My first freezer day

This is probably only interesting if you are me, so you are excused from reading this blog entry..... Another blog confession:  I buy and serve far more pre-packaged (somewhat overly processed) dinners than I would like to, given perfection.  I have been contempleting this situation for some time and have tried various methods that pay attention to nutrition, time, taste and money.  There is no easy solution to making nutritious, cheap, quick meals.  Money Saving Mom routinely sets aside a day to cook freezer meals, freezer meal starters and whatever else tickles her fancy.  I have never tackled multiple dishes before but I have had some success in freezing foods.  Usually it is an unplanned event.  I might have a giant zucchini that needs to be used, or too many meatballs, or too much chili.  Whatever, it is sporadic.  As much as I have been planning a cooking day, this cooking day was a bit unplanned too.

 I was shopping without a list at Costco on Friday night and 8 lbs of hamburger jumped into my cart when I wasn't looking.  The hamburger also invited friends amounting to almost $700.  I thought I might win some prize at check-out, no such luck.  I did however, successfully floor my husband.  He even got the calculator out to make sure there wasn't some kind of error on my receipt.  Still waiting for that prize......  Anyway, I bought hamburger thinking, "oh I can make some meatballs and have a freezer day."  Knowing full well that freezer day doesn't work that way, I proceeded on with my little half-baked plan.  I wanted to make:
1) Pizza dough (we eat a lot of homemade pizza.  I usually buy Trader Joe's premade dough and freeze it.  It costs a couple of bucks a bag, but I figure I can make it for a fraction of the cost.)
2) Pizza Sauce (I don't like the bottled pizza sauce and regular marinara is to watery and expensive.  This is a test)
3) Meatballs (Costco's frozen meatballs are nasty.  Thank goodness my boys would eat them so they didn't go to waste.  I prefer my Giada meatballs which I regularly freeze a portion.)
4) Macaroni and Cheese for Keith (Considered doing some healthy alternative to the blue box.)
5) Shepherd's Pie (Made 2 of these last winter on a whim and everyone loved it.  Great healthy one dish meal.  Kevin's favorite.)
6) Banana Bread (Another repeat performance)
7) Chili

First thing I learned from Money Saving Mom?  Get rid of the kids.  Thanks to Mr. Television, the boys happily colored and rotted their brains for 2 hours while I cooked and washed dishes. There was some meatball damage at the hands of Mr. Keith but other than that it was very smooth.



My planning time amounted to cruising the Internet for recipes 15 minutes before I was ready to cook.  No luck with that so I resorted to my tried and true Meatball recipe .  I can call it mine because mine isn't exactly the same as Giada's.  I also got out my Shepherd's Pie recipe (this is one of the only Rachael Ray recipes that I actually like).  I didn't have a pizza sauce recipe just a compilation of recipes in my head (bad news).  I ditched the Macaroni and Cheese because I bought a Costco size back supply of the blue boxes (shame).  I made banana bread the night before and was shocked that my dozen frozen over-ripe bananas only yielded two loafs of banana bread.  Oh well.  I forgot about the chili while trying to figure out how to divide an odd amount of meat into double and triple recipes for the meatballs and Shepherd's pie.  And I ran out of time for the pizza dough.

I thought I had ingredients for everything.  I thought wrong....  I didn't even have recipes ready for everything, let alone ingredients.  At the very least I figured I had the supplies to make pizza sauce.  One can of crushed tomatoes, this is perhaps the only point in my tenure as a mother and wife that I haven't had any tomato products in my pantry.  How is it possible that I can run out of tomato sauce, paste, petite cut tomatoes, whole tomatoes, even bottled sauce at the same time! I pushed ahead, dumped my impromptu recipe (don't ask me to repeat it, it is embarassing) into the crock pot and figured I would have time to go to the store.  Hmmph....

I love my Calphalon.  I don't use my pans enough.  The grazy loved coming together in this pan.

The ap for this?  Convert units.  I should have used this before I started cooking to make the doubling and tripling easier.  I will definately use it when I do my holiday baking (and freezing).  There is nothing worse than getting to the point in your recipe that requires 3 teaspoons of something and now you have to triple it and you know it will take longer to convert it in your head but really putting 9 teaspoons of anything in a recipe is just ridiculous.  Thank you iPhone.

Almost done, Meatballs ready to be balled, pizza sauce cooking, Shepherd's Pies cooling (I extended the recipe to make three pies instead of two.  I think it is enough filling in each.  I'll let you know)

The meatball tools.  I know I could flash freeze the meatballs and they would be perfect little balls but I like to use the cookie thing to get even portions and I have had a lot of luck with Press and Seal.  Normally I would use the freezer grade but again with the planning and preparation (there wasn't any).  

The result is round meatballs with flat bottoms.  No worrying about losing a meatball when somebody sneezes and perfect for meatball sandwiches.  I like a smaller meatball because they defrost and cook faster and the boys can handle them.  Besides, there is just something gross about a huge ball of meat, but that's just me.  And I made 134 meatballs in no time at all.  We will eat the meatballs in soup, on pizza, sandwiches, and of course with pasta.  They are good in lasagna too.

So that's it.  I am now plotting my baking day which will include the pizza dough that got left out.  We are eating one of the Shepherd's pies tonight.  Perfect for a cold rainy day.