Freezer Foods Friday is back

I hope your as excited as I am that Freezer Foods Friday is making a comeback. It's been a while and I've missed it.    Here's a little , er... educational introduction... to kick us off.

This might be "old news" to you, a refresher, or a new slant. However you receive it, I hope there is something you can use or add to. 

There are many types of "freezer cooking" methods. There's the OAMC (Once a Month Cooking); TAMC (Twice a Month Cooking); Mini Sessions, preparing meals by categories...The methods and lists are as vast and varied as individual's tastes.

Whatever "style" you adopt, the most important rule is organize your recipes!

You can have a card-file system or notebook file system. I use the notebook pages because I can have each recipe printed on an individual page, put in a page protector and place in a three ring binder. You can see my post about organizing my recipes into notebooks by clicking here:  Organizing My Recipes from Magazines, etc.

Before cooking day, study each recipe to decide on the order in which you'll prepare them. It may sound like overkill, but it really helps the process run more smoothly. Once you've decided, put the pages in order in which you will prepare them. The page protectors are great because I almost always spash! All I have to do is wipe these clean.

Menu - You might like to fly by the seat of your pants, but you really need to do a menu. You don't really want a month of all Mexican, or Italian food do you? There are all sorts of sites with good forms to print out for menus and I've used a lot, but in a pinch, I like the old, take a sheet of notebook paper, fold it in half, fold it again, and again. Unfold and you've got 8 blocks. Yeah, I know there aren't "usually" 8 days in the week, contrary to what the Beetles said! (I'm showing my age aren't I). Just fill in the 7 blocks with a day's menu.  Super simple, right? 

Try only a few new recipes each month. (That way if it flops, it was only one meal) Your menu should be mostly ones your family already likes.

If you're not sure a family favorite will freeze well, when you prepare the dish, take out a portion and freeze it. "Test" it in a week or two to see if it passes the test. If so, great! You've got another freezer-food to add to your list. And, well, if it doesn't, you haven't wasted time and money.

And I can't stress this enough... Label your foods!  In a month or so, you won't be able to tell the difference between chicken broth and squeezed lemon juice (for lemonade) by just looking at that freezer bag.  Trust my experience, here.

I like to buy steaks and chicken when they're on sale.  My husband is the designated "griller" in the family and he's a steak kinda guy.  I don't make my marinade for the beef, but I buy a marinade called "allegro".  I really like the flavor of this.  So, what I do, is when our local grocer has steaks buy one get one free (I love those deals!) I buy what they will allow, bring them home and place in a zippered type freezer bag, pour the marinade into the bags and freeze.   When we're ready for grilling, I take them out to thaw in the frige and while they're thawing, they're marinating.  Win Win!

Ok, I can't leave chicken out, can I? Here's a couple of great freeze-in-the-bag-with-chicken marinades.  If you will notice one recipe I used as a marinade is from the recipe that everybody was making a while back...You know, the Apricot Chicken recipe? Well did you know it makes a great marinade for grilling chicken? It does!

Honey Chicken Marinade
3 TBSP soy sauce
1 TBSP honey
1 TBSP olive oil
1 tsp lime juice
1 tsp garlic

Apricot Chicken Marinade
1/2 bottle Catalina dressing
1/2 packet of dry onion soup mix
3 TBSP olive oil
12 oz jar of apricot preserves - heated in the microwave until runny.

Alright, if I haven't bored you to tears yet, I want to leave you with one more recipe. Would that be ok?
I've had this for probably 18 years or so, and I've made them into little (portion controlled) muffins, with a crust, without and called it a casserole, you name it.  But it was originally called Crustless Quiche.  It's great to fix ahead and have for holiday breakfasts or brunch.

You're going to need...

16 ounce container cottage cheese

4 eggs

1/4 cup milk (you'll notice I used evaporated milk, you can use regular "jug" milk but this makes it richer)

1/4 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 cups cheddar cheese, shredded (I used mild but you could use sharp too)

cooked and crumbled bacon (equal 10 slices) I cheated, see pic?!

1/4 cup chopped onions

Process cottage cheese in a food processor or blender until smooth.  (I use a blender)

transfer to a large bowl

In a medium bowl beat eggs.

Add milk, flour, baking powder and salt to eggs and mix until smooth.

Add egg mixture to cottage cheese and mix.

Stir in shredded cheese, bacon and onions.

Now here's where you choose... Do you want to bake and freeze, or just freeze?

If you want to bake 'em now and freeze, then pour into muffin tins (mini or regular - doesn't matter)
bake at 375 degrees for 12-15 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.

Cool and freeze in freezer bags.

I chose to pour the mixture into freezer bags to bake later. When I'm ready to bake 'em, I'll just thaw in frige and follow the above instructions.

I hope this has helped inspire you to either begin, start back up, or step up your freezer game a bit. Don't forget to check back next Friday for another tried-n-true freezer meal and I will share with you about Freezer Meals parties, and making freezer meals with a friend.    Until then,

Be Sweet!

Easy Homemade Apple Cider

Did you know you can make your own apple cider using your food processor?  It's so easy, you'll never pay the big-bucks for apple cider again.   Here in Florida we don't have many apple orchards. In fact, if you know of any, please tell me.    But every October, there is an apple festival in north Georgia.  My sister went and gifted me with a bushel of apples.   These were Gala apples.  I thought they would be too mild for applesauce (another easy-peasy thing to make at home) so I tried this.  (I prefer apple cider over apple juice, but that's me)

There's no recipe per se.  But all you I-Need-A-Recipe folks, don't fret.  You don't need one.  You do, however, need a food processor and cheesecloth. Well, you don't even need cheesecloth.   I used what's called bar cloth. Walmart sells these in packs of five in the kitchen towel area.  Get those.  You'll get tons of use from that five-pack.

Here goes,

Wash the apples really well, because you're going to leave the peels on. You know those nifty little apple slicer/corer things?  Using that will help the process along quite nicely, but if you don't have one don't worry.   Just slice it the way our grandmothers, or great-grandmothers, did it.  You don't want the core and seeds, mind you.

Toss those slices into the food processor.   Don't fill it full of slices, half full is fine, otherwise you will be there a while.   I know, it seems counter-intuitive, but doing multiple half-full bowls is really quicker.  Process it until you have "mush", or as mushy as you can.

Have a large bowl, with a collander inside and the barcloth, or cheesecloth, inside the collander. Dump that mush into that.  (such technical terms)

Next, gather up the edges and give it a good squeeze to make a ball.

Quite a bit of juice is already draining.

At this point, I ladled out a taste.  Ooooh.  Heaven!

To make sure you get all the goodness (juice) extracted, place a heavy object on top of the bag of mush (those technical terms again).  I used the heaviest pot I could find.  Let that sit a few hours, or overnight if you don't have "critters".

and there you have it.  You apple cider maker, you.

Note:  This is not pasturized, so it won't keep as long as commercial stuff.  A week is fine in the frige.  But if you want to do bulk batches, you can freeze it.    Enjoy.  

How do you enjoy fall's bounty of apples?  I'd love to hear.

Red Velvet Cheesecake cookies with white chocolate drizzle

I want to share a new recipe I tried out this past week for the Real Women Eat's Christmas Tea.  We were doing a gift exchange, but with a twist.  The "gift" had to be a baked item, and it was supposed to be something we have never made before.  So, my collection of recipes just wouldn't do this time. Off to Pinterest I go.  I found Two Peas and Their Pod's site where these beauties were.  She had me at "red velvet" and when I saw these were cookies, all the better!  (I'm such a cookie monster!) These cookies should come with a warning... they are very rich.  LOL.   They're not hard, but they do take a little bit of time investment, but oh, so worth it!   So here goes....

Red Velvet Cheesecake Cookies

Cookies:

• 1 box red velvet cake mix (I used Duncan Hines)
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cheesecake filling:

• 4 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

White chocolate drizzle:

• 1 1/2 cups white chocolate chips, melted

Directions:

To make cookies, combine cake mix and flour. Whisk until clumps disappear before placing in mixing bowl. Mix together cake mix, flour, eggs, oil and vanilla extract. Mix until smooth. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap. The dough will be oily.  And I really mean oily!   The recipe said to refrigerate for 2 hours.  I had running around to do, so they stayed in there a lot longer than the two hours (and were fine)

To make the cheesecake filling, combine cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract. Mix until smooth. Using a teaspoon, scoop out cheesecake filling and place on a plate. Continue scooping out cheesecake filling into teaspoon balls until you have 10. Place plate in the freezer and freeze for at least two hours. Again, more than two hours didn't hurt. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper-  or a silicone baking mat if you have one.  I don't. 

To assemble the cookies, take about 1/4 cup of red velvet cookie dough and flatten in your hands.(I used one of those ice-cream-looking scoops that I use for cupcake batter)   Place a teaspoon of cheesecake filling in the center and wrap the cookie dough around the filling. Gently roll into a ball and place on prepared baking sheet. Scoop onto lightly greased or parchment lined baking sheets. Only bake 3 cookies at a time. The cookies are large and will spread.  Trust me, she knows what she's talking about.  So, really, only three at a time.  Ya, hear??

Bake for 11-13 minutes or until the cookies begin to crackle. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes. Remove from baking sheet to a wire cooling rack and cool completely.

Melt the white chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl or over a double-boiler. Drizzle the white chocolate over the cooled cookies. Let the cookies set until the chocolate hardens. 

Note: I bought the white chocolate chips, but ended up using the white candy coating wafers instead thinking it would harden quicker.  I didn't see where I saved any time using the wafers so go ahead and use the white chocolate chips!  

These cookies are really rich and I doubt you'll be finishing them in a day, so store in the frige.  My husband ate one and said he felt like he had eaten half a dozen...THAT rich. 

Source: http://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/red-velvet-cheesecake-cookies/