Yearly Family Pics

This past August (it's been two months now??? what??) my good friend Amy took some sweet photos of our family. These are the first family pictures since Lucy was born so I really wanted to get some good shots of her and that's exactly what happened! Enjoy!

                                (Poor Emery does not handle the heat well. I sure don't blame him.)

Tried and True Freezer Cooking Tips

• Use good quality freezer bags or containers. I'm pretty thrifty but I don't skimp in this area. With cheap bags I've noticed freezer burn and meals that taste like the freezer, yuck. I do try to wash out and reuse the Ziploc bags I buy.
• Don't have a vacuum sealer? I don't either. But my trick is to use a straw to suck out all the air. Zip up a bag all the way to the corner but leave enough room for a straw. Suck out all the air and finish zipping very quickly so you don't let any extra air in. It's very important not to freeze meals with extra air because ice crystals will form on food and change the taste.
• When freezing meals with pasta or rice or other starches, don't cook the pasta or rice completely. I cook it 3 minutes short of what the time on the package says and that way when it's thawed/reheated, it won't turn to complete mush.
• I like to blanch most vegetables that I freeze, unless they're in the dish that's being cooked before being frozen. For example, I make big batches of sweet potato fries and regular french fries by cutting them up and blanching (boiling for 3 minutes and quickly dumping into an ice bath). I do the same thing with fresh broccoli that I buy in bulk.
• Flash freezing is a great idea for things you may not use a whole bag of at once. I do flash freezing with fruit for smoothies, my french fries, muffins, pancakes/waffles and more. It's simply freezing for 1 hour on a baking sheet in a single layer, then transferring to a freezer bag, getting rid of all the air and returning to the freezer.
• To make the most of freezer space, use freezer bags! Quart and gallon sized. When I make a lot of dump meals at once, I'll stack the completed freezer meals flat on a cookie sheet and freeze them. After they freeze flat, you can stand them up in your freezer almost like you would with files or books. They also thaw out much quicker this way!
• Do a complete meal in a bag. Instead of just freezing the fajita meat/onions/peppers, I will put it in a smaller Ziploc and put that in a bigger bag with enough tortillas and a baggie of shredded cheese. This way you've already got all the fixings together and you can pull it all out at once. I do that with stir fry as well (bag of rice, bag of mixed veggies in a sauce that I made with shredded chicken). 
• If you don't have time for a whole day of freezer cooking (or a whole weekend, in my case) start out slow by doubling or tripling the meals you make. It doesn't take much more time or effort the result is you've made 3 dinners instead of one which means 2 fewer meals you have to cook in the future. Yes, I can subtract! 
• People say potatoes don't freeze well. And they don't...if they're raw. But cooked and in dishes, they freeze fine. Just don't cook them all the way or they will turn to much when thawed and reheated. I usually parboil add them separately. Baked potatoes should freeze fine (I have't tried yet), and I make french fries and actually bake them prior to freezing (it's easiest and best results, in my opinion).
• These are a couple other ways I use freezer cooking to save money and trips to the store, which in turn, saves money: I buy lots of dried beans and let them cook in my crockpots, then bag them up in 2 cup portions and freeze them. Much tastier and cheaper! 
• Put your kids (if you've got them) to work! And if your husband thinks you're crazy for cooking absurdly excessive amounts of food at once, remind him that he'll have way less dishes to wash every night this way. Way less. Or fewer. It's nap-time and I can't think about that one at the moment.

 Last night, it was 6 PM and I didn't know what was for dinner. Thirty minutes later, we were eating Lentil and Sweet Potato Curry, roasted cauliflower and homemade whole wheat rolls. I've adapted a lot of my recipes and have come up with new ones that are more healthy and less carby. But that's another post for another time. I just wanted to throw that out there and let you know why I'm so into freezer cooking.