating up the kitchen!
Here’s what I made:
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (a necessity, right?)
To freeze cookie dough, simply mix up the batter and scoop it out onto a cookie sheet. Place the cookie sheet in the freezer until the cookie dough is frozen. Transfer the frozen dough to a well-labeled ziplock bag. Store in the freezer for up to two months. To bake the cookies, place the frozen balls of dough onto a baking sheet, two inches apart. Bake as directed, adding a few minutes extra baking time.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffin Batter
Here are the details you’ll want to read to learn about freezing muffin batter. On a chilly morning someday soon, I can use these frozen muffin balls to make fresh muffins without any effort!
Don’t like the hassle of rolling out and cutting out biscuits at breakfast or dinner time? Me neither (even though it really isn’t hard). I mixed up a double batch of biscuits, rolled them, cut them, and froze them on a cookie sheet. Once they were frozen, I transferred them to a freezer bag. To bake frozen biscuits: Place desired number of biscuits on a baking sheet to thaw for 30 minutes to one hour before baking. Bake as directed.
Other ideas of ways to get ahead when it’s too hot to cook/bake:
- Put together Whole Wheat Butterhorns and store them, unbaked, in the freezer.
- Grate cheese
- Prep veggies
- Make salad dressing
What else have you done to get ahead in your kitchen that doesn’t require using a stove or oven?
How has it been going for you as you’ve been
working through the eCourse and trying new recipes from the eBook?
Haven’t started yet? We’d love to have you join us!
We’ve homeschooled Asa since he began kindergarten (yesterday). We decided that now that he is a junior in high school, helping him get a few college credits under his belt while giving him some classroom experience would be ideal for him. The classes he takes at the college while he’s a high school student will serve as dual credit classes (meeting requirements for both high school and college). Sweet! Plus, as a high school student, he receives a healthy discount on one class per semester at our local college. Saving money, knocking out a few classes, starting college in two years with several credits already out of the way? It’s all good.
