3 Chickens for the Freezer

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If I’m going to go through the trouble of roasting a chicken, I decided I might as well roast 3.  Hy-Vee had their whole roasters on sale for $.59 a lb a few weeks ago and I snagged 3 and filled my roaster.  Once they were cool, I deboned the meat and put some meat in 2 cup portions in the freezer plus 3 frozen 9 x 13 dishes of chicken enchiladas.  The plain bagged chicken can be used for chicken salad, chicken soup, burritoes etc.  Here’s the Rub recipe I used:

My Mama’s Herb Chicken Rub x 3:

1 Tablespoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 1/2 teaspoons paprika

3/4 teaspoon savory

3/4 teaspon thyme

3/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Place chickens breast side up in a greased roasting pan.  Mix all spices and rub onto the breasts of the chickens.   Bake covered at 350 degrees for 2 hours or until the chickens are browned and tender.

Meal from Frozen Chicken Strips

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I just wanted to show you a photo of a meal you can make when you fill your freezer with marinated, grilled chicken strips.

This was torn romain with sliced baby bell peppers.  I topped it with the grilled chicken, 2 T of shredded cheese, and a sprinkling of leftover spanish rice.  I used salsa for dressing.  The whole salad had less than 200 calories but was very filling and tasty.

Grilled chicken for the Freezer

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With school starting and a generally busy schedule, I’m putting homemade convenience foods in my freezer every chance I get. The latest recipe started with a 10 lb bag of boneless skinless chicken breasts from Costco. I poured a bottle of chipolte lime marinade I snagged for $.50 right into the bag. And refririgerated for a couple of days until I had more time.

Then I placed them on a broiler pan and broiled on high for 5-7 minutes on each side.

Set them on a plate to cool while I cooked the rest. And then sliced them really thin.  I had in my mind restaurant style grilled chicken strips as I sliced.

Then I weighed the strips into 4 oz serving sizes and packaged them in snack size bags for the freezer.  Now all I have to do is microwave the frozen strips for 90 seconds and add them to a tossed salad or a pita for instant lunch.  It’s low-fat, high protein, and sooo tasty!!

Do you have a favorite chicken marinade recipe to share that I can try next time?  I’m out of $.50 bottles of  marinade 🙂 .

Overnight French Toast Casserole

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Here’s a make-ahead breakfast recipe for you.   I like to make it the night before and pop it into the oven right before I start my morning aerobics.  By the time I’m showered and dressed breakfast is ready to serve. 

1.  First cut a whole loaf of 100% whole grain day old bread into cubes and place in a greased 9 x 13 pan.

2.  Then mix 6 eggs, 3 cups of skim milk, a tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and a teaspoon of vanilla and pour over the bread.

3.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.

4.  In the morning dot with 2 tablespoons of butter cut into tiny bits and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar (about 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon.)  Bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes. 

5.  Cut into 12 squares and serve with maple syrup or fruited and yogurt. Yum!

Quick Meal Stretch: Taco Meat for a Crowd

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Our hamburger comes in 2 lb frozen logs.  It barely feeds my family of 7 for a meal of tacos.  Once a week we add 4 extra mouths to our table and I knew it wouldn’t stretch.  I added 2 cups of cooked brown rice to our meat once it was browned and then added my taco spices to flavor it all together.  I loved the flavors and the children ate it well.  We had enough for lunch the next day.

3 Ingredient Taco Seasoning

1 teaspoon garlic salt

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1-2 Tablespoons chili powder

Mix spices and sprinkle on 2 lb cooked meat with 1/4 cup water.  Cook and and stir until most of the water has evaporated.

Freezer Lunch Idea–Mini Pizzas

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Like convenience foods?  I do!  But I like them best when I make them from scratch.  For these little pizzas, I put my favorite pizza dough ingredients in the bread machine and let it do the work for me. 

Then we rolled out the dough and cut it into circles using a jar lid from gallon sized penny candy jars.

A quick topping with jarred spaghetti sauce, turkey Italian Sausage (recipe to follow), and mozarella cheese.  I put veggies on some of them, because I like it that way.  Then bake at 400 for 15 minutes.  Cool and Slide meal portions into gallon size freezer bags and freeze.  To reheat, put frozen pizzas on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 20 minutes.  They are great with veggie sticks or a tossed salad.

Pizza Dough

1 2/3 cups warm water

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 Tablespoons honey

1 teaspoon sea salt

4 cups whole wheat flour

1 Tablespoon yeast

Put all ingredients in the bread machine in the order listed and start a dough cycle.  This makes 2 extra large pizzas or 18-20 mini pizzas. 

Turkey Italian Sausage

1 lb ground lean turkey

1 teaspoon garlic salt

1 teaspoon whole or cracked fennel seed

1/4-1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 teaspoon crushed basil

Spread turkey in a skillet, sprinkle with spices, cook and press the spices into the meat as you chop it into fine pieces with your spatula.  Easy and Yummy.  It is less expensive and less calories than buying traditional Italian sausage.

Quick Veggie Tuna Melts

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8 slices of whole grain bread

2 cans of tuna, drained

1 shredded carrot

1/4 cup shredded zucchini or cucumber

1/4 cup shredded onion, optional

1 cup shredded cheese (colby jack, cheddar, mozz–whatever you have.)

1/4 cup plain yogurt

1/4 cup mayo

1 teaspoon worchestershire sauce

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder, salt and pepper

Mix all inredients except for the bread.  Spread filling on each bread slice place under the broilder for 3-5 minutes or until cheese is melted and golden.

Mmmm Manicotti

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Tuesday I slipped into the store just in time for buy 2 Ragu spaghetti sauce jars for $.99 each and get a free box of pasta.  It’s the perfect chance to show you one of the many fantastic recipes that comes in the Grocery Shrink Ebook. Did you know the book had recipes?  It has a step by step how to plan for saving money on your grocery bills, but also a collection of recipes to make cooking at home interesting again.

You can modify the filling in these tender pasta tubes however you like.  Cottage cheese, parmesean, basil and spinach would be yummy!  Or pizza toppings stuffed inside would be sure to please the kids.  Here’s how I made them:

Boil your manicotti noodles according to package directions.  Drain and rinse with cool water until cool enough to handle.  Meanwhile combine the manicotti filling ingredients listed below.

Manicotti filling:

1 lb ground beef, browned

1 cup shredded mozarella cheese

1 cup Italian style bread crumbs–(you can make your own with dry/toasted bread heels a blender and dry Italian seasoning)

1 Tablespoon worchestershire saucef–the secret ingredients that makes these the best!

1 teaspoon garlic powder

Stuff into cooked shells. 

Place stuffed shells in a greased 9 x 13 pan.

Top with a jar of spaghetti sauce and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. 

Sprinkle with parmesean cheese for good looks :).

It’s tasty with salad and green beans.

Strawberry Pizza

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The Lesson:  Use what you have. 

I found a huge sale on cake mixes for $.49 each about 9 months ago and I bough a LOT.  Normally we don’t consider cake mixes food, but when I need to take a treat to a gathering, it can make it a lot less stressful.   I’ve tried making cake from scratch and I’ve never gotten it to turn out well.  (Unless it is fruit filled cake, like fresh apple cake, carrot or zucchini cake–Yum!)

Cake mixes make cake (duh), but they also make cookies, brownies, sweet pie crust, and fruit crisp topping. 

This summer has been especially busy for us and I often feel overwhelmed.  I needed a quick snack to take to our monthly family worship gathering and thought about what I had on hand:  cake mix, fresh strawberries that really needed to be used, a tiny amount of powdered sugar, strawberry jello, and an open brick of cream cheese needing to be used.  Strawberry pizza was the natural choice!  Since I was using what I had on hand, I didn’t follow a recipe.  Here’s what I did:

Strawberry Pizza:

Crust:  1 cake mix, 1 stick butter melted, 1 egg.  Mix all together in an electric mixer and roll onto a pizza pan.  Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes. Cool completely

Frosting:  8 oz cream cheese (can use lowfat or non-fat) 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla.  Whip together and spread over crust.

Top with sliced strawberries.  You can glaze with strawberry jello mixed with 1/2 cup warm water until it dissolves.  But it was almost too sweet that way.  It would have been better plain or with whipped cream.

Stir Fry at Home

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The Lesson:  Use what you have on hand.

Happy Birthday to my husband, Darren!  He helped me make the meal below.  Even though it was a simple thing to prepare and the rice cooker and frozen eggrolls made it a snap, I got in over my head with 2 pans to stir and other things to tend to and he rescued me.  Thanks dear!

Stir fry is one thing we rarely do the same twice.  If you have a reliable sauce recipe (one to follow), then you can just use what you have to fill out the dish.

This time we used a couple of chicken breasts, sliced and cooked in a skillet.  I cooked the sauce with the chicken after the chicken was mostly done.  This same sauce is nice with beef, pork, or shrimp too.

The vegetables were the rest of a bag of baby carrots, zucchini from my mother-in-loves garden, sliced onions, and fresh mushrooms that we happened to snag for $.77 a carton.  I’ve found it’s nice to add the crunchiest veggies first since they take the longest to cook.  I gradually add vegetables based on their cooking time.

The eggrolls were homemade and pre-frozen recipe here.  We baked them on a cookie sheet at 350 for 3o minutes and didn’t worry about thawing first.  Yum!

Here’s our sauce recipe which was passed to me from my sister-in-love, Gena.

Stir-Fry Sauce

2 cups cold water

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 Tablespoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger (or powder)

Shake everything together in a blender jar until the cornstarch is dissolved.  Pour over your browned meat and cook and stir until sauce is bubbling and thickened.  Combine meat, sauce and vegetables together and serve over rice.