Remember Me? Cooking Update!

I've been a sad excuse for a blogger, and haven't posted anything mildly interesting for a couple weeks. I actually have some things to share, so here they come... finally!

First up, a li'l cooking update. More like, a long-winded cooking update.

I haven't followed along exactly with MoneySavingMom.com's freezer cooking challenge, but it's been inspiring some of my recent cooking endeavors and providing me with great recipes to try in the future.

Brown Bag Burritos

When looking at MoneySavingMom.com's freezer cooking recipes that she was planning to tackle this month, I was most excited to try out the Brown Bag Burrito recipe. They sounded like something the hubby & I would enjoy because we're suckers for Mexican food. I tackled the recipe last week,  cooking the meat filling one day, then letting it hang out in the fridge overnight. I was glad I did this, because the mixture was a bit soupy and may have resulted in soggy tortillas.

With the overnight fridge time, it was the perfect consistency to scoop onto a tortilla! And let me just say, it was fun having a kitchen island + counter full-o-burritos!

Even better was having them all wrapped up and ready to freeze. :)

We had them for two dinners last week and they reheated great! The oven method was easiest because I could leave them to do their thing, although I found I had to cook them for 15 minutes longer than the recipe called (45 minutes total at 350 degrees). The real testament to their tastiness was when my husband said he really enjoyed them! Phew.

I highly recommend this recipe: it's easy, makes a whole slew of burritos, and is delicious.

AND, you can make it super inexpensive. I got a great deal on lean ground beef to make these.I bought about 3 lbs, used 2 lbs for this recipe, then formed the rest into hamburger patties and froze those. Just had the burgers today for lunch and will have the rest tomorrow for lunch... yay for multitasking meat purchases!

Pizza Dough

MoneySavingMom.com made freezer-friendly pizza dough, but I had actually tried out a different pizza dough recipe from the Rachael Ray food magazine "Every Day", and froze it a couple weeks ago. I used it to make pizza last week, last night, and will do the same tonight. It worked out great; the dough defrosts well, and it's great to have on hand when you can find good prices on cheese, pizza sauce, & toppings. I actually found a ginormous thing of pizza sauce from Sam's (107 ounces for $3.88... I know) and froze it in about 3/4 C servings. So now when I need some pizza sauce, I grab a cube-o-frozen sauce and I'm good to go! In my previous life, I never thought I'd be buying so very much pizza sauce.... and then freezing it. Ha.

Cookie Dough

I've been making cookie dough and freezing it off and on for months, but I've been doing it more frequently over the last month to save time. And because I love cookies. And because there's nothing better than a fresh, warm, delish cookie. And maybe because I bought the biggest bag of Nestle chocolate morsels ever from Sam's.

My personal fave is chocolate chip, and I use my grandma's secret Nesslay Toolhouse recipe (one of my fave Phoebe moments from Friends :)). I was glad to see that MoneySavingMom.com is also a fan of frozen cookie dough!

I was feeling adventurous, so I baked some dough on the spot, using two scoops per cookie to make some bigger cookies.

And popped them in the freezer. A couple hours later... I added ice cream. Homemade ice cream cookie sandwiches. 'Nuff said.

Homemade Baking Mix = Sour Cream Blueberry Muffins

This past week, I was excited to finally try out the homemade baking mix that I made a couple weeks ago. So I found a really simple sour cream blueberry muffin recipe from AllRecipes.com, and made them Monday morning. Super fast to assemble thanks to the homemade baking mix, and only five ingredients required (the mix, sour cream, blueberries, eggs, and sugar). I did NOT let the baking mix thaw at all, I just decided to take a risk and use it straight from the freezer. No problems encountered!

End results: 1) Delicious blueberry muffins, 2) Super happy me (with the knowledge that I made my own Bisquik and have  a bunch in the freezer).

Homemade Sandwich Rolls: The Obsession Continues

Lastly, the homemade sandwich rolls. I made them two Sundays ago, and I'm still obsessed with the recipe. And the fact that they indeed freeze SO WELL. So please make them, now. Because I can't even explain how amazing it is to be able to have fresh sandwich rolls on a whim (a whim being a minimum of three hours of thawing)!!! And I actually think they're better post-freezing, because they end up rising as a taller roll (when I baked them with fresh dough, they were short and wide).

The proof: Pulled-pork sandwiches that we made last weekend using thawed buns. The hubby & I were making annoying "mmmmm" sounds the entire time we ate them. True story.