So, it is Saturday and if nothing pops up I can be found freezer cooking for the first 4 hours of the day or so. I know that seems like a lot of a precious weekend day to give up but in the long run it saves time during the week and allows me to avoid burnout.
The goal is to do this sort of order on the freezer cooking:
week one: freezer burritos, pancakes, random
week two through six: one crockpot freezer dinner per week in quantities of six.
This way I can do mass/assembly line meals and have five types of dinner and some breakfasts... in the freezer at any given time.
The reason I am doing the burritos and pancakes is because I can make them much healthier (and cheaper) than the store bought ones.
The thing that takes the longest is the
refried beans so I started that in the crockpot last night and let it go all night. This morning I mashed them and put them in the fridge to cool (you want to assemble everything cold if possible to avoid condensation and extra freezer burn).
Side note: I made a batch of veggie puree yesterday and put 4 cubes of it in the crockpot. This is just 5 colors of whatever is in season (lovely thing about California is that you can get almost anything almost any time) with a little water in the blender. It can be hidden in any sauce, stew, or crockpot recipe that is flavorful enough to hide it. We don't love a lot of veggies here (not the really healthy ones at least) so this is a way to get some extra ones in.
After that this is how the morning progressed:
Toss half a bag of shredded
potatoes (I know but you can get natural ones, it is so much easier, and still extremely cheap per serving) with some grapeseed/olive oil. Line a baking sheet with them. Put them in an oven that has been preheated to 400 and turned to 300 (to try to avoid a grease fire from popping oil on frozen potatoes with a gas oven, this way when the burner turns back any popping should be done). These can stay in until they are to your desired crispiness (I left them in an hour). Then you can toss em in a bowl and put em in the fridge to cool.
While those cooked I made the
pancakes, so they could cool. I just used a pancake recipe with 2/3 whole wheat flour and 1/3 oat flour, plus a few tablespoons flax... you can use whatever you want. You can use store bought white pancake mix and mix it with some healthy items like flax and chia seeds, do a mix of a grain pancake mix and white. I made these into silver dollars on the griddle. After they have cooled you can roll them (like coins) in press and seal (or if you have a vacuum sealer even better).
Next, I made a dozen
egg whites, with two egg yolks, into a scramble and put that in to cool.
And a dozen turkey
sausages, sliced and in the fridge.
At this point I would like to recommend, since we are saving money, if you can afford it try to get humanely raised animal products. They are better for you as well as the animal.
Then I made some home made
tortillas to have for dinner with some of the beans and some rice. I remember my first time eating fresh tortillas. Just over the border in Tecate there is a little open air shack of a restaurant and the tortillas are heaven. Normally I don't make them unless they are to be eaten plain with a side of fresh beans and rice because they are tedious to make. I used some white flour here because you really just have to with good tortillas. I don't, however, use lard. Sure they would be better, or at least butter, but since they are not to be eaten plain I am using grapeseed/olive oil. Some whole wheat and oat flours as well as some flax meal is used here too.
So, for the tortillas, I never end up with a pretty circle. My old neighbor who is from Mexico and makes tortillas regularly laughed when my daughter went over to play with some oddly shaped tortillas. Ah well, you can buy the shaper, I am not going to. They taste and work just fine. Roll out a ball of dough, toss it on the griddle. Roll out another ball quickly because these things get flipped in like 30 seconds. Keep doing that until you have finished your batch. They really only take about a minute each to cook so you can keep that griddle going.
Assembly time! For this I use store bought tortillas. Whatever is inexpensive, and lard free for us but you can get wheat, low carb... whatever you want really.
The burritos get rolled in press and seal too (I cannot afford a vacuum sealer). Each bean burrito gets beans and shredded cheese, rolled up and sealed. I serve them with taco sauce (we use the Taco Bell brand) and sour cream. The breakfast burritos get a little of each: eggs, potatoes, cheese, sausage. Those are served with ketchup here.
Well, there you have it. We have created
36 meals today for about 50 cents each (including wrapping). The pancakes and bean burritos are far cheaper than the breakfast burritos too. Probably less than 20 cents each. A lot of mornings I eat a banana with a bit of PB2 along it or some oatmeal but this way I don't have to worry about making food for my daughter when I would rather sleep the extra 20 minutes and she has much healthier frozen burritos to eat when I am in evening classes and there is no fresh dinner to be had.
Recipes: I like to get a lot of my recipes on
allrecipes.com, you can find the beans recipe there as well as anything else you need.
