Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Two Simple Ways to Get Ahead in the Kitchen

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It may be apparent after you read this post that somebody got a little bit wheat grinder happy this week, thoroughly enjoying a small portion of the 300 pounds of hard white wheat that had been delivered. (You can read all my posts involving grain and grinding grain here, in case you’re interested in reading about my grainy obsession.)

I couldn’t help myself. After being sick myself and taking care of a family of sickies for the past four weeks (that influenza stuff is a BEAR), to have energy again and healthy children with appetites is truly delightful. I’ve been spending extra time in the kitchen, trying to make up for lost time it would seem. I loved every minute of it.

Okay, maybe not the dirty dishes part.

Dirty dishes aside (and really – I shouldn’t complain about the blessing of having so many people to dirty up dishes at my house), I loved being able to bake and cook a little extra this week in order to have healthy convenience foods in my freezer. Two things occurred to me as I was participating in this mad flour grinding, recipe mixing up, dough kneading, cooking ahead extravaganza this week, and I would like to share them with you.

Here are two of the simplest ways I’ve found to get ahead in the kitchen:

1. Cook or bake just one extra thing each day, if at all possible.  This might mean that you brown up several pounds of hamburger to have on hand for an easy casserole, tacos, sloppy joes, etc. Or it might be that you whip up some snacks to have on hand for the kids. Or maybe you could cook up some brown rice to have for simple meal prep the next day. It doesn’t have to be complicated or time consuming. But if you happen to be home and have a few extra moments during the day, utilize it for cooking up a little something extra to make for convenience on those days you barely have time to cook at all because you’re running around crazy-like. 

2.  If you’re mixing up one batch, you might as well mix up two (or three) batches.  You’re already making a mess. You’re already getting out the needed ingredients. Why not double or triple up the recipe and make plenty of extra of whatever it is you’re making, then put the leftovers in the freezer for a busy day. I love doing this with Whole Wheat Waffles, Easy Lasagnas, Muffins…whatever freezes well and reheats easily.

Here are just a few pictures of the food items I made this week in my efforts to get ahead. Let me clarify something though:  Not every week is this productive for me in the kitchen. I happened to be home most of the week without many outside engagements, allowing me to really focus on teaching my kids and working in the kitchen. Now I  have several quick foods in the freezer to easily warm up on those days where we’re running to ball games and practices, or dentist appointments or any other event that makes it difficult to spend time cooking.


Chocolate Chip Cookies and Easy Lasagnas

Honey Whole Wheat Bread (x2)

Whole Wheat Waffles (x2)

Homemade Whole Wheat Rolls (recipe found in Heavenly Homemaker’s Guide to Holiday Hospitality)

Whole Wheat Tortillas (x4)

Meat and Cheese Burritos

Sloppy Cornbread Muffins

Banana Muffins (x2)

Whole Wheat Vanilla Wafers (x2)

What did my kids do while I was doing this extra cooking? Most of the time, they were sitting in the kitchen with me, doing their school work. They also spent a fair amount of time playing with a huge box, shooting things, and eating the food I was making. 

What did my dust and clutter do while I was doing all this extra cooking? Let’s not talk about it.

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Freezer Cooking For July Wrap up

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Well now, here we are…many, many days after my original post telling you about how I was going to cook and bake to get ahead in the kitchen for July. I’m sure you were waiting on pins and needles to hear how it all went.

Want to know my husband’s reaction when he saw my list? First let me say that usually when Matt sees my cooking-ahead lists, he gets excited about the food in his future. This time however, since I was working so frantically on finishing the curriculum kit, he looked at the list, then he looked gently up at me (beautiful, haggard me…with hair drooping pitifully into my face and contact lenses strewn about the table) and said not so confidently, “Really?”

I smiled weakly and said uh-huh, because we still needed to eat and occasionally I wanted to take a break from the computer, you know? What better therapy after being on the computer for hours than being able to go into the kitchen to cook? 

Lest you look at these pictures and think I am really cool for getting all this done…do be made well aware that all of this took me no less than NINE days. I did not do it all at once. I did not do it very quickly. I just cooked a little extra each day when I was making our regular meals. And now, we have some lovely convenience food in the freezer. 

And let’s all do appreciate the fact that having these lovely cooking breaks in between writing did much for my sanity. 

Oh, and the children and husband also appreciated my sanity being provided with something to eat.

Take note that I did not get everything done on my list. However, I added a few things to the list so it all balances out.

I cooked a whole chicken, made broth from the bones and the whole nine yards, but I must have forgotten to take a picture. Forgive the lack of poultry pictured below.

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I made some butterscotch bars for a reunion. And for breakfast that day, I made applesauce bread into applesauce cake. Note to self:  applesauce bread makes good applesauce cake and a fun breakfast treat. Just spread bread batter into a buttered 9×13 inch pan and bake at 350° for 35 minutes or so.

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I mixed up chocolate chip cookies, but instead of baking them, I just froze scoops of dough. Now, I can bake a few at a time as needed. Check out the red stained parchment paper. That was from freezing strawberries last month. I like to reuse parchment paper. The kids thought the cookies were bleeding, but that’s just because they’re boys and they like to think of gross things.

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I made a batch of breakfast cookies one night, froze half of them and we ate the other half for breakfast the next day. Sorry about the poor quality of that picture. That happens late at night.

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One day I got a whole bunch accomplished:  frozen chicken fried steak strips, tortillas for burritos…

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There are the finished bean/cheese burritos. With tortillas leftover. I love it when tortillas are leftover.

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Another day I made a batch of buns. 
Here’s your chance to say:  “Wow Laura…nice buns.”

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I made ice cream one evening and we ate it for dinner. That’s it. We just had ice cream for dinner. But it was this recipe and I felt like we were having quite a nutritious dinner. Minus any vegetables. It’s okay, we had green beans for breakfast Wednesday so that made up for it. We’re weird, aren’t we?

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Somewhere in there I made a jar of peanut butter.

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These weren’t on the list, but I was making lasagna casserole one night, so instead of one, I made three. Didn’t take any longer and now I have two in the freezer!

Now, as we approach August…I’ll probably just continue to make and freeze food as much as I can. August is very full with school starting, the garden exploding with food to preserve and soccer season begins again.

Bring on the freezer food.

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Freezer Cooking for July

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Um, first let me say that it felt very weird typing “July” just now. Really? July already? Weird.

Anyway, Freezer Cooking for July.

I’ll be doing a little extra cooking this week to try to stock pile some grab and eat foods.

Here’s a list of food I’m hoping to make and freeze (or eat) during the next few days:

It may take me a few days to get all of these foods made up. I just so happen to be in the middle of a huge, very big, gigantic, enormous project that I hope many of you will find interesting. If, that is, I EVER in my long leg-ged life get it finished! Matt is helping me. The boys are helping me. I’ve been getting very little else done but hours and hours of sitting at the computer…

I’m excited to tell you about it within the next few days if I can at least get one more tiny (big) thing finished enough to show you. 

But let’s just say that having some of the above foods prepared ahead would be a good idea so that as I’m working away on the computer, the boys have something besides watermelon chunks or bread crumbs to eat. 

Anyone care to take a guess about what I might be working on? I’ve mentioned it here before, but it’s been a while.  ;)

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Freezer Cooking for June

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Here’s a picture from our freezer cooking day in April!

The Problem:  I am out of town visiting family. (Visiting family is not a problem. I’m lovin’ it. But it is a little bit hard to make frozen meals when you’re several hours away from your kitchen and your freezer.)
The Other Problem:  My freezer is full of frozen meat. (Wait, frozen meat is not a problem either – it’s a blessing.)
The Actual Problem:  The only thing in my freezer was frozen meat…we’d eaten up all of our frozen, homemade healthy convenience items.
The Additional Problem:  If I’d waited to make freezer meals until after I got home from my trip, there would have been nothing for my husband to eat while we were gone, plus nothing for me to feed the boys once we got back while I was trying to catch up on twenty-eight loads of laundry.

The Solution:  Make the freezer food before the trip!

Ah, and so that is what I did. I took a few days last week to make up some healthy convenience foods for the freezer. Matt has been eating on it while we’ve been out of town, and when I get home, there will be easy-to-warm-up food in the freezer to make life easier for me while I recover from being away from home.

This was my to-do list:

Check back in a few days and I’ll share how my cooking attempts went. Also, I plan to address the question many of you have asked:  “Laura – are you in the kitchen ALL the time?!”

:)

One of my sponsors, Old Fashioned Homemaking has a wonderful,
helpful post about Freezing Meals Ahead for the Beginner. Be sure to check it out!

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Freezer Cooking Diary of the Week

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I’m gonna just admit to you that I bit off more than I could chew this week (so pardon me while I type with my mouth full).

This was not a good week for me to try to make extra food. This would have been a good week for me to HAVE extra food in my freezer ready to pull out and warm up quickly. But what did I do? I cooked extra food. In the midst of running around like a funky chicken taking my kids to soccer and musical practices…putting the final touches on all of our LTC projects…preparing for a short trip…working on costumes…going on a field trip…sorting through spring/summer clothing…and doing school work.

WHAT was I thinking?

I think I was thinking that having extra food on hand in the coming weeks will be very handy, and I’m right…it will be very handy. But I’m whipped.

I am NOT whining. No ma’am. I’m just saying that maybe next time I should make a better judgment call on when I should do extra cooking. 

And also, I’m letting you know that every single room of my house looks like a bomb went off. There were apparently separate bombs for every room and some bombs were larger than others and had a flying clothing effect.

Ah, but at least I have lots of prepared food in my freezer now, eh?

Here’s a run down of the week:

Sunday night I started a pan of beans to soak and mixed up a double batch of tortillas to soak overnight.

Monday morning before schooltime, I started cooking beans and rolling out tortillas. I put together the Bean and Cheese Burritos and got them into the freezer by noon. I then mixed up a double batch of dough for Homemade Pizza Pockets and Beefy Enchilada Bake to soak. I also made a batch of Homemade Ice Cream for the Ice Cream Experiment. That was it for Monday.

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Tuesday was the biggest cooking day as the only extra thing we had going on was one soccer practice.

I got five pounds of meat cooking before breakfast. Once I got the kids started on their math and other individual work, I mixed up a double batch of Corn Dog Muffins and got those into the oven.

The meat was then finished browning, so I stirred up three pounds of Sloppy Joes and put them into jars for the freezer. The remaining two pounds of hamburger helped make up two big pans of Beefy Enchilada Bake.

I then set about putting together Homemade Pizza Pockets and Mini Apple Pies. I had to take a break somewhere in there and feed us all lunch. Everyone was disappointed that we weren’t having pizza pockets and apple pie for lunch. (Ah, but what they didn’t know what that I had secretly stuck a big apple pie in the oven for later!)

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Here’s a look at a very adorable five year old, along with the finished
Beefy Enchilada Bakes, Homemade Pizza Pockets, Corn Dog Muffins and Sloppy Joes.

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And here’s a closer-up picture of the food…but without the five year old..
so this picture may not be as fun to look at.

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Finally, I got the Mini Apple Pies finished and put into the freezer. 
Those will make a wonderful breakfast some morning soon!

I finished Tuesday off by mixing up a double batch of Giant Breakfast Cookies to soak for the next day.

Wednesday I spent the morning baking Giant Breakfast Cookies. While each round of cookies was in the oven baking, I’d go tackle some homework help or spring clothes sorting.

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I took some time to shake up some Ranch  Dressing Mix, Italian Dressing Mixand Taco Seasoning Mix. I LOVE having these mixes ready for when I need to make dressing or dip or tacos or…all the other things I use making these mixes.

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And there you go. I didn’t quite finish everything on my list, but that’s okay! I think we will be using many of these convenience foods next week while we CLEAN UP the war zone that is our house. 

Has anyone seen my broom?

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Freezer Cooking Plan for April

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Crystal and Jessica are at it again, working to inspire all of us to save time and money by preparing some foods in advance with an April Freezer Cooking Day.

This is going to be especially important for me to do right now with all four boys being involved in our home school musical in April. Plus spring soccer season is just about to come into my life at full force. Meal times are likely to be rushed many nights this month as we head out to practices, games and rehearsals. 

Therefore, I must be organized. I must plan ahead. I must put some ready to grab food in the freezer. I must not panic.

Ugh, but I must make four animal costumes in the next 3 weeks. 

Okay, I can do this. I have a plan (for the cooking, not for the costumes). Do you want to hear about it?

Each day this week, I’ll be making a little extra food to freeze. By the end of the week, I should have all kinds of food in the freezer to keep me from panicking while I attach black spots to white sweat pants so that I can make my eight year old look like a dalmatian puppy. 

Here’s what I’ll be working on:

Giant Breakfast Cookies x 2

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Mini Apple Pies

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Beefy Enchilada Bake x2

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Bean and Cheese Burritos

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Corn Dog Muffins x 2

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Homemade Pizza Pockets x 2

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Sloppy Joes x 3

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Here’s what I need to do to prep:

In addition, I’d like to also prepare the following to simplify my life:

I’ll post the results of my efforts (again, for the cooking, not the costumes) at the end of the week!

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