Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Homemade Frozen Dinners Are Da Bomb!

These days I'm all about saving time in the kitchen. I had Thanksgiving AND Christmas Eve dinner at my house last year and since then I have barely been in the kitchen. My husband can vouch for that. Having dinner at my house has become a tradition (three years running) and I love it. Everyone in comfortable here and I really don't mind all the cooking. But after it's all done, I don't want to set foot in the kitchen for a couple of months. Then I was hit with a great idea: Frozen Dinners. This was my thought process: I puree and freeze Sakura's food every week, I can do the same with our dinners! Logical, right? I don't think you can do this with all dinners, for example, frozen rice. I have tried a few things with great success.

Pesto is very easy to make!
I usually get the urge to cook every now and then and have the energy to cook two meals at a time. So while I'm in the mood, I make it count. I make a meal we'll eat that night and another meal to freeze. So one night I make rice, beans and chicken breast AND supper sloppy joes. When the rice and beans were done, out came the sloppy joes. I didn't cook the whole week. Next I tried a simple beef stew recipe and it tasted exactly the same as the day it went in the freezer. Just defrost and put it over white rice or mashed potatoes. The most recent meal I've done was basil pesto. Easiest recipe ever: fresh basil, garlic, salt, pepper, Parmesan or asiago cheese, oil and walnuts. Blend till creamy and done. I love pesto sauce because you can use it in many recipes; chicken and pasta, caprese salad, chicken enchiladas, on top of pizza, smear on bread and toast a little, in scrambled eggs, on steak, and in mash potatoes. I'm sure you can come up with a few more things.
Frozen pesto and beef stew

Bottom line is that dinner doesn't have to take hours to make. Find a few quick recipes that are freezable and once it's made just sit back and relax.

3 comments:

  1. Didn't I tell you this a few years ago?? LOL ;-) Glad to see you've started to enjoy cooking. As for rice, the quickest and best method for rice is getting the frozen brown rice in the steamer bags. I think bird's eye makes it?? Brown rice takes like 40 mins to cook...this takes like 90 seconds. Then I had all the beans, veggies, spices, etc. to it. Makes things so much faster/easier! Some meals are very special and you want to take a long time cooking them. Other meals can be simple/fast and still be yummy and healthy for the whole family :-)

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  2. Yes, I'm learning the hard way. I come from a family that makes everything from scratch. They buy the dry beans in the bag. I don't have time for that. So, I need to find new ways of making dinner. Frozen rice, huh? I'll have to check that out!

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