Last weekend I had a big cooking day. I love to cook and bake, but I usually don't have time. So it's usually quick stuff, freezer meals, and crockpot cooking. Lately, I've been so tired after work I haven't even really had time to get a meal in the crockpot to cook the next day. So I spent all of last Saturday cooking, baking, and prepping food for the coming week/month. I was worried that there just wasn't enough stuff around for Justen to eat, since he can't just grab whatever. I started out the day by making him a GF cinnamon pull apart. It was a little dry but I learned my lesson, just because the recipe says you can use an angel food cake pan doesn't mean you should. All the yummy goey goodness leaked out the bottom, but it was still good. And the left overs were dry enough we cut it into slices and made Justen cinnamon french toast. Then, I made everything from gluten free granola bars (they are awesome) to a bunch of bread that we cut in thirds and freeze. I made a triple batch of GF chocolate chip cookies to freeze. Justen loves being able to bake a tray whenever he feels like cookies, and I love not having to make dough all the time. And double bonus, they are amazing frozen. I even took the heels of the old bread and crumbled up to make gluten free bread crumbs. I never throw old gluten free bread out, I always dry it, put it through the food processor and then freeze the crumbs. I suppose I could buy them, but $8 for a box of bread crumbs seems pretty ridiculous. I also tried something new! I got the idea online and hunted down a bunch of recipes that sounded tasty. Crockpot freezer meals! Who would have thought. Now I don't even have to have the energy at night. Some nights I get home and even the effort it takes to thaw and heat a freezer meal feels like to much, so these are perfect. I can just grab one out, microwave for a few min, to thaw enough to get out of the bag, and in the pot it goes. Five min. of effort before work and we have dinner that night. The other great thing is that it is so much faster than regular freezer meals where things have to be pre-cooked. I was able to make 10 meals in 2 hours plus a half hour for clean up. That's not bad at all! 8 went in the freezer, one got cooked for dinner, and one got put in the fridge for dinner the next day. So this round I made, Honey Rosemary Chicken, Orange Chicken, Beef Stew, Cilantro Lime Chicken w/corn and black beans. The fresh meals we ate were the Cilantro lime chicken and Beef stew, and they were both great! I also discovered my new favorite thing. I usually try not to use to terribly many disposable products but this one is so AWESOME that I'm making an exception, Crockpot liners! Sure they've existed for years but I just discovered them. I LOVE them. So here's a few pics from my major cooking weekend:
And just for fun, I thought I'd include a picture of how I organize all my freezer meals. This is my small upright freezer in the house. The top three shelves, with the exception of a little meat on the very top, are freezer meals. I do have another large upright and a chest freezer in the garage where we put our meat, you know half a beef, a lamb or two, and I usually buy 20-40 lbs of chicken at a time. So all of that, plus our big storage of fruits, vegi's, and jam is actually out there. This freezer just houses stuff we may need to grab on a daily basis (and all my freezer meals) and then gets restocked from the outside freezers as needed.
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