Freezer Cooking News from Nanci

Dear cooks,
Carol will be taking a few well deserved months off her newsletter. Tammy and Shelley and I will do our best to keep the info, news and recipes coming during the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th week of every month. Thanks!

Happy spring to everyone! I’m writing this over my school’s spring break. Ah . . . the luxury of sleeping in until 8 or 9 am, reading a book for fun, calling my sister for a 3 hour chat, catching up on correspondence and cooking, cooking, cooking. I have to laugh at my students when they say that they are “too busy to do this” or “too busy to do that”. True, they are busier than we might have been at their age but if they think it changes as they get older they are in for a big surprise. I am 47 years old and my “to do” isn’t getting any shorter.

Since money is a little tight right now (income taxes due soon, property taxes coming up in May, kid in college, etc. etc.) I decided to do a lot of cooking over spring break but to limit myself to what I had “on hand”. I don’t know if your pantries, refrigerators and freezers look anything like mine but they just seemed to be filled with stuff that nobody wants to eat or make into anything. And so I tackled the shelves and the corners. Here’s what I made:

• 1 recipe of stuffed shells (40) –  (members can access online)

• 2 C. of peach Jell-O with crushed pineapple

• 4 C. of raspberry Jell-O with mixed fruit

• 4-1/2 C. servings of sugar free cherry Jell-O with frozen strawberries

• 4-1/2 C. servings of raspberry Jell-O with raspberries

• 6-1/2 C. servings of chocolate pudding (the cooked kind)

• 1 Apple Pie Cake (see recipe below)

• 1 pan of Apple Squares (24 bars) – 3rd edition Freezer Cooking Manual (members can access online)

• 1 Coconut Carrot Wedding Cake (8 large slices)

• 2 recipes of No-Bake Cookies (60) – 3rd edition Freezer Cooking Manual (members can access online)

• 1 recipe of Fried Rice (8 C.) (see recipe below)

• 1 recipe of Onion Rice (6 C.)

• 16 servings of Make-Your-Own Instant Oatmeal (8 C. total)

• 1 Rocky Road Ice Cream Shop Pie (6 large pieces)

• 1 pan of Helen’s Nutty Bars (35 bars)

Not bad, eh? The first thing that I ran out of was stick margarine and milk. I could have kept going a lot longer with more of these two ingredients. But all good things must come to an end – ha!

Here are two new recipes that I tried. Both are definitely “keepers”.

Apple Pie Cake

I clipped this recipe from a local newspaper years ago but had never tried it. The ingredients sound a little weird but boy does it taste good. It’s just my kind of recipe. It tastes great frozen, chilled, room temp or warmed up. That means that I can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Next time I may try putting it in a glass pie dish or my Pampered Chef pie plate. Enjoy!

Fried Rice
Another recipe that I tried was Fried Rice. I like this at the Chinese restaurant in town but never thought of making it. Really easy! This is a great recipe for using up the extra cooked meat that you may have at the end of cooking day. For me, it meant picking the bones from daughter Becky’s leftover Applebee’s Rib Dinner that she had for her birthday this past week. I didn’t have any bean sprouts in the cupboard so I left them out. I did add some peanuts. I bagged these up in 1 C. servings to take to work for my lunches.

Company and Website News

Sales are brisk here at 30 Day Gourmet. I hired my oldest daughter Kaytee to help in the office over her Christmas break. 2nd oldest daughter Becky still helps out most Saturday mornings. My 16 year old son Adam often accompanies me to the UPS Store to carry boxes that are way too heavy for me. Jenna doesn’t much besides taste test recipes! My friend Lisa and her daughter Kali live right up the road from us and put together our notebooks and labels. On Sundays we all get together after church and eat a 30 Day Gourmet meal! So thank you for your business. You are helping my kids go to college (Kaytee is studying criminology at Ball State University and Becky has been accepted at Indiana Wesleyan University to study missions in the fall). You are giving my son a way to earn his spending money for a trip to Morocco this summer (his friend’s dad grew up there). And you are making my best friend’s budget a little easier to manage. I know we don’t have a lot of what the big companies have to offer but we have survived as a small business (really small actually) for 10 years now and I have you to thank for that. THANK YOU!

Emails from Happy Customers

I wanted to let you know that I love everything I have received from your company. As a busy military wife it’s nice knowing that dinner is in the freezer. It’s also made it possible for me to bless others in our unit (one gal just gave birth to twins and was thrilled by not having to cook a night) and it makes cooking for a large group a breeze. Brandy 

It LIIIIIIIIIVES! (Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein)

My Bobby, my picky, finnicky, won’t eat wheatballs boy, Bobby, nodded in approval at your meatball recipe that I made with TVP. You. Are. Genius.

Thank you! Mary from Stamford, CT 

I purchased my absolutely priceless copy of 30 Day Gourmet many years ago and have almost worn it out. I would like to have access to the web site so that I can get some new recipes and inspiration. My book is so old that you don’t even picture my edition on your site. It is a big yellow binder.

By the way, my family loves the Parmesan Chicken, Russian Chicken and Meat Loaf best. Virginia from Florida

Closing Comments

By the time you get this, it will be Easter weekend. Have a blessed time with your family and friends. At the Slagle house we will joyously celebrate the resurrection of Jesus at our church. Hopefully we will bring several “extras” with us and then invite them all back to our house for a big dinner. If it’s nice outside we will take a walk in our local park and then play several games of Scrabble. I will hide one large chocolate-on-the-outside and peanut butter-on-the-inside egg in the house for each of the kids. They will be embarrassed to go looking for it but they won’t turn it down when they find it. If you still have little ones in your house enjoy this time. It passes by so quickly!

Happy cooking!

Nanci