Last week I baked some banana bread. I have also been hungry for some cinnamon bread as well but haven't made that yet. I plan to tackle a baking day here in the next week or so. I have been trying to have at least one baking day each month. I really enjoy making breads, and my family loves all types of bread.I see that lots of other people do once a month baking days as well. Stocking their freezer up with meals that they have prepared ahead of time and just thaw and throw in the oven. I have never frozen an entire meal but have thought about it and I think it sounds like a really good idea. I do freeze big batches of cooked hamburger frequently. Right now I don't have much room in my freezer for large meals. So for now I think I will just stick to my breads because that's what works for me.
What do you do? Do you have a baking day every so often where you stock up on something in your freezer?
To see what others have tackled this week head over to Tackle it Tuesday at 5 Minutes for Mom and then head over to Talk about Tuesday at The Lazy Organizer.
One of these days I would love to make breads and freeze them. Thanks for the inspiration. I look forward to hearing about recipes that work really well when frozen and thawed.
ReplyDeleteI recently started making a large batch of homemade pizza dough and freezing part of it. The day I'm going to make pizza I just pull it out of the freezer and it's thawed by dinner.
ReplyDeleteI grew up with a huge chest freezer... having just a small one now (or normal sized) doesn't make me seem like I have a whole lot of space to prepare meals a head of time and freeze them.
ReplyDeleteI will occasionally stick a second loaf of bread in the freezer, but I'll have to give more freezer cooking a try. I'm really tempted to make bread dough ahead of time - for my own bread rolls! :)
We only have a small freezer, but I like to make meatballs and freeze them, and then I also make and freeze my own red sauce. That way, I can throw it all in the pot and braise the meatballs until they are cooked through, make some noodles, and have a nice dinner. Pesto also freezes well, as does enchilada sauce.
ReplyDeleteWhenever we leave town for a length of time, I make a meal and put it in the freezer so that when we get home, all I have to do is heat it while we are unpacking/rinsing the travel grime off. Lasagna works well, but I also make empanadas and calzones and freeze them.
I would love to try my hand at bread making
ReplyDeleteYummy tackle!! Usually around the holidays I stock the freezer with baking but not on a regular basis. The stuff just goes too fast:=)
ReplyDeleteNo, that would be a good idea but I just bake when I want something. I like everything so much better when it is fresh.
ReplyDeleteI try to always keep my freezer stocked with homemade bagels and muffins so I bake 2 dozen at a time. I think pulling them out of the freezer is the next best thing to making them fresh and MUCH tastier and healthier than store bought!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was pregnant with the twins I decided that I really needed to get organized and start stashing away as many meals as I could before the 'big day'. My goal was to put away 60 meals in my freezer, I got up to 52 meals before I reached the point where I could no longer stand upright long enough to cook something.
ReplyDeleteIn my preparation for freezer cooking I found the site http://www.30daygourmet.com and quickly bought their freezer cooking manual. It really has EVERYTHING you could need to get started with freezer cooking. Including how to plan a cooking day, organize your freezer, and recipes already pre-measured for making large batches. You will not be sorry that you paid $15 for this book! I still refer to it all the time.
There are 2 things that I often do that this book suggests. One is "If you aren't using your crock pot you're wasting time". Because you can always have the crock going with something while you cook something else that requires more attention. When I do big cooking days I'll whip out BOTH of my crocks and get meals going in them before I start on more labor intensive meals. The second thing I do, I cook double (or triple) the amount of food I think we're going to need at least once a week and then I freeze the leftovers. This is SUPER easy to do and takes practically no extra time. If you're going to make spaghetti & meatballs for instance, it takes literally NO extra time to make twice the amount of homemade spaghetti sauce and perhaps only 10 extra minutes to make double the meatballs.
Another great thing I love about freezer cooking (dang, I should just post about this on my own blog! lol) is that if a friend is sick or on bedrest or whatever, I can just pull out a meal from my freezer for them. :)