Baking Day

The Results of Wednesday’s Freezer Cooking In An Hour Session

by Crystal on June 3, 2011

I didn’t accomplish as much on Wednesday as I have on previous weeks’ Freezer-Cooking-In-An-Hour sessions. But it probably didn’t help that we ate up most of the Banana Chocolate Chip Bread and the Whole Wheat Chocolate Pancakes before they ever made it to the freezer — or in the picture I took!

Next week, I think I’ll try making something without chocolate and see if it lasts longer than a few hours.

At any rate, here’s what I made in a little over an hour on Wednesday:

Whole-Wheat Chocolate Pancakes (only half made it into the picture; they were that good!)

Banana Chocolate Chip Bread (again, almost half the loaf was gone by the time I got a picture taken!)

Two bags of cooked rice/wild rice

Three bags of cooked barley

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Freezer Cooking in an Hour: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, French Toast Casserole, Marinated Chicken and Waffles

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by Crystal on May 12, 2011

After deciding that this wasn’t the season of life for me to be doing big marathon freezer cooking sessions, I’ve been trying to figure out what might work for me and how I can streamline cooking and dinners around here.

I love having stuff in the freezer to pull out and use. I love not having to worry about making dinner every night of the week. And I love not having to do as many dishes. But I don’t love the upheaval the mega freezer cooking sessions were creating nor the massive mess and exhaustion that always seemed to result now that I have three children underfoot.

So I’m experimenting with another alternative… something I’m calling “Freezer Cooking in an Hour”. Basically, I’m going to set aside one hour one afternoon a week during Silas’ nap time to do as much cooking ahead as I can. And I’m bringing you all along on the ride with me to see how this goes.

Here’s what I did in an hour (plus a little extra!) yesterday:

3:00 — Start mixing up Pumpkin Waffle Batter. I “cheated” and used a mix I’d gotten for Christmas. I had set out some frozen milk the night before to use.

3:10 — Waffle batter finished and started waffles on the waffle iron. Realized I still had a few cups of milk left. Decided to make some French Toast Casseroles with the clearanced bread I’d gotten at Aldi plus the extra milk.

3:30 — Three French Bread Casseroles made and stuck in the oven, the pile of waffles continued to grow and I moved onto making the Marinated Chicken.

Uh-oh, Silas is up from his nap. I set the children all around the table with my laptop to watch Mary Poppins and dive back into freezer cooking.

3:45 — Chicken is finished and in the freezer, waffle batter is all cooked up, time to start on the Whole-Wheat Chocolate Chip cookies. But wait, someone needs a drink. And a snack. Silas needs a diaper change…

4:00 — So much for finishing in an hour! The children are back to their places at the table. I mix the cookie dough and roll it into balls.

4:20 — Finally finished! Well, except for the kitchen. I tidy up, have the children go out to play and survey my accomplishments:

3 pans of French Toast Casserole

4 meals’ worth of Marinated Chicken

3 dozen Whole-Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls

Double batch of waffles (Half were eaten for snack. Sigh. How much are these children going to eat when they get a little bigger?!)

Not bad for an hour and 20 minutes!

And truth be told, I think giving myself a shorter time frame encouraged me to really focus and be efficient and productive. I’m looking forward to testing this theory out during my Freezer Cooking in an Hour segments over the next few weeks. Perhaps this method of cooking ahead might be the perfect solution for this time in our lives! We’ll see…

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Freezer Cooking Day: You mean I was actually supposed to cook something?!

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by Crystal on February 2, 2010

I have a big confession to make: I sort of flaked on you on the whole Freezer Cooking thing.

I have a whole lot of excuse cards I could whip out: my 8-month-old is cutting 4 teeth (bless his heart!); I’ve been battling a infection in my mouth which got really bad this weekend and was almost debilitating (I’m on the mend now–thanks to a great doctor!–but ouch!); and this whole switching servers and changing from Typepad to WordPress has been a bear (Gratefully, I have some amazing tech people working me on it–like FiveJs!–or my site would be permanently broken and maimed!).

I had visions of all these delicious meals I was going to make, wonderful pictures I was going to take, and well-crafted blog posts I was going to write, but it just didn’t happen.

Instead, you’ll just have to suffice for no picture and a small list of what I was able to get done over the past three days:

3 meal’s worth of Barbecued Beef

5 Chicken and Dressing casseroles (This is a new recipe and I reworked the recipe so majorly because the original wasn’t turning out as I’d hoped so I’m not even sure how to replicate. I wasn’t too impressed with the final result, but my husband LOVED it. I was happy about that considering he has to eat it four more times!)

2 bags of cooked chopped chicken (Having the meat already cooked and chopped makes preparing Homemade Pizza a complete snap. I can have it in the oven in 15 minutes or less!)

4 meal’s worth of Marinated Chicken

So all totaled, we have enough for 14 dinners–which is actually not too bad considering I only cooked for about 2 1/2 hours total! And I have the ingredients on hand to make about 8 other main dishes for this month (I was supposed to make some Cheeseburger Meatloaves and homemade Macaroni and Cheese but I never got around to it!), so I think that’ll probably last us the whole month through!

And next month around, I hope to do a much better job of cooking and blogging about it.

Have you entered the Freezer Cooking Day giveaways yet? If not, they end tonight and you’ll definitely want to put your name in the hat to win one of three great items to help you in the kitchen! Head over to LifeasMOM to enter.

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Did you have a chance to do any baking or cooking this week? If so, post about it on your blog and leave your link below to your direct blog post. I’d love it especially if you could share pictures and recipes so we can get ideas for our next Freezer Cooking Day! And I’m guessing many others would be inspired as well.