Freezer Cooking

Happy Saturday Everyone!

I took a little over 4 hours today to do some freezer, nibble and nosh cooking.  We had some produce from our CSA that needed to be used or preserved.  There were also some partial packages of this and that in the fridge that needed to used before they had to be wasted. 

Here's what I made today:

Pimento Cheese Spread

This is a roasted red pepper cheese spread for those that have never heard of pimento cheese spread.  It's great on burgers, prepared like a grilled cheese or one of my favorites served with some crackers and fruit.  I'll post the recipe in a few days.

Tzatziki Sauce (or Greek cucumber dressing)

This was/is an experiment.  We had a lot of cucumbers begging to be used.  We have canned quite a few pickles.  We eat gyros often and never seem to have any cucumbers to make Tzatziki sauce.  I read up on this and you are supposed to be able to freeze this for later use.  I took several recipes and created this one, which has become our favorite. 

 Once we use this I will update on how well it turned out.

1 lb of Greek yogurt

4 cups of peeled, diced cucumbers

 1 T dill

1/4 t of garlic powder

1/4 t of onion powder

2 t of lemon juice

black pepper to taste

Mix everything together and chill before serving, allowing flavors to meld.

Freeze in family portion sizes in freezer bags. (I got 4 bags out of this)

*If you are making this to use the night made, you can use sour cream in a pinch, but not for freezing.

Italian Bread x2

This was not the best day to attempt bread.  The humidity here was awful, we had rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine and yet more rain. It resulted in my bread not rising as much as it should have.

  I will post this recipe soon.  It's a great bread machine recipe.

Nestle Chocolate Chip Cookies x 4 dozen

My camera ate the picture of these.  Go figure.

I baked 1.5 dozen of them and froze the remainder of the dough for later

Homemade Spaghetti / Pizza Sauce x 2

Another my camera ate the picture of this. 

I used 4 leftover Italian Sausage Meatballs I foraged in the freezer, fresh CSA tomatoes, frozen tomatoes from last CSA season, fresh garlic, mushrooms and tomato paste,

a pinch of this, a dash of that.. 

The end result was magnificent.  I froze this in freezer bags for use later.

CIAO!

Amy