make-ahead & freeze anyone?
i am attempting my first ever marathon cooking session based on recipes and ideas from Jessica Fisher’s Not Your Mother’s Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook. a little Epiphany gift to myself! my goal is to get a load of meals in the freezer without snapping at the children too many times! this evening already, the four year old got an ear full from me…he tripped over my foot and toward the gas stove as he was reaching for a piece of bacon. open flame, boy!
i have the book checked out from the library. it’s taken me a few times through to get a handle on the process, but so far, so good. i’ve been making lists and checking recipes all week. then i walked to the grocery this afternoon. i did the prep work (chopped vegetables, baked potatoes and bacon) as i prepared dinner. the kitchen is mostly clean and ready for more work in the morning. i’ve got beans and rice and take out pizza on the menu tomorrow to make the day’s work feel less stressful. and it really shouldn’t take that long to get things ready for the freezer.
when dinner is on the table with a minimum of stress and effort, i feel like life is manageable. with housework + homeschool + breastfeeding a teething baby all night long, my energy and attention are at a premium. this is a good kind of problem to have. but it still feels like a problem! how do you work with all the demands on your time? have you made resolutions for the New Year? what’s the hardest piece for you? any hints or hacks?
I guess I freezer cook incrementally, putting things in when I have the time or resources, but not always in the biggest amounts. I’ll cook some dry beans to freeze or make broth (especially good on cold days) or make a big vat of stew and freeze part of it. Mainly, we freeze fruit and vegetables for later–rhubarb, peaches, berries, pumpkins. I’m freezing meal components most of the time, though it is mighty nice to pull out some vegetable soup on a difficult day.
My hardest thing presently? Keeping a tidy kitchen. Used to be washing the dishes.
yes, dishes used to be hard here too…then we moved to a house that had a dishwasher ; ) we freeze lots of fruit too. there’s nothing like smoothies or fruit crisp or pumpkin bread in the middle of winter!
peace keep you