Saturday, May 5, 2012

Three hours = 10 meals in the freezer

I got energetic and made up some freezer meals today.  The recipes are from Saving Dinner. I have used these before with my sister, Jane. I think one time we did about 30 meals each over a weekend.  I only did 10 today.   I purchased a subscription where I get 10 new recipes each month - this month was chicken. 


Here are most of the ingredients after I did the prep - cutting and dicing veggies.  Each recipe used about 1 1/2 pounds of chicken so I looked like I was have a big barbecue when I did my shopping yesterday - 8 packages of chicken breasts and chicken tenderloins.  Some of the recipes use the whole chicken breasts, some used strips (I used the tenderloins for those - less cutting) and some required I cut it up into 1 inch cubes.  I started with the ones that used the whole breasts because if I had miscalculated on the amount of chicken it would be easier to 'adjust' the 1 inch cubes than a whole breast :-)  As it turned out I used only 1 lb of the cubes for a couple stew recipes so I had enough chicken left to make some Thai Chicken in the crock pot for supper. 

 Some of the ingredients -  3 cups of diced onions and 1 cup chopped.  So thankful for my Pampered Chef chopper.  2 chopped jalapenos - I wore gloves but the 'fumes' about got to me - definitely opened up my sinuses.  Diced carrots, tomatoes, celery and green pepper.   Lemonade concentrate, pineapple juice, brown sugar and bittersweet chocolate.   And some peanut butter, honey, apricot preserves, sesame oil and soy sauce.  
That does not include all the spices.  Saving dinner recipes use a lot of spices and interesting ingredients like Thai Chili Paste.

And 4 hours later - meals are all in the freezer, dinner in the crock pots and kitchen is clean.   You should have seen the mess.  The worst was a cup of chicken broth spilled down the dishwasher front and on the floor.  Buddy got a treat :-)  I don't know why she has you put 8 cups of chicken broth in the bag with the stew ingredients.  It was sure hard to handle and get it air tight and zipped up.   Next time I will put a cup or two in the bag to blend with the veggies and then make a note to add the other 6 cups when I cook the stew. 
And only 1 casualty.  I dropped a couple clean Corelle saucers and one shattered all over the counter.  Thankfully there was no open food around or I would have had to toss it as the saucer shattered into slivers.   I was done with the meals and emptying the dishwasher - of course it was a clean dish that broke! 
And in the two crockpots -One has Aloo gobi (I understand it is an Indian dish - potatoes and cauliflower with a spicy tomato sauce) and Thai chicken in the other.   I 'm pretty sure I should have some pita bread or coucous or something to go with it all - but not tonight.  This lady is done cooking for the day.   And I think a blizzard is headed this way tonight  - the DQ kind. 

1 comment:

Queenie Jeannie said...

Well done, Mary! Your kitchen set-up looks the same as the one I had in Georgia (our first one) and I LOVED that kitchen!!! Everything sounds so yummy!

And yes, you always break clean dishes. I think it's a rule or something, lol! You definitely deserved some ice cream for all that hard work!