Money Saving Mom®

I’m back to freezer cooking and it feels SO good! It’s amazing the difference it makes when someone asks, “What is there to eat?” and I can list off options that are in the freezer!

On Thursday afternoon, I made 5 different recipes:

• Homemade Energy Bites
• Homemade Biscuits
• Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins
• Carrot Cake Waffles
• Homemade Chicken Nuggets

Here’s a little peek into how it all went down:

I started the afternoon by unloading the dishwasher and hopping on Facebook Live to give everyone there a rundown on my plan and show my pre-freezer-cooking kitchen that was all clean.

I found that doing live videos motivated me to make sure I kept the kitchen clean during the freezer cooking session. I always need this kind of motivation because stopping to clean up as I go is not really my first choice. But it makes such a difference at the end.

You can watch my Freezer Cooking video here to see a peek into my kitchen, if you’re interested.

I started off the Freezer Cooking session by making Homemade Energy Bites. This is one of those recipes that we’ve made over and over and over again and it’s family favorite.

It’s so easy to make, these are so versatile, and everyone loves them! Plus, not only are they a great snack, but they even suffice as breakfast in a pinch! 🙂

I almost didn’t make these, because as I was getting ready to make them, I realized that we didn’t have any honey — which is kind of a staple ingredient in this recipe! 🙂

I put on my thinking cap and rummaged through the cupboards and refrigerator and decided to try subbing maple syrup for the honey. It made the Energy Bites a little stickier and I ended up adding a little flour to the recipe, but it worked!

For those of you who might be interested, as you can see in the photos above, I set up my tripod and did a quick live video while finishing up making these. It was my first attempt at actually “cooking” while being on live video and I was happy with how it went.

We also had a funny conversation on the video about how I only have two kinds of looks — the dressed up look or the completely dressed down look — and I answered questions about why I was wearing a nice shirt to cook in. 🙂 Watch the video here, if you’re interested.

After I finished the Homemade Energy Bites, I then moved on to making Homemade Biscuits. I use the recipe from the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook — one of my very favorite basic cookbooks in existence and a cookbook I think every cook needs to own!

I accidentally mostly melted the butter, so instead of making cut-out biscuits, I made drop biscuits. They may not have looked as pretty, but they tasted just as delicious!

Next up, I made the Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins. This was a new-to-me recipe and I was anxious to see how they turned out.

I used some of the marked down yogurt I got recently for the Greek yogurt the recipe called for. Mostly because that was all the yogurt we had, but also because I did not like the lime flavoring of these yogurts and was trying to use them up!

This recipe is made in the blender — which made it super easy! However, I also noticed that since the batter was a little thick, it got warmed up because of having to blend it for a few minutes on high.

This meant, that when I added in the chocolate chips, they melted somewhat due to the warmed up batter. It gave a sort of swirled look to the muffins — which was different than I was expecting.

Honestly, I might be weird, but I prefer chocolate chunks in my muffins to chocolate swirls, so I thought that was a drawback to this recipe.

The biscuits were delicious (of course I had to “taste-test” one warm from the oven!), but the Banana Muffins were a bit of a let-down. I think it’s because they are gluten-free and the flour in them is oat flour. It just isn’t as fluffy and yummy as it would be with regular flour.

Oh well. Not all recipes can be homeruns, right? And if you’re gluten-free, it’s definitely a pretty good recipe to try.

Next, I made the Carrot Cake Waffles. I devoted a whole post to these because this was the surprising favorite of the Freezer Cooking Day.

If you’re looking for a new twist on waffles, have some extra carrots to use up, or are looking for ways to sneak more veggies into recipes, go try this recipe! All my family really loved it!

And finally, I made Homemade Chicken Nuggets. (Can you believe it was my first time to make Chicken Nuggets?)

These were easy and quick to make, but I think that next time around, I won’t bother to cut them in chunks. My family would like them just as well if I just sprinkled all the ingredients on top and coated chicken tenderloins and baked them.

If you’re interested, you can watch my quick video here — complete with spilled muffin batter on my shirt! — where I show you all of the finished recipes!

I Need Your Feedback!

I’d love to hear from you! If you followed me along for this Freezer Cooking Day, could you give me your honest feedback? Did you like me posting on Snapchat and Facebook Live? What would you like to see more of? How would like for me to blog/post about these Freezer Cooking Days?

I’d love to hear your feedback and input and suggestions. So much has changed in social media since when I was regularly live-blogging my Freezer Cooking and I’m trying to determine the best way to conduct these sessions so that it’s fairly simple for me, but also fun and inspiring for you all. Let me know in the comments!