Food Prep tip to save time

**bee9984** · 03-18-2008, 05:52 PM

Another thing that I do too is when I make up a cake sometimes I will double the recipe and bake them in bread pans, pop them out of the pans,wrap and freeze. I put frosting on them after they have thawed. This is great for lunches

**Judi Dial** · 03-18-2008, 07:10 PM

most of what I do is "companion cooking." If I make enough for more than one meal, we usually eat it until it's gone, or there's three meals from it (6 portions). That seems to be our limit. At that point, I either need to alter it or freeze the remainder or it (eventually) gets tossed.

So, what I do is throw potatoes in the oven when I'm cooking a roast. We'll have hash or baked potatoes topped with whatever sometime in the next few days. I've thrown in rolls, cookies, squash, baked veggies, another roast, bread.... The last time I made up a meatloaf I cooked 3 stuffed peppers and two meatloaves from the same meat mix, all cooked at the same time. That kept us for a while!

Judi

**CoCo** · 03-21-2008, 10:57 PM

boil your taters with skin on, in the largest pot you have Boil for 5 mins cover pan and let stand for 10 mins. drain the water and let cool , I put mine on cake/ cookie racks to cool. take a paring knife and scrape the skin off, make into grated , or sliced and place in air tight container, they will keep for a week. OR you can freeze them but place on cookie sheet in single layer untill frozen so they are not a big GLOP in a bag.

Hope this helps

**staceyy** · 03-22-2008, 12:32 AM

I also bake and freeze cookies, pancakes, waffles, cupcakes etc. Lately, I've been making up a lot of mixes and storing them in plastic containers. I go through my cookbooks and make enough mixes for the week. For instance, this week I assembled the dry ingredients for pancakes, waffles, scones, biscuits, coffecake, banana bread and muffins one batch at a time. Having all of the dry ingredients out on the counter makes it easy to assemble these batches quickly. I then label each container with the name of the mix and the title and page of the cookbook the recipe can be found in. The night before I combine the wet ingredients for the mix I decide to prepare the next day and place in the refrigerator. In the morning, I combine the dry ingredients with the wet and bake. I am a professional baker so I enjoy doing this. I'm not a big fan of master mixes, I like a lot of variety and don't like the underlying taste to be the same.

**Athena31** · 03-22-2008, 10:29 PM

humm never tried the potato idea. I will have to see if that will work for me sometimes when I am going to be short on time.

**nessarowdy** · 03-25-2008, 11:06 AM

I love the frozen mashed potatoes, too! Great idea! Before it warms up too much before summer, I bake cookies, cupcakes, cornbread muffins, breads, etc. and throw in the freezer. Then we can enjoy homemade yummies without heating the whole house during those steaming hot days... I also buy and chop up green peppers and other seasonal veggies to go in the freezer for winter. Thanks for the awesome tips, everyone!

**mombottoo** · 03-25-2008, 12:42 PM

I do the same thing with celery. I have found it keeps longer and stays fresher than it does if you leave it stalked. The upside is there are celery sticks ready for munching on or if I only need a little bit it is ready to be diced.

**cissylu** · 03-25-2008, 04:48 PM

there is a lot of thing`s I haven`t done . this is a very interesting site.
I`m ging to try thr frozen mashed potato`s.
keep ithe idea`s rolling.

**larabelle** · 03-26-2008, 11:42 PM

I make up a large batch of chili.
1.) I then save some in individual containers for lunches.
2.) I freeze some of the chili in individual ice trays, once this has frozen I place the cubes into a gallon size freezer bag. I use the cubes on miniture pizzas, baked potatoes etc. That way whenever I want just a small amount of chili, I have got it.

**mommy4ever** · 03-27-2008, 12:42 PM

I like planned leftovers!

Leftover meatloaf can become:

* a meatball sandwich
* taco meat
* meat sauce for spaghetti.

Leftover roast can become:
* french dip
* stew
* soup

Left over chicken/turkey can become:
* open face sandwiches
* Ground sandwich meat(store frozen)
* soup
* stew

**Libby** · 03-27-2008, 06:39 PM

This is a great thread ladies!!!

But how do you defrost your frozen mashed taters? Just let thaw in fridge a few hours before? Night before? Or do you nuke them?

I never thought of chopping up veggies and freezing them let alone cooking meat with seasoning and freezing too!!

**kellydoeshair** · 03-31-2008, 03:45 PM

last week on sunday I did a whole chicken in the crockpot then portioned it and saved it in the fridge and freezer for all kinds of stuff stir fry, salads, wraps, quesadillas it's nice to have fresh chicken on hand and not that rubbery stuff they sell in the store yuck!

**Luv2BeFrugal** · 04-14-2008, 03:54 AM

About every 6 weeks or so I get my big stock pot out. I cook up a HUGE batch of pinto beans (nice and cheap!). I freeze most of them in meal size portions and then the "bean broth" and several cups of the beans turn into a soup...along with some taters and veggies.

I pull a baggie of beans out of the freezer one day before we're going to use them...this process usually yields me about 12-15 bags.

We eat bean and rice burritos, beans and corn (with cheese and sour cream), beans and cornbread, and sometimes I'll pull a baggie out to make a quick crock pot of soup.

We buy our onions in bulk at Costco... I chop up one or two at a time (diced) and they live in the fridge... This is great for tossing into scrambled eggs, bean burritos, etc. I need to try the freeze-job on the onions...those bags from Costco are hard to get through before the last couple onions go bad. Regardless, it's WAY cheaper to buy them that way.

Love this thread! Keep the tips coming!

**lisettelovebug** · 04-14-2008, 11:28 PM

Originally Posted by Lalapops

So,, I can freeze homemade cookies and make my family think I am still baking all the time? hehehe

I'm loving this site more and more each day!

I can't freeze cookies. I eat them!!! lol. Even when I freeze the dough I find myself raiding them and either eating the dough raw or sticking a bunch in the toaster oven for myself... LOL. Even if I try to be good, they call my name!!!!

**momof2joys** · 04-15-2008, 08:51 AM

Some things I do, are try and prepare the next days meal in the crockpot and in the morning when we leave for work, pull it out and turn it on. Low settings for things that don't take that long to cook and higher settings for things that do. I also will spend a day or two once a month and cut up veggies, carrots, celery, onions, peppers, etc. This way we have then on hand and they don't spoil by staying the fridge. We make a lot of meals with our crockpot, so anytime we can just pull from the freezer and dump into the crockpot is a good day for me!!

I also have a food dehydrator (don't know what they cost, my MIL got it for me for x-mas on year) so in the summer and fall when there are a ton of apples (my great aunt has a few apple trees, and since she passed away, my family has just been mowing her lawn and making the grounds look nice until her daughters figure out what they are going to do with the place, so they said we could have as many apples as we wanted) I just cut them up and dehydrate them and freeze some so my kids always have snacks. It beats paying almost $2.00 a bag at the store. I usually soak my apple slices in lemon juice (helps them from turning brown), and some times I mix in orange juice or food coloring just for something different. The kids love them and they are great for road trips too!!