Planning for Fall Freezer Cooking...

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Minta

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Picked up more red and green peppers, got them chopped up and into the freezer.
 

AuntJamelle

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This weekend I made and froze a batch of Pioneer Woman Holiday Bacon Appetizers - where you sprinkle Parmesan on a club cracker and wrap it in 1/2 a slice of thin bacon. You cook all those little guys at 250 for 2 hours and then freeze. You just reheat in oven when you want to serve. Boy are those good! Thinking of making one more batch because I didn't end up with too many.

Also made a big batch of Mini Bacon Pinwheels - that classic where you spread herbed cream cheese on flattened, crustless bread cut into strips - you roll up the strips and wrap with raw bacon.

Got a bunch of those frozen and ready to be cooked day of serving! I have some tips on making these faster if anyone is interested - it really saves me some time!

And I did one batch of cookies - DH's favorite - Chunky Chocolate Gobs - baked them, then froze.

I am so happy because I have FINALLY figured out why I've been struggling so much with my ovens. I have a double wall unit and usually use the top oven. Put the oven thermometer from the RV in it last week and come to find out it runs about 25 degrees cooler than the display says. But only at first, after a "while" it comes to true temp.

Been using the bottom oven instead and finally I feel like a baker again! Was so frustrated with how I kept burning or under cooking everything!
 

AuntJamelle

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Added some more to the freezer!

6 Cheesy Garlic Bread loaf halves
2 bags of Funeral Potatoes
1 more batch of Chunky Chocolate Gob cookies (baked)
1 batch of Peanut Butter Kiss Cookie dough (will bake from frozen then add the Hershey's Kiss on top)

Just a couple more appetizers and some cookies left to go on my list! The end is in sight! Which is good because the freezers are nearly tapped out on space!
 

Cindylouwho

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AJ~ A few questions for you. (And I've edited this post 3 times adding to it, so sorry for the rambling on #3. ;-)

1. How many people are you cooking for and do you strive to have all different recipes among your 40? I do mine in double batches, then because we use leftovers in school lunches I make large batches for each meal -- so one individual freezer meals serves at least 6.

2. I noticed that Rolo Cookie recipe was Paleo. Are you Paleo at all or did you just like the recipe? I ask because I'm 85% Paleo (much less over the holidays. I'l be eating lots of gluten free cookies!). The family prefers the big more multiple ingredient meals which I do prepare but I'm always looking for ways to freeze easier Paleo recipes - but there is often fresh produce involved which makes it a bit harder to prepare in advance.

3. How long are you cooking when you do your freezer cooking? I would really like to hear more about your setup and structure in the kitchen and how you put it into your day.

The freezer cooking recipes that I have done so far are based on purchased online plans. AND I LOVE THEM BECAUSE I CAN FILL MY FREEZER IN ABOUT 3 HOURS!! (After shopping the afternoon before.) But while they are healthy and gluten free I'm still looking for Paleo versions to mix in there and then another type of plan for baking cookies. So I'm not fully "there" yet -- but getting close. It helps me when someone else has put together the recipes, combined the recipes for a shopping list and figured out the order of the prep to make it super fast. I find that if I'm cooking multiple recipes that are not related that my mind starts fragmenting and it takes me longer. There are lots of other recipes I'd like to do for the holidays but I do not have the time if I cannot prep the in advance. How do you juggle it all? I'm suspecting you are very organized person when it comes to cooking. Would love to hear a little more about how you set yourself up to cook.

I really need to start using my Paprika App more methinks.
 
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AuntJamelle

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Cindylouwho – Oh my gosh! Are you ready for this? Sorry for the BOOK!

1.) I am primarily cooking for DH and myself. DS is a very picky eater and I have a variety of meal items I can quickly make for him on demand. The number of 40 meals is most definitely not 40 different recipes! More like 17-20 I think. In many cases I am taking a recipe that was meant to serve 4-6 people and splitting it up into two pans before freezing. Then there is plenty for DH and I plus a little bit of leftovers for lunches the next day. Other recipes are big enough I can split them 3 ways.

For a larger family of course, you wouldn’t need/want to do that. But how I’ve been approaching it is that we will be eating all of these meals over the months of Nov and Dec. I’ve plugged each meal into my daily task list for those months so that I can make sure if we have Green Chile Enchiladas on Nov 1st that I am not planning on serving it again until at least Dec 1st – so there is a month in between us eating the same thing.

I suppose you could just plan to make a double batch of a particular recipe and then just plan to eat them about a month apart. It is often a lot easier to make two of the same recipe than it is to make two different ones!

Overall, I do strive to have a nice variety of the TYPES of recipes I freeze. Not all casseroles, etc. That is still a work in process because there are just some types of recipes that freeze well and you tend to see more ideas for those.

2.) I had no idea the Rolo cookie recipe was Paleo! Get me being all healthy! I like the idea of Paleo but that is not a direction we’ve gone in. I do have a good friend that is majorly into it and I’ll hit her up for ideas for you! She and I are going camping together over Halloween and we’ll have lots of time around the campfire to discuss such things!

3.) How long am I cooking? Well, that is the rub. It does take a fair amount of time. Out of a weekend, I am usually spending at least 8 hours on it. Sometimes that is broken between two days. Sometimes I do it all in one day and leave the other day for cleaning, etc.


I’ve struggled with that this year because I’m also trying to do HGP, there’s homework to do with DS, regular weekly cleaning chores and just STUFF that comes up. Let alone a minute to relax!


I’ve been doing this big PUSH over the last several weeks and when it has gotten crazy I remind myself that once November arrives I will be doing minimal cooking for the next two months. Which will be awesome! I did this last year too and it was so nice!


Where possible I have planned something really simple/easy for dinner on my major cooking day. But I won’t lie, we did have to order pizza once! And maybe make a run for the border another night…ahem…


I’ve been unable to go the route of purchasing an online plan because so many rely heavily on acidic ingredients (tomatoes, etc.) or spicy things and those do NOT work for DH. I did make/freeze lasagna, etc. for us but those are for just a few meals and one of those things where DH knows he will struggle after eating it but he wants me to make it anyway.


In order to do this big effort this year, I started planning all my meals very early – back in April or May I think? I use an Excel spreadsheet – “Make Ahead Meals” and every year I add a new tab for the year – I copy over what worked from the previous year and then build from there. The worksheet lets me see recipe name, how many batches of it I plan to make, any notes I want to make on serving suggestions, and a place to link to the recipe online or a note of where I have it saved on my thumb drive. I’d be happy to share it you wanted to take a look!


This year I went through my whole list of recipes and re-read though them and decided on a “rating” – Quick/Easy, Medium or Time Consuming. Then I looked at my daily task lists for Sept/Oct and decided when I was going to make what. I tried to only plan to do one Time Consuming recipe a weekend, along with maybe one Medium level recipe and maybe a couple of quick ones. I also tried to group up recipes with common factors.


It was helpful to cook and shred a boatload of chicken breast and then use it in several different recipes that called for it all in the same session. The other common factors I looked for were recipes that all used heavy cream, ricotta cheese or ground beef or so on.


The other thing I’ve done is include ALL the ingredients for the freezer cooking recipes in my Master Holiday Grocery Shopping list Excel spreadsheet. Once I decide what date I am going to make/freeze each recipe, I plug that into the Date Needed column in the spreadsheet. This allows me to resort the spreadsheet by date and see what I need to pop onto my grocery list for each week as it approaches. I’d be happy to share this as well if you want a peak.


It was time consuming to compile (which is why I started early!) but once I have it I can re-use the data from year to year. It also lets me filter/sort by ingredient and I can see where I might have groups of items that all use similar ingredients. This really helps me with my grouping of recipe “clumps” I mentioned above.


NOTE: My normal grocery shopping day is Thursday which works well for any fresh produce purchased for weekend recipes.


So THEN, once I have my group of recipes decided on for a weekend, I do another review and think about what I can do to be my own sous chef. On Friday night, after dinner but before dishes I will chop the veggies, shred the cheeses, measure out the spices, etc. Everything is put in a baggie or container and labeled as needed and put in fridge if needed.


This saves me a lot of time the next day! If a recipe called for peeled potatoes, I would peel and cut them the night before – they keep overnight in the fridge if covered with water. I may get out some of the pots/pans, cutting boards, etc. that I know I’ll need. I’ll set out butter to soften the night before. But I wait until first thing the next morning to set out cream cheese to soften, just to be safe.


Basically I just rack my brain as I scan the recipes for anything I can get a little jump on.


FINALLY, I decide on the order of my session – creating a little outline for myself, even if just on a scrap of paper. If I need to boil water to cook anything, meat, noodles, potatoes, etc. I plan to get that started first. If there are any ingredients I need that are already frozen I get them out to thaw. Common examples: cloves of garlic, frozen cubes of lemon juice, frozen chicken stock.


Then I would cut up and or prep any ingredients to be used in the recipes that I hadn’t already gotten to the day before. I’d probably go ahead and prep my dishes (lining with foil) and/or writing labels on ziplock freezer bags to be filled and set those aside. Then jump into the first recipe.


It depends on the recipes you are tackling, of course, as to what order would be the most efficient. If you are making a dough that has to chill, make that first then switch gears to something else while that is in the fridge, etc. I haven’t really formalized this part of things yet. I just try to think about it by Thurs or Friday before the weekend.


The whole process I described above – deciding on recipes, building all my spreadsheets, etc. - took place over the course of time (April – Aug) and things have also evolved from year to year as I learn what works best for me. This year I did a lot of repeat recipes that I knew we liked from last year. But with a few new ones thrown in too!


Oh, one more thought – I’ve been making cookies here and there but I have one big COOKIE WEEKEND planned for filling the freezer in a few weeks. One night this week I am going to go through and pre-measure all the dry ingredients for each cookie and put them in a labeled zip top bag. Then come the day, all I’ll have to do is dump and mix with the wet ingredients.


What I wish I could help with more was the Paleo side of things! But ultimately, with enough time and mulling it over and list making, you can take ANY combination of recipes and come up with a plan.


If you had a group of recipes you were looking at tackling, I would be happy to look at them and offer some suggestions along the lines of my approach above!
 

luludou

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Wow! AJ you sure have an organized method. Thanks for all the info, quite fun to read
 

Minta

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Made a big pot of chili yesterday for dinner with plenty of left overs. Stored the left over chili in large containers in the fridge. Tonight I will separate the chili into small storage containers for hubbys lunch this week and the rest will be split up into single serve portion in freezer bags and placed into the freezer. Also picked up more green peppers yesterday at the local farm market, what doesn't used for dinner tonight will be chopped up and frozen.
 

Cindylouwho

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Aunt Jamelle ~
Oh I'm so excited to see your long reply! Can't wait to read it! I'm taking kids to school right now and then today is my Christmas shopping day with DH. Will be back on tomorrow and looking at your structure. That quarter share of beef should be arriving this week. I have got to get cooking, otherwise I don't know how on earth I'm going to store it all!
 

Cindylouwho

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Well wow! I just read that long post AJ. Thank you for the feedback! Sorry for the delay -- focused on other things over here. But I'm looking at recipes this week! Some thoughts:

Number or recipes -- Ah. So you are cooking for 2. I was wondering how many freezers you had to have that many. I cook for 6. Freezer storage gets tight. I always omit the water/major liquids where I can to save space.

Making your own Excel spreadsheet to track: It sounds like you do by hand the type of Package Plan that I purchase. It sounds very streamlined and your family must just love that! I rely on Excel a lot myself for other areas -- I like its simplicity. After doing this batch cooking a few times I can see that would be nice to be able to mix up the plans because sometimes the plans have recipes we don't care for. Having said that, there's been a recent update to the plan website that I frequent that will now allow me to do that -- I haven't fussed with it yet. Been waiting til my next session. And that will be soon since the beef just arrived.

Ever used that Paprika app? Or something similar?:
I might have already asked this question. I like this app. I've been adding recipes to my account and hope to generate some cooking lists of my own. I know I can print out shopping lists for each. Wonder if I can print out shopping lists for multiple recipes. Hmm. Still streamlining my system. You are way ahead of me.

Dinner on cooking day: Here I cook one batch of one of the days recipes. I just don't wrap that one. And it is usually a slow cooker one.

Cookie Batch cooking:
I REALLY want to do that in the next few weeks. This is my number one mission for that Paprika app -- to see if i can do that. (If you are not familiar with Paprika, it will grab recipes from other websites you like and translate it into the Paprika format to save and create shopping lists etc.)

Tomatoes being in lots of recipes - Yep. I agree. I experienced this too and now make a point to balance this with broth or marinade recipes so things are not repetitive.

Paleo ~ No worries. I'm not hard core -- i just lean that way. But much less so during holidays. And the "Rolo" part of that recipe was not Paleo. ;) Still sounds good to me! :)
 

AuntJamelle

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Cooking for 6 vs. 2 definitely makes a big difference I am sure!!!

I have never heard of the Paprika app but I will check it out. It sounds like it does automatically what I have done manually. I will have to check it out!!! :) Cookies in the freezer are my focus over the next few weekends! As of last night we are starting to use all the freezer meals I put away and that will start to make some room as time goes on. My freezers are pretty full right now!

I need room to store a small turkey once they start having the deals at the grocery stores! Let alone tucking away a ham if I find a good price!