Adventures in Freezer Cooking

I had been hearing about Freezer cooking for awhile, and while that seemed like a great idea in practice I just wasn't sure how to make it work for us. Then, I read Andi's post at [Iron] Bowled Over and decided to give it a try. I decided to start small just to see how it goes.

The Menu
Teriyaki Chicken
Meatloaf
Honey Chicken
Chicken stir fry
Grilled Chicken
(yes, we eat a lot of chicken)

These are all meals that we eat on a pretty regular basis, so I figured they would be safe to try. I spent about 2 hours (including making dinner) and have 7 bagged meals, plus grilled chicken for Kyle's lunches/ cut up chicken for my salads! Each recipe is for two bags, except for the Honey Chicken.

Five bags of chicken meals!

Teriyaki Chicken
Matchstick carrots
Red onion
Minced garlic cloves
Pineapple Chunks
2 Chicken breasts
Teriyaki Sauce

Put in crockpot with 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce cook on low 8 hours.

Meatloaf
(I typically add in about a cup of oats, but we're not eating grains anymore! Hopefully it'll still taste good.)
2 pounds ground beef
2 eggs
Chopped onion
Minced Garlic Cloves
Worcester Sauce

 Place foil in pan, form meatloaf, pop out of pan and freeze. Then you still have your pan for later! Thanks for the tip Andi!
To cook, take meatloaf out of foil and put in pan to thaw. Bake @ 350 for ~20 minutes.

Honey Chicken  from mmmcafe
1 Chicken Breast
Minced Garlic
Chopped Onion

Sauce:
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 Tbs Vegetable Oil
1/8 cup Ketchup
I put the sauce in a small separate bag inside the larger bag because it needs to be thawed before going in.

Put in crockpot, cook on low 3 hours. Pull out chicken and shred toss back into sauce.

Chicken Stir fry
Cube two chicken breasts
I bag frozen stir fry veggies of your choice
I can sliced water chestnuts (optional, I just love them)

Put a Tbs of oil into skillet/wok, cook until tender.

Grilled Chicken
I took a whole bag of frozen chicken tenders. Seasoned with Montreal Chicken Seasoning and Lowery's. Grilled on the Foreman.
After they cooled, I cut up 5 into strips to add to my grilled chicken salads and froze the rest for Kyle to pull out and reheat for lunches.

Freezer filled with goodies.

EDIT: For an update on how they all turned out go here, Update!

Individual Smoothie Packets

I've had a lot of new food ideas that I've been meaning to try and with Kyle working during the long weekend I decided now was the time to try them! So forgive all the posting that I'm sure will come of this.

I've been seeing homemade individual smoothie packets on pinterest for awhile now. I found the recipe I used here, Lacey In Love Blog. I used frozen raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries. You can use whatever fruit you prefer as well as fresh fruit. I used frozen because it was cheaper. I also used regular vanilla yogurt instead of Greek because it was on sale.

First, I scooped a tablespoon of yogurt into my mini muffin pan, I didn't have any free ice cube trays. Once it was filled, I put the whole thing in the freezer. Mine took a little over an hour to freeze. I also had about 1/4 of the container of yogurt left.

Scooping in the yogurt

 All of my supplies

I put a little over 1 cup of fruit and 3 yogurt cubes into each bag. It made 8 packets, costing just under $2. You can use cheaper fruit to make it even more cost efficient!

 Finished bags

"May Contain Awesome."

For forever months, Kyle has been wanting to build a new computer. He has had his laptop for over 6 years now, and it just hasn't been working as well as it should have for awhile now. For example, he brings a fan with him when he carries around his laptop or else it will completely overheat. The poor fan works so hard it's a constant background noise to our lives. Not really what you want in a laptop...

So we began to look into what was needed to build a desktop. For my graduation gift I got an iPad, so Kyle felt like he should get his new computer too. We finally decided to take the plunge and for days boxes of computer parts piled up around our tiny apartment. Despite being sick for over a week Kyle somehow managed to feel well enough to build the computer the second all the parts made it here.

My husband is super nerdy cool!

All things new

Since blogger won't let me transfer my old blog, comewhatmay1231.blogspot.com to my new e-mail address I figured it was finally time to go ahead and make a new blog.

Kyle and I have already been married 4 1/2 months! It's crazy how time flies. I graduated with my Masters in Early Childhood Education from UF at the beginning of the month and am currently job searching! Hopefully it all goes well. Kyle and I will be moving down to South Florida at the end of July so that he can finish school.