Ive been working on getting a freezer stash of already cooked staples for meals for my family. Im not the type of person who plans meals ahead well. Its usually 4 or 5pm before I think about what to make for dinner. So Ive been trying to make extra whenever I make up a staple. Some of the things Ive been doing is making large batches of brown rice, it takes almost an hour from start to finish to make so I make an entire bag at a time rather than just enough for a single meal. Once our meal is over I put the left overs in freezer bags and pop the bags in the freezer. They come in very handy, I just microwave the rice in the bag and no one has noticed the difference. Ive also started browning ground beef and turkey and freezing them in servings so my husband can have meat with his spagetti or whatever we may be having that I have made meatless. My most recent freezer batch was a large box of orzo, orzo is a small rice shaped pasta. It freezes surprisingly well for a pasta, and my kids love it.

I have also started cooking frozen vegitables in batches. I just put the left overs in the fridge and that is the vegitable I serve at dinner until its gone, usually just two meals total. Except for brussel sprouts, I cant seem to find a bag big enough to cover more than one meal. Who knew they were so yummy?!

I also grill 5lbs of chicken breasts at once, I marinate them and grill them all at once and freeze the left overs. So basically all I need to do on busy days is pull some chicken from the freezer, already cooked, grab some frozen cooked rice and throw them both in the microwave along with whatever already cooked vegitable from the fridge. These grilled chicken breasts make awesome sandwhiches for a nice change of pace!

 I throw in a low fat pizza and pasta and low fat sauce now and again and thats pretty much our dinners. I dont spend nearly as much time cooking these days as I used to. Which is a HUGE plus since I really dislike cooking!

Posted by Shelley in Whatever on April 26th, 2007 |