I'm planning to begin baking/cooking at 10 a.m. CST sharp tomorrow and am hoping to be completely finished and have the kitchen clean by 5:30 p.m. Yes, I'm probably being a little ambitious, but that's my goal anyway!
Since I ended last Freezer Cooking Day completely worn out, I chose recipes this time which required fewer steps and prep work. I'm hoping it makes things more enjoyable and less exhausting. Only time will tell!
At any rate, here's my plan:
1. Mix up Pumpkin Pancake batter and begin baking pancakes
2. While pancakes are baking, peel and slice apples
3. Make Slab Apple Pies
4. Make Banana Bread
5. Mix biscuit dough and stromboli dough
6. Make Brown Sugar Biscuit Twists and stromboli
7. Make Sugar Cookie Dough
8. Boil Noodles, Make Muffin Mixes
9. Make Tuna Noodle Casserole
10. Make Ham and Broccoli Casserole (added this in place of the breakfast casserole)
11. Make Christmas Candy
12. Make Turkey Shepherd's Pie
13. Make Hot Cocoa Mix
14. Make Barbecue Chicken and Marinated Chicken
15. Clean up my very messy kitchen and find room for everything in my two tiny freezers
16. Put my feet up and be thankful that I'm done with most of my cooking and baking for the entire month!
Stay tuned for live-blogging and tweeting (follow me on Twitter here) tomorrow on my real-time progress complete with pictures and recipes. Don't forget to follow FishMama on her blog and Twitter or the more that 160 other women around the country who are participating in this Freezer Cooking Day and tweeting about it with the hashtag #oamc.
At the end of the day tomorrow, I'll post a final wrap-up with recipe links and a Mr. Linky so you can share your accomplishments as well, if you've been blogging about any cooking or baking you're doing this week.
See you in the kitchen tomorrow morning! For now, I'm off to get a good night's rest!
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I’m with Olathe mom – I can’t see how you can do this with the littles. You’re amazing!!
Mine are currently 4 1/2 and 1 1/2, but the little one is stll nursing, and fussing, and obviously at that age needs constant supervision. And why do they always melt down right when you’re up to your elbows in messy dough?!
How DO you do it?
woman – you are really incredible. i always see your cooking for freezer day posts and i’m amazed. you’re a huge example and inspiration. one day i REALLY do plan on getting off of my bottom and doing this =)
I didn’t write a blog post but I did have a kitchen day today :). I made a big batch of pb granola, turkey tetrazinni, beef and broccoli, pepper steak all for the freezer. I made 2 batches of candy apple jelly for us and Christmas gifts :).
Erin–along with what the Prudent Homemaker said–I test out whether or not the eggs are really spoiled by seeing if they float. If they sink, they are good. If they float they are rotten. I read that even if they stand up a bit on the bottom of the cup, they are OK, they are only rotten if they float–something about gases developing in the eggs over time–so I do use them far past the X-date if they don’t float yet!
Don’t know about egg casseroles but you could bake some breads or muffins or cookie doughs or things that use eggs and freeze them to use a good bit of your eggs!
Erin — when I make quiche, I cook it fully, cool and freeze. To re-heat I defrost it fully in the fridge and then cook covered in foil at 350 for about 30 minutes or until heated through. You could probably do the same for any egg casserole you wanted to make.
MSM — Can’t wait to see how far you get and how those strombolis turn out. I may have to make them this week myself!
Erin,
I don’t know about freezing eggs, but the American Egg Board says that eggs are good 4-5 weeks PAST their expiration date. I buy 13 dozen eggs at a time when they are on sale and then I can just wait unti lthe next sale if I use them sparingly (our family of 7 eats 18 eggs for breakfast if we have scrambled eggs). I have a designated spot in my fridge for eggs . . . .
Just a question…do you or anyone you know have a recipe or idea on how to cook eggs or an egg casserole to freeze? I have a ton of eggs and just got that buy 1 get 1 dozen free coupon, so I’d love to make up some casseroles to freeze for weekend breakfasts or to take to work!
Thanks!
what zip code are you in for the free QT? I just show the $1 off…
Quick trip has done it AGAIN with their FREE sandwich!! It is now up on http://www.coupons.com!!!!
I cooked 5 pie pumpkins for the freezer. I’m going to try making those pumpkin pancakes you linked to! A triple batch would get eaten in one morning here . . . 🙂 so I don’t think I’ll be freezing anyway.
Hi Crystal,
Noticed your tweet about the baby nursing, and that actually gave me another question. When you are not feeding, is he content to play nearby and watch? My littlest one nurses often, but also really enjoys being held (his mama enjoys that, too!). He is now at the age he is “all arms” in the sling. I am worried that by the end of a cooking day I would feel quite frazzled! Of course my son takes naps, but I wonder if you might be willing to share an honest rendition of his care along with your cooking day. It might be very inspiring to moms like me, who feel that for others this is going off without a hitch, whereas we are struggling mightily to make it work.
I have three older children who I could arrange grandma-sitting for, but the baby’s care is always something that makes me scratch my head a bit! Even knowing that your son is “fussing while you flip pancakes” might be helpful to me!! HA!
I have a question too…
You will be freezing the Christmas candy recipe you posted on the other blog?
Sounds like a great idea!
Possibly a dumb question….you said bake the pancakes; does that mean you actually cook them in the oven instead of on a griddle or something? I end up using too much oil/butter on griddle, so the baking thing sounds quite interesting
Sounds like you have a great plan. Good luck with it all. Thanks for hosting!
~Liz
When you boil and cook noodles, then freeze them, do they get mushy or rubbery when you reheat the meal you made them for?
Can you share your recipe for your brown sugar biscuit twists? I think you had it on your old blog, but I couldn’t find it on msm. Thanks so much!!!