Bran Muffins

A breakfast staple for me is bran muffins. They freeze well and are ready to eat after just a minute in the microwave. I make a double batch, and they last for a couple months. This is the standard 6-week bran muffin recipe, but I have made several adjustments over the years to make them more to my liking. The regular recipe calls for buttermilk, but I started using skim milk or mixed dry milk several years ago. I actually like the taste better and it has fewer calories.

Bran Muffins
5 tsp baking soda
2 cups boiling water
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup applesauce
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 TB salt
1 qt milk (I just use reconstituted dry milk)
5 cups flour
2 cups bran flakes
4 cups all bran cereal
2 TB cinnamon
1/2 TB nutmeg

Dissolve soda in boiling water. Cream shortening, sugar and eggs. Combine salt, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg. Add flour mixture and milk alternately into shortening mixture until well blended. Blend in water and soda mixture. Stir in cereals. Let batter sit in fridge overnight to soften cereals. Bake at 375 for 15-17 minutes. Freeze in gallon ziploc bags. Makes 4-5 dozen muffins.Claire the muffin thief:

Mom's Lasagna

Tonight we're having lasagna for dinner. Pasta dishes such as lasagna freeze great. Assemble the dish as normal, but don't cook the noodles. Drizzle about 1/4 cup water over your assembled lasagna, cover with foil and the baking dish lid. Freeze. Thaw in the fridge and bake as usual. Here is my mom's recipe. It's the one I have always used.

Lasagna
1 lb hamburger
1-2 cloves garlic
1 chopped onion
1 can tomato sauce
½ c water
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp dried basil
½ tsp thyme
1 can tomato soup
2 tsp vinegar
9 lasagna noodles, uncooked
1 pt cottage cheese
1 pt ricotta cheese
½ lb mozzarella
Parmesan

Brown hamburger garlic and onion, drain grease. Add tomato sauce, spices, water, soup, and vinegar. Simmer 30 minutes. Assemble by layering noodles, ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, meat sauce, and mozzarella, repeat three times. Sprinkle top with Parmesan cheese if desired. Cook at 350 for about an hour until bubbly.


The assembly process for a large batch. This is a quadruple batch that I put into one 9x13 and six 8x8 pans.

Tracking System

One of the biggest challenges I have found with freezer cooking is remembering what I have in the freezer. I will often find things more than a year old sitting at the bottom of the freezer. Usually it's best to use things within three months. Here is my newest system. I developed a simple spreadsheet listing the name of the food, the date it was made and several additional columns to list what I have such as a 9x13, quart bag, gallon bag, etc. It has worked great. I taped a pencil next to it on the freezer door. When we take anything out, we just mark it off. Then I can see what needs to be used up and what we have left. You can download my Excel file using the link below.

Freezer Food Excel Doc

BBQ Chicken Pizza

Tonight was pizza night. We have found that pizza freezes great. We cut out several cardboard rounds about the same size as our pizza stone then cover them with heavy aluminum foil. Spread the dough over the foil covered cardboard and make your pizza as usual. Wrap with several layers of plastic wrap and freeze. To thaw, take your pizza out in the morning. While frozen gently pull your pizza away from the foil and place on your pizza stone or pan. Thaw in the fridge. Bake as usual. (Don't try baking your pizza on the cardboard round. My sister did this while staying with Claire when I was in the hospital. It will set off your smoke alarm, so unless you are looking to test that out, I wouldn't suggest it.)


Here is our favorite pizza dough. You just make it in the bread machine, but you could definitely make it by hand as well.

Cheese and Garlic Pizza Dough
1 1/4 cups warm water
3 to 4 TB extra virgin olive oil
3 1/2 cups bread flour
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 to 2 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp instant yeast

Place ingredients in your bread machine and set for dough mode.

BBQ Chicken Pizza
2 cups cooked and shredded chicken
1 1/2 cups BBQ sauce, divided (our favorite is Famous Dave's)
3 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion

Mix about 1/2 cup BBQ sauce with shredded chicken. Spread remaining sauce over rolled out dough. Sprinkle with 3 cups mozzarella. Spread chicken and onions over cheese and top with remaining mozzarella. Bake at 400 for about 15-20 minutes.

Bread Mixes

I love good homemade bread. Wonderbread just doesn't cut it. I really enjoy the wheat bread from Great Harvest, but I have a bad tendency to also purchase a loaf of their pumpkin chocolate chip bread when I go there. A few months ago I pulled out my bread machine and started using it faithfully again. Making bread in the bread machine certainly isn't hard, but I was looking for a way to make it even easier after the twins arrived. It can take some time, especially if I need to grind the wheat. In order to streamline this process, I decided to put together my own bread mixes for my machine. It took me about an hour to put together a dozen mixes for our favorite wheat bread. I ground a couple cans of wheat and lined up 12 Ziploc bags, measured the ingredients for each, sealed the bag, and put them in the freezer.

This morning I decided to make bread. All I had to do is pull out my mix and add water and yeast. It took me two minutes compared to the 15 it usually takes to pull everything out and measure it all. Around here 13 minutes is a big deal.

50% Whole Wheat Bread
(from the cookbook for my Panasonic bread machine)

1 1/2 tsp yeast
1 3/4 cups bread flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp wheat gluten (opt)
1 1/2 tsp dough enhancer (opt)
2 TB dry milk
2 tsp salt
2 TB butter
2 TB molasses
1 7/16 cups water

The original recipe doesn't call for the gluten or dough enhancer, but I think they really help.

She really does like the bread. Claire just woke up from a nap and wouldn't smile for me.

Random Tips

• I generally don’t precook noodles—like in lasagna. I just put them in and pour a little extra water over it after I have assembled it. They soak up a lot of moisture as they are cooling, freezing and then cooking. It saves you a dirty pan and a whole step in the process.
• I freeze everything possible in Ziplocs. They take way less room in the freezer. Just freeze them flat and they stack or can be easily stood up. I freeze everything else in Gladware plastic bakeware.
  
• Many of my recipes call for precooked chicken. I buy a large amount of chicken at Sam’s Club and then cook it all in the crock pot. Just drizzle some olive oil or put a little butter with the chicken while it cooks. Otherwise it tends to be a bit dry.
• When freezing something like Sloppy Joe meat or shredded BBQ pork, freeze it in muffin tins and pop them out when frozen. Store in a large Ziploc. These are generally good individual size portions.
• Preassemble crockpot meals and freeze them. Put everything together in a bag for the meal (meat, seasonings, veggies, etc. When you want to cook it, just thaw it in the fridge overnight and pop the meal in your crockpot the next day.
• When filling Ziplocs put them inside another container like a tall glass and wrap the sides of the bag around the glass while filling. It’s way less messy. Also, don’t usually fill your bags more than about ½ full.
• Start with your dishwasher and garbage can empty and clean as you go.
• When freezing everything spread it out in your freezer as much as possible. You want it to freeze quickly.
• Put your recipes in page protectors and use a magnet to attach them to the stove hood or somewhere easy for you to see quickly so you aren’t always digging to find your recipe.
• Most recipes freeze just fine. Just experiment.
  

Intro

I decided to start this blog after being asked many times about how I do freezer cooking. I have been doing freezer cooking for several years. I started doing it because I was too tired after work to come up with anything to eat. Now I do it because I'm too tired at the end of the day to cook after taking care of three demanding children under the age of two. Having a stocked freezer is the only reason we have had food to eat this past month as we have adjusted to newborn twins. This site is intended to be a collection of random tips, ideas and recipes I have come up with over the years. If any of you have wonderful recipes, I'd love to post them with pictures.