Cookin’ at the Keyboard with Shelley

September means back to school…even for me! This month marks the beginning of our ninth year of home schooling. Sarah, in black, is a junior; Lauren, on the left, is a freshman. The twins, Aundra and Anicia, are in the fourth grade and Megan, our 5-year-old, is proud to be a first grader!

Our weekly schedule is full to overflowing. My main focus this year is history, so the dining room table is covered with books, binders, timelines, and coloring pages. I’m also teaching the older girls “how to teach.” The twins take math from Sarah, and Lauren gives them their spelling lesson. Considering that the high school girls are out of the house part of every day for piano lessons or classes at the academy, my first priority has become scheduling (school doesn’t work if the teacher isn’t home!).

Every morning we meet around the breakfast table to review the schedule for the day. It’s much easier to get the girls up and moving if they know that a hot breakfast is waiting for them downstairs. I serve a variety of things, but eggs and muffins bring the biggest smiles. I don’t have room in my freezer for dozens of muffins and baked goods every month, so I’ve created another option. I make my own “baking mixes” to manage both my time and my freezer space.

I use the “cooking day/serving day” strategy discussed below in Software Suggestions. For any baked item (muffins, breads, etc) I combine all the dry ingredients for that recipe and seal in a food saver or freezer bag. After labeling, I toss them in the freezer (if there’s room), or I store them in a cool, dry place. Be sure to date the package.

When I’m fixing breakfast, it’s easy to grab the milk, eggs, oil, and a custom homemade baking mix. I always double (at least) every recipe so that I have enough leftover to put in the freezer for another day. It’s a deep satisfaction to know that my daughters will have memories of waking up to the aroma of fresh baked muffins, at least once in awhile.

In honor of back-to-school, here are two of our favorite after-school snack recipes. Best wishes to your family for a fun and productive school year! 

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Loaf

When the zucchini is literally overflowing the garden, we wash, grate, and freeze it. The original recipe didn’t call for chocolate chips, but they turn this snack into a real treat. If you replace half the white flour with whole wheat the kids will never know.

Glazed Almond Poppy Seed Mini-Muffins

This is a special reward for a good day of school. Since these muffins aren’t high on my “healthy snack” list, I use the mini-muffin pan. I recommend glazing them after they’ve thawed, not before freezing. Add some hot tea and “dress up” clothes and you’ve made a memory!

Software Suggestions

“Cooking Day” vs. “Serving Day”

When freezing meals, I have several goals in mind. Primarily, I want to save time, save money, conserve freezer space, serve delicious food, and make it painless to put a meal on the table (I don’t ask for much, do I?) All five of these goals can be accomplished by cooking only part of a recipe.

“Homemade Chili” is a prime example. After frying the ground beef and onion, I stir in all six of the seasonings and freeze in a food saver bag. Time is saved because I prepare multiple quantities of the recipe while the time-consuming task of chopping onion, frying meat, hunting for seasonings, and washing the pans and utensils need to be done only once. Money is saved because the canned tomatoes and kidney beans aren’t purchased until I serve the meal, or until they’re on sale at the store. Freezer space is conserved because I’m storing only the meat, not the tomatoes and beans. My chili is delicious because I’ve cooked the portion of the recipe that, in my opinion, freezes the best. Finally, it’s easy to put the meal on the table; the cooked ground beef thaws quickly and the cans of tomatoes and beans are simple to add.

Believe it or not, it gets even better! Advantage Cooking actually helps me keep track of what I call a S.A.N.E recipe (Some Assembly Needed Eventually). For any ingredient in a recipe, set the “use on” field to indicate whether this particular ingredient is a “cooking day” or “serving day” item. Serving day ingredients are marked with an asterisk* on the printed recipe. I like to use the Move Ingredient buttons to position the “cooking day” ingredients at the top of the recipe and the “serving day” ingredients below.

In addition, three options are available for the Grocery Report. For any group of recipes selected, the grocery list can include:

1. all ingredients,
2. “cooking day” ingredients only, or
3. “serving day” ingredients only.

I use the first option if I want to grocery shop once and make sure that every ingredient will be in the house when I need it. When money is a consideration, I buy the “cooking day” ingredients only, in order to cut down on cost.

To make sure you have all the serving day ingredients on hand, you have two options. Either use the “serving day” option for the grocery report, or print the Recipe Inventory Report. It’s the most convenient because it lists the serving day ingredients for every recipe selected for a cooking day. Print a report and see how easy it is to use!

Closing Comments from Shelley

Kitchen Fun with Carol

Hi everybody! I don’t know if it’s hot and humid where you are but it has been a scorcher here this summer. We have had weeks of temperatures in the nineties with extremely high humidity thanks to hurricane Dennis.

I always try to plan ahead for the summer months when I put together my summer menu. I avoid meals that will heat up the kitchen. That means we usually do a lot of grilling, cooking with a slow cooker or microwave, or cooking meals that are quick and with very little cooking time.

I usually organize the menu by the day of the week. Saturday and Sunday meals are quick and easy so that we can get in and out of the house for church and family activities. Monday is a slow cooker day. This gives me time to catch up with chores around the house after a busy weekend. Tuesday is a grill day. Wednesday is Mexican with tacos, burritos and fajitas. Thursday is Chinese stir-fries or soups cooked in the slow cooker. Friday is family night. If it’s cool, the kids usually want homemade pizza or calzones. If it’s hot we cook something special on the grill like grill packets or some marinated chicken and grill fries. Some of our favorite recipes include Meats in Marinade, Swiss Steak, Elegant Chicken in Marinade, Delicious Pot Roast, Meatball Subs, Montreal Chicken Sandwiches, Grilled Chicken Salad, Pork BBQ, Chili cooked in the slow cooker, Taco Salad and Sloppy Joes.

We are year round grillers. We have been known to light up the grill in the dead of winter with six inches of snow on top of the grill! We have accumulated our fair share of grill recipes over the years. Some are favorites from friends and family. Others are ones that we have created on our own. Some can be frozen and others cannot. We love trying out new recipes or trying to adapt existing recipes to be cooked on the grill.

Last year while shopping for a Father’s Day gift for my Dad, I came across an expandable grilling tray that is used for cooking vegetables on the grill. It expands to fit the depth of your grill. We love using it. You can use it to grill potatoes, vegetables or even cook bags of frozen French Fries. How convenient is that!

One of our favorite new recipes this summer is grilled zucchini. You cut 3 small zucchini into 1/4 inch slices. Cut up 1 green pepper into 1/2 inch chunks. Cut up 1/2 of an onion into 1/4 inch chunks. Mix it all together with 1/3 cup of light Italian dressing and 1 teaspoon of Italian seasoning. Grill on a vegetable grilling tray or a cookie sheet at medium heat or about 350 degrees until the veggies start to brown and are crisp tender. This is a wonderful side dish!

This issue of Chewin the News brings you two new grill recipes including some tips on grilling potatoes or French Fries. Read more about it below in the Bonus Recipes section.

Bonus Recipes

Grilled Chicken Parmesan

I remember seeing a commercial for Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil. In the commercial they created grill packets. They placed the food inside the wrap and folded it to seal it. This allows you to cook your meat, sauce and vegetables all at the same time on the grill. This idea is great for freezer cooking as well! You can prepare the grill packets ahead of time and freeze them. When you want to grill, just take them out of the freezer and let them thaw completely. Heat up the grill to the appropriate temp and you are ready to make a great meal!

My husband loves Chicken Parmesan but I don’t like to heat up the oven for 45 minutes in the summer. Grill packets became our solution to the problem. It’s easy to create your own grill packet. Tear off a piece of foil that is 18 inches long. Layer your recipe in order of cooking time. Meat usually takes the longest amount of time to cook so start with the meat on the bottom. Add any toppings and sauce.

Once you have all the ingredients layered, it’s time to make the packet. Bring the short sides of the aluminum foil together and fold over twice. Center the fold in the middle of the packet. Now fold over the ends to completely seal the whole packet. The packets can be cooked immediately or frozen for later use.

Grill Fries Seasoning Mix

We wanted a way to cook potatoes and French fries in the summer besides using the microwave. We love those seasoned fries that you get at restaurants so we created our own seasoning mix. You can use this either on regular potatoes or on plain frozen French fries. We grill them using a vegetable grilling tray. I have also used a regular a cookie sheet. The secret is to make sure that you flip the potatoes or fries over every couple of minutes so that they don’t burn.

Recipe of the Month Contest Winner

Recipe of the Month… April’s Chicken Marinade

Our winner this month is April from Beaverton, OR, with her recipe for April’s Chicken Marinade. This recipe uses honey. I have never frozen honey in a marinade before. Most information on honey talks about the quality of the honey after freezing. It tends to make baked goods mushy because it breaks down. This is not an issue with marinade and it worked great for us!
I am always looking for a great marinade. There’s nothing simpler on cooking day than putting a marinade together, adding the meat and then freezing. It’s a wonderful thing! We tend to eat a lot of chicken in the summer and this recipe tastes great! My kids even asked when we would be having it again. I just love it when that happens! I would also suggest trying it with pork chops.

Let’s meet April:

I am a stay-at-home mother of my three-month-old baby girl, Allison. Before her birth, I was a high school English teacher with an hour-long commute. My husband and I have been doing 30-day-gourmet for a couple of years. Every time we make a meal that we know freezes well, we make a huge batch and freeze a bunch of it in entree size Gladware containers. The individual servings work great for us, because we can just grab one out of the freezer to take to work for lunch (much healthier than frozen meals from the grocery store, and tastier too), and it doesn’t take long to build up a variety of meals. On nights when neither of us feel like cooking “from scratch,” we just grab meals out of the freezer. This keeps us out of the fast-food restaurants. This poultry marinade is great tasting, simple to make, and doesn’t include expensive ingredients. I found it on a hand-out that I received in a high school foods class from the Oregon Turkey Improvement Association, 13 years ago. I used it a lot when I was still a single first-year teacher with no money. Enjoy!

Click here to view/print the August Recipe of the Month.

Freezer Cook of the Month Contest Winner

Our winner this month is Theresa from Houston, TX, with her great story about the “five second rule” and freezer cooking!

Theresa says:

The new “newsletter”(s) are great! It was so great to get the one from Carol and then from Nanci so close together. The fact that my sister, a friend and I just had a marathon cooking day on Saturday probably influences my excitement. It was my friend’s first time cooking the 30 Day Gourmet way and my sister’s first time in 8 years! We made 94 batches of entrees, breads, muffins, soups, sandwiches and of course, desserts! I started at 6 AM finishing my make ahead items (browned beef and fat free white sauce) and we finished around 9:30 PM. Our final recipe was the Chicken Pockets and since we had been working so diligently and hadn’t stopped to eat dinner (lunch was pizza delivered to our door), we were eagerly anticipating the timer going off to signal the first tray of them being done. In my overly eager state, I opened the oven door (the upper of a double oven) and pulled out the pan and apparently those chickens had a rebirth and flew right off the pan onto the floor!!!! Unfortunately the 5 second rule didn’t apply due the day’s worth of build up on the floor (uncooked rice, cornflake crumbs, etc.). We were so hungry we really wrestled with the thought of digging into the steamy pile of 12 crescent rolls filled with the cream cheese enrobed chicken … BUT couldn’t get past the hairs and rice sticking to it all. So, we waited 10 more minutes and enjoyed the second batch:) When it was all over, we felt like we did after walking a half marathon back in January, but we are in that afterglow of awe at our full freezers! The new newsletters keep me inspired and act as a 30DG Rolaids (relief for the “I’m so tired of browning, cutting, mixing, stirring, labeling, storing, I don’t want to do this anytime soon” feeling I had at 10:30 PM Saturday night). Thanks for doing a great job as usual !!!!!!

Thanks Theresa! We’re glad you are enjoying the new newsletter format and are encouraged by them.

Closing Comments from Carol

I hope you enjoy the recipes and the grilling tips! Next month we’ll talk about back to school lunch and after school snack recipes.

Do you have any recipes that you would like to share? I’d love to try and share them with everyone. You can post your recipes on the 30 Day Gourmet Facebook® fan page or click here to send me an email. Or do you have any other topics that you would like me to cover? Click here to send me an email. I enjoy hearing from you!

Have fun in your kitchen!

Carol

Cookin’ at the Keyboard with Shelley

When I started freezer cooking eight years ago, I began by cooking enough meals for one month at a time. It wasn’t long until I started to double the recipe quantities, stocking the freezer for two months instead of one. With a little extra planning and only one extra day in the kitchen, we’ve been able to freezer cook every four months. We plan a cooking session in early February (after we’ve recovered from Christmas), June (stocking the freezer with lots of marinades for the barbecue), and October (to get us through the busy holiday season).

One summer I had selected several chicken marinades and multiplied each by a quantity of four (one for June, July, August, and September). After assembling individual recipes of each marinade in separate freezer bags, I added my chicken pieces to each bag and anticipated a hassle-free summer at the backyard barbecue. Everything went as planned until some unexpected company arrived in late August. I went to my freezer and found that I had one bag of Teriyaki Chicken, one bag of Spicy Grilled Chicken, and one bag of Debbie’s Chicken in Marinade…but not enough of anything to serve my guests. The result was a quick trip to the grocery store for me!

I learned my lesson that summer. Now I freeze my marinades separately from the meat. It’s easy to find 1-cup and 2-cup containers on sale and they store conveniently in the freezer door. I specify the container needed for each marinade recipe in the Advantage Cooking software, and then use the Container Report to anticipate the number of containers I need to have on hand.

Using this method, I can spontaneously react to the carefree days of summer, mixing and matching meats and marinades. Here are three new ideas for the grill that we’ve enjoyed this summer.
Spicy Grilled Chicken
Ready to try something new? This marinade is a little different because of the strong, spicy flavor. The older our daughters get, the more they like it.

Blackened Chicken Rub

We like to use this seasoning mix for grilled chicken sandwiches, which has become our recipe of choice to serve to company this summer. Butter and toast the sandwich rolls on the grill. Everyone will rant and rave!

Montreal Burgers

Grab a stack of burgers and throw them on the grill. Sprinkle with Worcestershire sauce and Montreal Steak Seasoning. For a stronger flavor, repeat on the other side after turning. It doesn’t get any better, or easier, than this!

Our family gave a big “thumbs up” to April’s Chicken Marinade and the Grill Fries Seasoning Mix that Carol shared in her newsletter earlier this month. We are planning a “back-to-school” mini-cooking day next weekend and are anxious to try some of Nanci’s snack and lunch recipes. Her cost analysis has given me added incentive to do some extra baking before school starts! Thanks, Nanci!

Software Suggestions

Scaling Recipes

I’ve received a request for the Advantage Cooking software to print recipes in “column” format, similar to the Freezer Cooking Manual. It is possible to use the software to generate the scaled quantities for any recipe entered. Here’s the process.

Unless I’m trying a meal for the first time, I always cook multiple quantities of a recipe. Depending on the nature of the recipe, I will assemble the ingredients in one of two ways.

The first method is used when the recipe ingredients are difficult to divide into individual meals. Marinades are the best example. Instead of combining four times the quantity of one recipe in a bowl and then trying to separate the “layers” when I’m done, I’ll use four different bowls (or freezer bags) and assemble one recipe, four times. In this case, I don’t need to multiply the recipe ingredients while I’m cooking; the original recipe has all the information I need. The critical step is to make sure I buy the correct amount of each ingredient! When planning for my Cooking Day, I must be sure to enter a quantity of “4” for this particular “Cooking Day Recipe” before generating a Grocery Report.

A good example of the second method of assembly would be meatballs. I don’t want four different bowls; I want one bowl with four times the recipe. To print a recipe with the ingredients already calculated, use the “Scale” option in the Recipe Manager. Select the desired recipe and click the “Scale” button. When the scaling window appears, enter the desired multiplication factor (“4” in this case), check the “Copy Recipe” option, and click “Scale.” A new recipe will be added using the same recipe name, followed by the quantity. All the ingredients are automatically multiplied by the scale factor! Print this new recipe and use it, instead of the single version, when assembling the recipe. Please note: when planning for the cooking day, be careful when selecting the “Cooking Day Recipes.” If you select the single version recipe, enter a quantity of “4”. If you select the scaled version of the recipe, enter a quantity of “1”. Either method will calculate the correct amount of ingredients on the Grocery Report. (An easy mistake would be to select the scaled version of the recipe, enter a quantity of four, and come home ready to make 16 recipes of meatballs. Oops!)

You will notice that scaling a recipe can result in some unusual amounts and measures of ingredients. Use the “Change Measure” button at the bottom of the window to quickly convert to equal, but more easily used, measures (e.g. 12 tablespoons = 3/4 cup).

Closing Comments from Shelley