Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Stuffing the Freezer

Well, after a luxurious 13 months of maternity leave (well, ok, 11 months of luxury and 2 months of babysitting craziness), I returned to work this week.  I leave the house with the little guy at 8am, and we get home at 5:15pm.  He goes to bed at 6:30pm (right now, at least - we're gearing up for that upcoming time-change!) - which leaves us precious little time to get supper prepared and on the table before bed time!  My husband is self employed and is often working with clients until 6pm, so getting him to make supper doesn't work so well, either.

This is why, last week, I started stuffing our 2 little freezers with prepared foods that will make dinner time just a little bit less hectic.  I thought I'd share some of my ideas for those of you who are interested in doing the same!  I've heard of the concept of Once a Month Cooking, and I've even attempted it twice, and trust me - the month following is so fantastic - but A) I just don't have the freezer space for that right now and B) it's much harder to devote a full day or two to preparing those meals when you've got a little one pulling at your pant legs competing for your attention (read: screaming).

There's a great, sorta sketchy store in Hamilton called Farmer Al's Food Market where the produce isn't fantastic and the dry goods have several months' worth of dust on them but the meat products are fresh and cheap.  When bought in 10lb bags, lean ground beef is $1.59/lb.  I was going to take a photo to show you what 10lbs of ground beef in a bag looks like but you really don't want to see that.  It's really gross.  I also caught a sale where the chicken legs were on for around $1/lb, and their sausages are always a WAY better price than in the grocery store.  All of that to say, I bought 20lbs of lean ground beef, 4 packs of sausages, and a bunch of chicken legs.

With 1 10lb bag of meatloaf, I mixed up (in 3-4lb batches in my KitchenAid Mixer) 7 decent sized meatloaves.  I could have cooked them before they went into the freezer - this would have drastically cut down on the cooking time day-of for serving, but I love meatloaf fresh out of the oven, so I'll just plan to take the meatloaf out of the freezer and put it in the fridge the night before so that when we get home we can put it thawed into the oven.  This is the recipe that I used, and I hope that it's good - because my freezer is full of them!

I divided the second 10lb bag in half, and fried it up in my soup pan.  I also picked up 6lbs of onions at Farmer Al's for $0.69, so I took half of the onions and 'diced' them with my mandolin - wow does that ever cut down on the tear factor of onions!  In the first batch of gb, I threw in the onions, cooked the gb through, and drained the grease periodically (it's really quite amazing just how much grease is in even lean gb when you're cooking 5lbs!).  I transferred it to a large bowl to cool, and cooked the second batch with more onions.  After the beef finished cooking and the grease was drained, I added about 1/3 cup of taco seasoning that I had picked up from the Bulk Barn.  If you've got more time to spare for your prep, you can visit this site to learn how to make your own taco seasoning!  I added about 1/2 c water, and let the mix simmer for about 30 minutes, then transferred to a bowl to cool.  While the taco meat was cooling, I bagged the plain cooked gb into 3 roughly equal portions in some Ziplock sandwhich baggies, labeled them "UNSEASONED" with a permanent marker, and threw them into the freezer.  Once the taco meat was cooled I did the same, though I labeled them "TACO", just to make things clear. ;)  Tip: take a wide mouthed mug from your cupboard, place the baggie inside, and turn the top to wrap around the rim of the mug.  This will help you fill the bags without spilling.
With all of this cooked meat in the freezer, I will be able to quickly put together the following, for example:
I decided that I would use this recipe for my chicken legs: "Crock Pot Super Garlic Chicken Legs".  I put the legs into a large Ziplock freezer bag, then added the olive oil and the spices.  Once I zipped it shut, I shook it around, labeled the bag, and tossed it into the freezer.  The night before I cook them, I'll take them out, put them in the fridge to thaw (it's not a good idea to put frozen chicken into the slow cooker!), and before I head to work in the morning, toss the chicken and the rest of the ingredients in the slow cooker!
 If you're interested in getting into Once a Month Cooking, here's a link to the Frugal Mom's Guide to Once a Month Cooking - 2 ebook cookbooks with simple, straightforward recipes! 
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