Freezer Cooking Sunday

It's been crazy around here with Brad and I working extra hours.

I haven't had a lot of time to do any extra cooking.

But, I have been thankful for the freezer dinners in my freezer for those nights

when there is no time to cook.

 I took a couple of hours

today to put up a bit of produce and make some bread. 

So we will call this a 2 hour cooking session.

Colby Jack Cheese Bread

makes 2 small loaves

 1 1/4 cup of milk

2 T butter, cut up

1 t honey or sugar (I used orange blossom honey)

1 1/2 t salt

1 1/4 cups Colby jack cheese shredded. Reserve 1/4 cup.

1/4 t black pepper

1/8 t garlic powder

3 3/4 cups bread flour

2 1/4 t of bread yeast

1. Add ingredients to your bread machine in order recommended.

2. Run dough on dough cycle.

3. Once cycle is complete, turn dough onto a floured surface.

4. Divide dough into 2 pieces

5. Shape into loaves and place on greased, cornmeal sprinkled pan.

6. Cover with damp cloth.

7. Let rise for 1 hour, or until doubled in size. In a warm draft free area.

8. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

9. Slash dough length wise and sprinkle with reserved 1/4 cup cheese.

10. *Optional* Sprinkle with basil, oregano or parsley.  I used parsley for color.

11. Bake 25-35 minutes or until done. 

Shelled field peas to freeze.

Froze whole tomatoes and cherry tomatoes. 

I wash them, dry them and throw them in a freezer bag for soups & stews in the winter.

How easy is that?

I also had Brad's help cooking 2 pounds of center cut bacon for breakfasts.

Ciao! Amy

Freezer Cooking Saturday

I had a lot of produce to process today.  I spent about 4 hours cooking today.

I scoured the internet looking for recipes to help me use up the produce.

I still have a few squash to use. 

Here's what I made today:

Chunky Tomato Bisque Soup

Stuffed Summer Squash

French Bread

Chopped Colored Sweet Peppers

Banana Peppers

Butter Beans (they got froze before pictures were taken)

Chunky Tomato Bisque Soup

I pulled a few things from several recipes and did the

mad scientist kitchen thing and created this. 

I left it a bit chunky instead of processing it smooth. This recipe turned out great.

Ingredients:

3-4 pounds of tomatoes peeled

(I placed them in boiling water for 30 seconds and skinned them)

2 T sugar

1/2 -1 t of oregano

1 stalk celery minced

1/2 small onion finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 T butter

Saute the garlic, onion and celery in butter until tender in a nice size pot.

Take skinned tomatoes, they will be soft, sqush with your hand

 and place in pot with veggies.

Add sugar and oregano.

Simmer for 2 hours, or until condensed down.

Bag and freeze.

When ready to eat. Thaw, add 1 cup of milk, cream, etc and heat through.

Made 2 meals worth.

Stuffed Summer Squash

I had a lot of squash to use up. This was stuffed with Homemade Italian Sausage 

that was frozen last weekend. I also added a small can of mushrooms and

some of the tomato soup that was simmering. 

They will be topped with some cheese and heated up in the oven for a quick meal.

Made 2 meals worth.

French Bread

This French Bread recipe is from the Gourmet website.

It was a little more involved than the french bread I usually make, but turned out wonderfully.

Crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. 

As you can tell there may have been some samplers in the kitchen when this came out of the oven. MMM!

Chopped Colored Peppers

We bought 9 colored peppers at Aldi.  Brad helped me chop them up for the freezer.

*Not pictured: Froze banana peppers and 2 bags of butter beans from our CSA box.

Ciao Amy ~ 

Freezer Cooking

My Freezer Cooking day was flip flopped due to things that popped up.

I still got a few things prepared with Brad's help this morning.

My plan kind of flew out the window.  Here is what I managed to get done.

Homemade Italian sausage (I'll post the recipe soon)

Chopped sweet, vidalia and purple onions for the freezer (from our CSA)

Chopped colored peppers for the freezer

2 lbs of Homemade Breakfast Sausage

French Bread

Carrot Cake

Did you do any freezer cooking this weekend?

Ciao! Amy

Homemade Pizza

My freezer cooking plan fell to the wayside today as other things popped up.  I did manage to get a couple of pizza crusts made.  One of them was dinner and the other one was par-baked and frozen for a quick nite pizza dinner on a later day. Keeping the delivery guy at bay. I have a basic Pizza Dough Recipe that I have used for years.  It's great for calzones, stromboli, pizza, cinnamon & sugar twists, etc.  Easily doubled. I make it in the bread machine on my 15 minute cycle and then bake it.

Pizza Dough

3/4 cup luke warm water

1 T olive oil (canola oil will work too)

1 1/2 t salt

2 1/4 cup all purpose flour (I use a combination of red wheat and all purpose)

*making this with all wheat makes a very dense and chewy crust

1 t sugar

2.25 t yeast

(optional add ins) basil, garlic powder, parsley, oregano

cornmeal for dusting pan

1. Preheat oven to 450 degreese. Spray pizza pan with cooking spray and sprinkle with cornmeal.

2. Place all ingredients in bread machine in recommended order.  I use my pasta cycle (15 minutes). 3. Take dough out and work out to fit pizza pan. 

4. Load with sauce and cheese and bake in heated oven for 5-6 minutes

5. Remove from oven the load with remainder of toppings.  Bake for additional 7-8 minutes.

*If freezing.  At Step 3 do not load with toppings. Bake for 6 minutes, cool.

Wrap well with aluminum foil and freeze for later use.

When ready to use, no need to thaw.  Load with toppings and bake at 450 degrees for 7-8 minutes.



Ciao! Amy

Freezer Cooking Plan

My hours at work have been all over the place lately.  I am planning on taking this weekend to do a little cooking for the week.  I am hoping to prepare a few lunch items and some dinner helpers. 

The above picture is the Asiago Cheese Bread I made last Sunday. It was heaven in a loaf of bread. 

I plan on making a couple more loaves this weekend to stick in the freezer. 

Freezer Cooking Plan for Weekend

Brown hamburger with homemade taco seasoning

 (I will post the taco seasoning recipe soon, it's great and lower in sodium than packaged brands)

Make meatballs for meatballs subs

Chop onions to freeze (we have an abundance of them)

Make pizza dough times 2

Asiago Cheese Bread times 2 loaves

Freeze fresh tomatoes for use later (this is so simple, I will post a how too soon)

Muffins (I am wavering between banana nut and orange pecan)

I will post pics as the weekend progresses on my progress and end results. 

Are you doing any freezer cooking this weekend?

Ciao! Amy

Weekend Freezer Cooking

I usually do my freezer cooking on Saturday while Brad is work.  That was not the case this weekend.  The weather was very gray and I needed to make bread.  Not a good combination.  So, I put off most of my cooking for the week until today (Sunday).

Every few weeks we do a big breakfast meat cooking day. Because our time is so limited during weekday mornings. We cook in advance and freeze it, so all we have to do is pull it out and pop it in a skillet or the microwave for a short amount of time and chow down.

Freezer cooking day 7/22/12

Homemade Breakfast Sausage (I will post the recipe in a few days)

 

Pork Tenderloin & Country Sausage (from the local market)

Center Cut Bacon

Homemade Vegetable Beef Soup

I had some odds and ends to use up and threw everything together for a tasty homemade soup.  We will use this for lunches for a few days this week. 

 Asiago Cheese Bread

We have been sampling various cheeses lately.  Brad brought home some Asiago and it was begging to be made into a loaf of bread.  Of course, I had to oblige.  I scoured the Internet looking for a good recipe and this is the one I settled on.  I will post a picture and reviews very soon. 

Asiago Cheese Bread Recipe

Did you do any freezer cooking this weekend?

Ciao~ Amy

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