So, after a month away, I’m surfacing back to the real world (well, actually, I suppose that’s backward as I’ve been living very much in the real world the last four weeks–but whatever. Go with it). Daisy is improving every day, for which we are so so grateful. This was her when I picked her up at PT yesterday.
In other crazy crazy news we have SOLD OUR HOUSE after more than a year on the market and we move in T minus 21 days (over Memorial Day weekend). EEP! Because, we didn’t have enough going on, right? The home inspections are over and now we’re just down to the nitty gritty of packing, which means that things are rather chaotic. Perhaps not the best time to be thinking about getting into food blogging, but I MISS YOU GUYS!
My latest obsession this week is freezer cooking. This goes by many names. Once A Month Cooking. Freezer Meals. There were others, but anyway the gist is that you pick one day and prepare a whole bunch of meals. Not necessarily cooking a bunch of stuff from start to finish, but getting all the prep work done up to a point and freezing them so that all you have to do is grab a bag or a container out of the freezer the night before and throw it in the fridge to thaw, then the next day throw it in the crock pot/on the grill/in the oven. It’s a big thing among busy and/or soon to be moms who aren’t going to have time to get inventive while juggling kids. I’m thinking it’s going to be a marvelous idea for those of us who are about to have a kitchen packed up (well not until that last week) and in semi-chaos for some period of time because we are MOVING. I admit, I went a little crazy on Pinterest when the idea occurred to me. You can see my Freezer Meals board here.
It’s something I’ve always wanted to try. And I did a small version of this when I was single and had more room in the fridge and freezer, just by doubling up whatever I was cooking and freezing half for another meal down the line. As I will actually have room for a deep freeze in the new house (or rather in the new garage with a DOOR), this is something I intend to get back into, as it’s a great way to have something ready on those nights you just don’t feel like thinking about cooking something new. It keeps you from ordering pizza or chinese or some other unhealthy take out. Or, you know, when you’re gluten free, it keeps you from having to come up with something anyway.
Some people get REALLY hard core about this and are cooking a whole month or more of meals (and by that I mean even breakfast, lunch, and dinner). I doubt I’ll ever get THAT into things both because a) I do actually like to cook and will probably always do at least 3 days worth of fresh, from scratch, off the top of my head meals a week, b) a lot of popular freezer meals would not work well gluten free, as cooked gluten free pasta does not reheat well and gluten free tortillas have serious pliancy issues under those conditions, and c) I’m only gonna have one of the mini deep freezes, not the epic Prepared For The Zombie Apocalypse kind. Also, a lot of the “dump” style freezer meal recipes (by which it’s everything you need in one bag that you then dump into a crock pot to cook–which has understandable appeal due to its ease) are not actually that good–at least not to a food snob. A lot of vegetables in those sorts of recipes come out tasting entirely the same after being frozen in a marinade and cooked or the texture gets funky.
All that to say, I’ve been doing a lot of research trying to sort out what recipes I could prepare that would freeze well, be gluten free (a lot of these recipes aren’t by dint of stuff used in the sauces and marinades), that would be adaptable (I’m big into the idea of freezing meats in different marinades or making a base like browned grown beef with onions and peppers that I can then transform into another dish), and that my spouse would actually EAT.
So, while I don’t have any actual recipes to post for you today, I wanted to give you a heads up that I am alive! and I will be back soon with news of my freezer meal campaign. And after we get moved and settled, as we move forward, I will probably wind up going back and gradually updating my existing recipes with instructions for how to turn it into a freezer meal (if it can be) because I think this is just a great idea for busy people everywhere to allow them to eat healthier and cheaper and HOME MADE.