Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

How to Make Frozen Hashbrown Patties

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Homemade Hashbrown Patties

I always get my best ideas from you, my adorable readers. A few weeks ago, Camilla left a comment on my Homemade Hashbrowns post asking, “How would I do this if I wanted to make frozen patties?” I left a reply, telling her what I would suggest, then I promptly hollered at my boys to start scrubbing potatoes. What a fantastic idea – to make hashbrowns ahead of time in the shape of patties so that all we have to do is pull them out and fry them up!

25 consumed Hashbrown Patties and 72 frozen Hashbrown Patties later, here I am to share all the fun details with you! This idea is a great one – plus it’s easier than you would think. Don’t you love it when delicious, healthy, and easy all make it into the same sentence?

How to Make Frozen Hashbrown PattiesYum

1. Scrub and bake as many potatoes as you like. We fill a big roasting pot with scrubbed potatoes, cover, and bake for about an hour and a half.
2. Allow the potatoes to cool. You can even refrigerate overnight if you like.
3. Shred the cooled baked potatoes as if grating cheese.
4. Use a large cookie scoop or spoon to scoop out nice portions of shredded potatoes. Put the scoops directly into hot oil to fry OR –
5. Place the scoops of shredded potatoes onto a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet.
6. Freeze the mounds of shredded potatoes on the cookie sheets. Transfer them to a freezer bag once frozen solid.
7. Store frozen hashbrown patties in the freezer in freezer bags until ready to cook and serve.
8. To cook frozen hashbrown patties, heat palm shortening or coconut oil in a skillet or on a griddle. Do not thaw hashbrown patties. Put patties into the hot oil and fry for about 2 minutes on each side or until golden brown and as crispy as you like. Salt and serve!

How to Make Frozen Hashbrown Patties

Do you love this idea?! Let’s hear it for another great freezer cooking idea to help us get ahead!

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The Plan ~ Getting Ready For Freezer Cooking, Week Two

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Are you ready (to get ready) for our Freezer Cooking Challenge, week two? This time, we’ll be focusing on chicken recipes. Want to know what’s coming up after this week? I’ve updated the post which shares the challenges to come. You’ll want to check it out!

Here’s what I have planned to make next week in an effort to put chicken dishes in the freezer. Want to join me?

If you joined the challenge last week and ran out of Pyrex dishes, you’ll be glad to know that you don’t have to use any casserole dishes this week (unless you want to)! This week, you’ll just need Ziploc type freezer bags and jars. :)

The Grocery List

  • 2 whole chickens (more if you like)
  • veggies for making broth (like carrots, onions, and celery)
  • 10 pounds (give or take) boneless skinless chicken breasts
  • 1 1/2 cups ketchup (for barbecue sauce)
  • 4 cups salsa
  • 4 cups cooked black beans (or 2 cans prepared black beans)
  • 4 ounces cream cheese
  • 1 pound bacon

Miscellaneous items you’ll need:

  • minced onion
  • sea salt
  • garlic powder
  • black pepper
  • liquid smoke
  • cheese, chips, sour cream, and other nacho toppings if you plan to serve Black Bean Chicken Nachos this week
  • fruit and veggie side dishes

I’ve created a downloadable and printable grocery list for you here:  Freezer Cooking Grocery List Two

Your first assignment is simply this:

Check out the recipes above and purchase all needed groceries. Then, look at your schedule next week to see how you might be able to work out the following:

On Monday, we’ll start by cooking our whole chickens to make Chicken Broth. Wednesday we’ll work on Black Bean Chicken Nachos. Thursday will be our Crock Pot Barbecue Chicken Breasts day. And we’ll wrap up on Friday by making Bacon Wrapped Cream Cheese Chicken. By the end of the week, you will have fed your family very well, plus you will have a freezer full of broth, pre-cooked chicken for salads, stir-fries, and casseroles, plus packages of bbq chicken, salsa chicken, and bacon wrapped chicken for easy-to-heat-up meals!

If that particular schedule doesn’t work for you – no problem! Those are the days I’ll be blogging about my freezer cooking progress with each of those recipes, but you can certainly work at your own pace and in your own time.

Ready…go!

Don’t forget, Let’s Do This! eCourse and {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook are discounted to just $5 for the whole package. The recipes included in that package are some that we use all the time at our house to get ahead!

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How to Make Freezer Biscuits

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As with any freezer food, these freezer biscuits are going to make your life easier!

Freezer Biscuit Tutorial

Yum

My family loves biscuits and gravy. But by the time I brown sausage and make gravy, mix together biscuits, roll them, cut them out, and bake them – I end up with a very messy kitchen and a lot of time spent trying to get breakfast on the table. Therefore, I used to only make this meal on special occasions like birthdays and Father’s Day.

But now!! I have unlocked the secret to getting a meal of biscuits and gravy on the table within just a few minutes and with very little mess. My men think I’m wonderful for working so hard when they walk into the kitchen to see the delicious breakfast feast. Little do they know that making biscuits and gravy has become easier than trying to get them to see the laundry that is waiting for them to fold and put away. How can they not see it when they have to step over it to get to their room, I’d like to know. But back to the biscuits…

Making a super fast meal of biscuits and gravy is dependent on two simple tasks:

  1. Have sausage pre-made, browned, and frozen in meal-sized portions.
  2. Make biscuits ahead of time, then freeze them to pull out and bake.

If you recall, I typically make 12 pounds of Homemade Turkey Sausage at one time. It just makes sense. I’m already getting out all of the spices. I’m already dirtying a pot. Might as well just dirty a bigger pot and make a huge batch of sausage, right? Then I freeze the cooked meat in 12 quart-sized freezer bags. The night before I’m planning to make biscuits and gravy, I get out one bag of meat and put it into the fridge to thaw. Easy!

How to Make Freezer Biscuits

Now how about the biscuits? I’ve learned to mix up a triple or quadruple batch of Quick Mix Biscuits, roll and cut, then freeze the unbaked biscuits on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. One mess, lots of biscuits. So easy! Once the biscuits are frozen, I transfer them to gallon-sized freezer bags. The night before I want to bake them, I place the desired number of frozen biscuits on a baking sheet, cover them with a cloth, then let them thaw on the countertop overnight.

The next morning, all I have to do is slide the biscuits into the oven to bake while I quickly make Homemade Sausage Gravy with the pre-cooked sausage. Slice some fruit, and I’ve got a favorite, hearty meal on the table within about 15 minutes.

My family will now be enjoying biscuits and gravy more often, thanks to these quick freezer methods!

Have you tried freezing unbaked biscuits before?

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What Recharges Your Batteries?

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Hearty Chili and Whole Wheat Butterhorns for the freezer

We had been traveling for two weeks. We drove from Nebraska to California and back again. We saw friends and loved ones along the way. We waited in traffic, slowed down while car accidents were cleared away, crawled along to be careful of icy roads, and took detours. Our body clocks got messed up because of the time changes. Our digestive systems got messed up because of the fast food.

We got behind on our work. We came home to deadlines, expectations, loads and loads of laundry, and a Christmas tree that needed to be taken down and put away.

After spending an enjoyable holiday with family – I found myself being so tired upon arriving home that all I could think of was how miserable I was. I had so much catching up to do, I didn’t know where to start. I just wanted to sleep. But no matter how much I slept, I somehow couldn’t get caught up on rest. My body was exhausted. And ultimately, I didn’t have time for extra sleep. There was too much to do!

The point of this post is not to invite you to my pity party. I’ve prayed through it. I’ve caught up on sleep. I’m over it. :)

But we all have times like this don’t we? Times when we are so overwhelmed and exhausted we can hardly see straight? It’s not fun.

While I was in the “thick of the sludge” last week, at one point I groaned and wearily told Matt, “You know what I really want to do? I really just want to skip all the rest of the work I need to do and go into the kitchen and cook all day!”

Matt told me to go for it. But I whined that I “didn’t have time to take a break like that.”

Finally, once I realized that I wasn’t able to be productive anymore at the computer, I threw my hands in the air and went into the kitchen to start grinding flour. :) I then proceeded to spend the entire afternoon baking, cooking, and baking some more.

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Orange Pound Cake, following this Lemon Pound Cake recipe, subbing orange juice from our California fresh oranges!

By the time I was finished, my back was aching, my feet were tired, and my kitchen was a mess. But I felt completely refreshed, recharged, and ready to tackle my other projects once again.

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 Whole Wheat Calzones

 It’s amazing really. Sometimes when we have too much to do, we need to just step back and do something else. By doing so, we will be refreshed and ready to tackle our to-do list again.

Cooking refreshes me. I love it. And then I end up with great food to feed my family too. It’s a win-win!

What recharges your batteries? What activity do you love to do when you need a breath of fresh air? Making crafts, cleaning, cooking, something else? I can’t wait to hear!

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Freezer Cooking Time

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This post is about two weeks overdue. I started some freezer cooking before Christmas, took pictures of my progess, then never got around to posting about it. :)

During this particular freezer cooking session, I practiced the “Cook Once Eat Twice” method. If you have never tried this, you really must. It is a huge time saver!

The basic idea is this:  If you’re planning to make a recipe, if at all possible, at least double the recipe so that you can freeze the second batch for another time. I love doing this and find that it is the simplest way to get healthy foods into the freezer for quick, effortless meals in the future.

To start this freezer cooking session, I mixed up a triple batch of Whole Wheat Tortillas. In the meantime, Malachi finished the final page of first semester’s math book. He was so excited!

(Oops, I forgot to mention – before I started making the tortillas, I put several pounds of hamburger meat in a pot to brown. Okay…carry on.)

Once the tortillas and hamburger meat were finished cooking, I made two pans of Cheesy Salsa Enchiladas. Then I used the rest of the meat/salsa mixture and the remaining tortillas to make Meat and Cheese Burritos.

Once that was all finished, I made a double batch of Giant Breakfast Cookies. These are great to eat fresh, and great for freezing for future breakfasts and snacks. Even if I forget to thaw them the night before we plan to eat them, they defrost quickly in a toaster oven.

Now that our Christmas Break is coming to an end, I’m hoping to put a few more items in the freezer, such as:

I’ll update you as I get these projects tackled. :)

Have you been doing any extra cooking/freezing lately?

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Gratituesday: Freezer Food, Which Was Made to Be Eaten (A Little Post That Laura Wrote To Herself That You Are Welcome To Read If You’d Like)

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Ah, Freezer Food…

I have a blast thinking through which meals will be helpful to have on hand to pull out with a moment’s notice. I spend hours preparing it. I experiment with new recipes that will keep nicely in the freezer. I store the healthy, prepared food carefully away for the “busy days”. I keep note of it in the back of my mind, thankful that it is there in the freezer if I need it. 

And then I hoard it.  I hesitate to use it, even on busy days, knowing that there just may be an upcoming day that’s even busier when I will need that particular frozen meal. So I quickly cook something else, even if I don’t have time, saving the frozen, prepared meals for a “busier day”.

Hello, Laura?!!? Every day right now is a busy day!!! You’ve found yourself coming and going every day for the past three weeks. You’ve barely had time to sit at the computer and you are getting more and more behind on your work. Apples are coming out your ears, waiting to be made into applesauce and canned for the winter. You desperately need to go check the garden to see what else is ready to preserve. God continues to put people in your life to serve, there is school work to be done, phone calls to return, and you haven’t been able to keep up with the nasty dishes crawling out of the kitchen sink since the end of July.

Exactly what kind of busy day are you waiting for that will qualify as a “good day to pull out some freezer food”?

Um…apparently I have been waiting for the days when we are chasing ourselves off to six soccer games, or well…I don’t know. There truly will be days that are busier than those which I am experiencing right now. But barely. 

On a day when I feel overwhelmed with everything on my “must-do” list – that is the day for the Freezer Food to come out. That is what it is for, after all. 

Here’s a picture of today’s BBQ Chicken Sandwich right before I threw it at my husband
when he came home for ten minutes between soccer practices. 
Fresh tomatoes and sweet peppers from our garden made this a great meal,
all of which I put together very quickly since I utilized my frozen food stash of BBQ Chicken.

Today, I am incredibly thankful that I spent the time a few weeks ago to stock my freezer with ready-to-eat foods. And today, I hereby give myself full permission to USE THEM!

Oh, and if you were worried, I didn’t really throw the sandwich at Matt. I handed it to him carefully so as not to fling bbq sauce and tomatoes, and I even managed to slap a kiss on his cheek as he headed out the door again. 

Share how God is working in your life on your blog, then come link up with us here. If you don’t have a blog, be sure to leave a comment letting us know what you’re grateful for! Please read through the Gratituesday Guidelines so that you understand what kinds of posts you can link up to share here. Posts that are linked but do not fit our Gratituesday theme will be deleted.

If you are linking up a blog post for Gratituesday,
please copy and paste the following sentence into your post! Thanks!

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

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Cook Once, Eat Twice (or more) {Eat Healthy ~ Save Time}

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When I make a lasagna, I must cook some meat, add some sauce and spices, layer the noodles with the meat sauce and cheese, then wash a few dishes.

When I make two lasagnas, I must cook some meat, add some sauce and spices, layer the noodles with the meat sauce and cheese, then wash a few dishes.

When I made three lasagnas, I must cook some meat, add some sauce and spices, layer the noodles with the meat sauce and cheese, then wash a few dishes.

I’ve even made up to eight lasagnas at one time. Even then, my job was to (all together now…) cook some meat, add some sauce and spices, layer the noodles with the meat sauce and cheese, then wash a few dishes.

Whether I’m making one lasagna or eight, I dirty the same number of dishes while preparing the food. I take barely any extra time to make extra lasagnas, so for me, it’s a no-brainer. Why would I just make one lasagna when I can make three (or eight)?

(And by the way, I typically only make eight lasagnas at once when I’m feeding a big soccer team. While my boy-filled family does eat a lot, we are not up to eating 1.333 lasagnas each…yet.)

The same “Cook Once, Eat Twice (or More)” concept applies to almost everything I make – Cheesy Beef and Rice, Corndog Muffins, even these Whole Wheat Waffles. Scroll through all of my Make Ahead Meal posts to get some ideas and recipes that will help fill your freezer with healthy convenience foods.

You do realize what will happen though, if you start participating in this “Cook Once, Eat Twice (or More)” system? You will then have a nice supply of healthy, homemade meals to quickly pull out of your freezer and heat up for your family – with little to no effort. Putting a hearty, healthy, delicious meal on the table will become extremely easy. You will no longer be able to use the “I don’t have time to eat or cook healthy food…” excuse.

Just so you know. ;)

Have you tried the “Cook Once, Eat Twice (or More)” kitchen efficiency method? What are some of your favorite healthy foods you like to make for your freezer?

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Sloppy Cornbread Muffins

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sloppy_corn_muffins_4

Yum

I’ve decided that I love sloppy joes more than any 36 year old mama ought to love sloppy joes. (Sloppy joes aren’t just kid food, right?)  I’m a little crazy when it comes to my hamburger meat. I like it a lot. Bring on the beef.

As you may recall, this Sloppy Cornbread is a very fun way to eat Sloppy Joes without buns. Over the weekend I experimented making the Sloppy Cornbread into muffins….and YUM!

To make Sloppy Cornbread Muffins you will need:

1 recipe of Cornbread
1/4 recipe of Sloppy Joes (which is 1/2 pound of meat)

which will make 12 Sloppy Cornbread Muffins 

These freeze and reheat very well…which means you may want to use:

a double batch of Cornbread
1/2 recipe of Sloppy Joes (which is one pound of meat)

which will make 24 Sloppy Cornbread Muffins

Is this getting confusing? If you make up the full Sloppy Joe recipe, you could just make some of it into Sloppy Cornbread Muffins, then freeze the remaining Sloppy Joes mixure. Or, you could just bring it over to me and I’ll get a fork and eat it right out of the pan.

sloppycornmuffins

First fill your muffin cups half full (or half empty depending on the kind of day you’re having) with cornbread batter.

The muffins do tend to stick a little to paper muffin liners…so you may have better success just buttering each muffin cup very well.

sloppycornmuffins2

 Spoon about a Tablespoon or two of Sloppy Joe meat into each muffin cup.

Bake in a 400° oven for 20 minutes.

sloppycornmuffins3

So, what kind of day are you having? Would your muffin cups be half empty…or half full?

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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.

freezercookingapril1sm

 

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!)

freezer_cooking_april_sm

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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March Freezer Cooking Report (aka My Baggies of Food Photo Album)

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Well now, there’s just something so satisfying about seeing a bunch of prepared food in baggies, isn’t there?  Or is it just me?  

I knocked out everything on my list over the weekend. Would you care to take a look at my baggies of prepared food with me? (What, like I’m actually giving you a choice?)

Here are 20 Breakfast Burritos frozen, ready and waiting in the freezer for a busy morning…

breakfastburritos7smI practiced FishMama’s baggie-air-sucking-out technique…very cool!

And here we have about 80 little Turkey Sausage Patties prepped and waiting to be cooked up for a breakfast or lunch…

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And here is a baggie of Whole Wheat Tortillas, waiting in the fridge to be made into Melting Snowflakes  or Tuna Wraps… 

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And here are a bunch of Mini Apple Pies in baggies ready to be baked for a special breakfast sometime…

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And even though it wasn’t on the list, I had a chance to make a big batch of Whole Wheat Waffles to freeze (and pop in the toaster another day!). Oh look, I put them in a baggie and took a picture for you…

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Thank you for nodding and smiling and saying “oh very nice, Laura” and trying to stay awake while looking at my all of my baggies of food.

I also made a batch of Homemade Peanut Butter and filled up a pint sized jar. Mmmmm! Um, here’s a picture in case you’d like to see it (and because I didn’t want the peanut butter to feel left out)…

peanutbutterjar

I think my most favorite part of my food preparation weekend was mixing together six pounds of Turkey Sausage!! When I make this sausage, I have to get twelve herbs and spices out of my cupboard. That’s kind of a lot of effort.  It was WONDERFUL to get out all of those ingredients one time, then make SIX batches of the sausage.

I saved out one batch of sausage to make the Breakfast Burritos, but made the rest (five pounds worth!) into little frozen sausage patties. I am SO excited to have these convenient little sausage patties in my freezer!

turkeysausagepattiessmI just froze them on parchment paper lined cookie sheets,
then put them into two gallon sized freezer bags
(shown above, because you know you want to go look at the baggies again).

To cook them, I’ll thaw the desired number of patties on a plate overnight in the fridge, then cook them up at breakfast the next day!

Wow, who knew 80 little sausage patties and all the other above pictured baggies of food could make me feel such a sense of accomplishment.

If I feel this great after making food and putting it into baggies…just think how I will feel when I watch my children receive a high school diploma.
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You’ll find more great monthly cooking tips at Moms in Need of Mercy.

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