4Real Forums: Making meals ahead or banking meals?

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Our Lady's Loom, Larder, and Laundry
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Topic: Making meals ahead or banking meals?

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Servant2theKing
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Joined: Nov 13 2005
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Posted: Sept 06 2013 at 9:40pm \| IP Logged

Do any of you make freezer meals? What things do you like to prepare ahead and freeze for "homemade convenience foods"? Care to share ideas or favorite recipes?

This BLOG is full of inspiring ideas! While I'll never reach the level of devotion to the concept this dear lady has, I'm encouraged to bank more meals and prepped items ~ anything that can shave time off daily meal preparation.

This week, we froze muffins and quick breads. We baked triple batches of some favorite muffin recipes various days this week ~ ate some, froze some in individual wraps for lunches on the go, and put still more in the deep freeze for company. We even had enough batter left to make a few loaves of quick bread. We used up the last of our supply of paper liners from GFS (Gordon Food Service) just $2.99 for 500 liners! They're white & plain, but they do the job and sure save time & cleanup when doing multiple batches. Dh brought home another box today ~ I was amazed that they're still $2.99, since I've been working on our last package for a couple years now, maybe longer.

Freezing prepped items is a great way to cut corners in the kitchen. We've been freezing sliced zucchini, summer squash, peppers and onion in batches for a favorite Friday pasta dish.

Dc have been peeling & slicing apples from our land with this little wonder for future pies. We had our first pie today and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the fruits of all that labor!

Used this new pie crust recipe for today's apple pie, since I didn't have certain ingredients on hand for our usual recipe ~ the crust was SO good I whipped up four more batches of crust for the freezer! Pie crust freezes very well ~ just thaw them in the frig OR put one at a time in the microwave on defrost for a minute or so.

Anyone freeze bread dough or pizza dough? I'd really appreciate ideas or tips for doing so.

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JodieLyn
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Joined: Sept 06 2006
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Posted: Sept 07 2013 at 1:21am \| IP Logged

You can make "brown and serve" breads for the freezer.. I don't remember the exact directions.. you might do a search.. but the idea is that you bake it at a slightly lower temp so that it's baked but not really browned.. then you freeze it.. and when you're ready to serve it you thaw it and pop it in the oven to brown and it's like fresh warm bread.

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TryingMyBest
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Joined: Oct 27 2012
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Posted: Sept 07 2013 at 10:07am \| IP Logged

I freeze a lot of homemade food. We have a small family (1 child) and recipes always produce way more food than we can (or should) eat so it's either freeze the extras or throw it away. There have been times when I've decided it's better to buy one muffin than to make 12 (and hence eat all 12 - I know my weaknesses well). So I loved what I read on that website about freezing unbaked muffins but haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Regarding making meals ahead have you seen this video? Cook a Week of Vegetables Basically the idea is to pre-roast a week's worth of vegetables. When I was working I tried this. and it works pretty well but you do have to devote a few hours each week to prepping. My goal was to have a week's worth of vegetables in the refrigerator ready to thrown right into the oven or skillet without needing to wash, chop, etc. There's a wealth of information on the web about how to store vegetables in the fridge to keep them fresh after washing if you are interested.

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