Oh, baby preparations! So many things whirl around in my head as I await the arrival of our baby Clare. One thing I feel is very important is having a stash of healthy, easy to prepare meals ready to go so I purchased Fix, Freeze, Feast
by Kati Neville and Lindsay Tkacsik to help get me started. The book utilizes purchasing ingredients in large quantities from warehouse stores and using them to make multiples of the same meal.
So far, I have:
- 3 Potato Asparagus Frittatas
- 3 Homemade Spaghetti Sauces
- 3 Black Bean and Vegetable Chilies
- 3 Cheese Manicottis
I loved whipping up the Spaghetti Sauce, or Red Sauce as they call it, because even though it is made with canned tomatoes and tomato paste it smelled so fresh! We ate a sampling that night and it was really delicious.. I may never go back to jarred pasta sauce. I have enough tomato paste left (half the super large Costco can) to make another batch when we are ready.
For the Black Bean Chili, I precooked my own beans from dry rather than buying canned beans. We love beans around our house, and I have really found it to be cost effective (as well as not too large a burden) to cook our beans from dry. I cook a huge batch about once a week and freeze the beans in two cup portions. I also included many delicious veggies from our Vegetable Co-op in this Chili. I love that I can use some of the plentiful proceeds of our co-op in freezer meals so that none of it goes to waste!
The 3 cheese manicottis turned out lovely and you don't even have to precook the noodles! I had enough cheese stuffing left over to mix with some leftover penne and sauce to make dinner for tonight.
I am hoping to make a few more dishes from this cookbook to stash away before all is said and done, and I hope that they all live up to my high expections once we eat them because I would like to continue some freezer cooking in my regular rotation.
Wow, everything looks soooo yummy. Does the book give an estimated freezer life?
ReplyDeleteWow! This sounds like a great thing to do to prepare for our baby. I'm sure the people that will be helping me post-partum would appreciate just taking out a freezer meal. One question about the book, does it have any ideas for high protein, low carb, grain free dishes or is it pretty heavy in vegetarian dishes?
ReplyDelete@Eleanor - The book gives a good deal of information about food safety, and though it tells you what temperature to keep you freezer at and how to package the meals it doesn't say how long they are good for. My personal guidelines are up to 6 months for the best quality and no longer than 1 year. Rotating old and new is important!
ReplyDelete@Elizabeth - actually the majority of the recipes are for meat main courses. The book is divided into "Chicken" "Pork" "Beef" "Vegetarian and Sides" and "Sauces & Extras". I pretty much made all the vegetarian stuff first because that is what I love to eat!