Friends Help Friends Stock Their Freezers!

I've been talking quite a bit to my friends and family lately about how I prepare food, what techniques I use to save time in the kitchen, and how I put fast healthy meals on the table after working a 9 hour day.  Even for someone who loves to cook like I do, coming home and relaxing on the couch and catching up on the day's events with my husband is much more valuable to me than slaving over a hot stove or a perfectly prepared dinner.  So in an attempt to maximize the return on my time, and ensure  we still have great food to eat during the week, I have started to prepare certain dishes on the weekend that I know will freeze well.  That way I can make larger batches or quantity and turn to them as my surefire solution to getting dinner on the table fast.

As a somewhat hilarious side note, my husband also really enjoys this pre-planning as well, but for a whole different reason than you might think.  He is a huge zombie fanatic so I'm pretty sure he looks at our freezer full of ready to go meals as the best way to be prepared for the impending zombie apocalypse!  In his mind, you can never be too prepared in case we have to make a stand! Ah, silly husbands....if we didn't love them so much! :)

Mary Beth and I are
cooking up a storm!

On a more serious note - I had been discussing these pre-planed meals and dishes quite a bit with my good friend Mary Beth.  She also wants to come home and have a meal on the table quickly without much hassle, not to mention that cooking for one person can certainly be a challenge.  She is single and works full time so I have been talking to her about how much time it could save her, not to mention the fact that it is healthier than ordering a pizza or eating prepackaged foods.  While Mary Beth thought the recipes sounded great, she was a little hesitant to try them out on her own.  Like I was saying in a previous post, not everyone likes to cook; let alone experiment in the kitchen like I do.  Crazy, right?  :)

So I decided we would get together and I would show her just how easy it would be to make all this delicious food right in her kitchen, and with her own hands!  And thus the plan was set into motion and Mission: Stock The Freezer was born!  

Ready to pour in the eggs for
Cheddar & Bacon Sandwiches

To start, I first sent Mary Beth several dishes and recipes I thought she would like to consider and let her choose 4 of them we could make in the course of one afternoon.  She chose Breakfast Egg Sandwiches (2 varieties), Veggie Burritos, BBQ Pulled Pork, and Chili.  Once she had dishes selected, I customized them to her tastes and dietary needs.  Since Mary Beth is very sensitive to lactose (poor thing!) she can't eat as much of certain cheeses and dairy so we tweaked the recipes to make them work for her. My next step was to go through each of the recipes and compile the list of ingredients she would need and then I sent her the grocery list of what to buy.  I also made a list of what cooking equipment (large rimmed sheet tray, saute pan, colander, tongs, etc.) she should have on hand, just in case she might need to borrow anything from me for our cooking extravaganza.  With all the planning done, all that was left was to set the date and time and prepare to Get Cooking! 

In the course of only 4 1/2 hours we made all the dishes, cleaned up the kitchen and portioned all the meals out for her to easily use.  In the end her freezer (with even some additional servings in the fridge for immediate enjoyment!) was packed full of delicious meals ready for when she needed them. (Note: I gave Mary Beth the BBQ Pork recipe in advance and she prepped the pork butt and started the slow cooker that morning so the meat was ready for us to put on the finishing touches 8 hours later).

Mary Beth portions out the chili
into ziplock bags using my "extra
set of hands" trick which you can
learn about in my 4x4 blog!

For the Chili, we lightened it up a bit from my 4x4 Chili recipe and went with just ground turkey.  She didn't want it too spicy so we just used onions, regular red and green bell peppers and one absolutely gorgeous poblano for some richer layers of flavor.  MaryBeth discovered that she loves cumin! She just hadn't known what the spice was called.  What a fun discovery! Now she can use it in more recipes and she has broadened her cooking repertoire which was also a goal of mine as we worked through the various dishes. Knowing it was a flavor she liked, we made the chili nice and smokey with lots of cumin, chili powder, and dried oregano.  I like to use fresh herbs when I make any kind of soup or stew that simmers for a long time to help freshen up the flavors so we also added in lots of fresh basil.  

Perhaps the most fun we had all day was when we got to squish up the cans of whole tomatoes into the pot of chili.  MaryBeth truly enjoyed the task and I think she might start putting whole tomatoes into more of her dishes just so she can squish them!  Unfortunately, I don't have any good photos to share of that part because she took me out with flying tomato juice from across the room! In fact, you might have noticed that she is wearing a different colored shirt in some of the photos.  Thankfully she changed into the darker shirt before we started having our tomato-palooza!  

BBQ Pulled Pork Goodness simmering
away in the crockpot!

The BBQ Pulled Pork recipe we used could not be simpler and it really makes for a wonderfully tender, fall apart pork that can be used in any number of preparations.  You will find the recipe at the bottom of this blog.  It is so straightforward I would be willing to bet you have everything you need in your pantry right now (minus the pork butt of course!) I haven't done much experimenting with the recipe because it turns out pretty great but I am going to work on a homemade BBQ sauce and see if that has any great impact. For a day of cooking like we had planned, being able to use a high quality bottled sauce (she chose Sweet Baby Rays) was a valuable time saver.  

Oh, and one other thing to note, while the recipe says to shred the meat with two forks, MaryBeth prefers her pulled pork chopped so that is what we did.  After all, there are not many hard and fast rules when it comes to cooking.  Do what you like, and make the food meet your needs.  Well, needless to say, it turned out great, and I think I may have created a new crockpot addict!  After all, what could be easier then setting the crockpot to high and coming back 8 hours later to all that tasty goodness?!  And at the end of the day, Mary Beth prepared this dish almost completely on her own.  

Filling and wrapping the
Veggie Burritos goes very quickly

I will share the recipe for the Veggie Burritos in a future blog the next time I stock up my freezer with the tasty treats.  You can see in the foreground of the picture the first bag of burritos that we already completed - - wrapped up, labeled and dated and ready for the freezer.  A great thing about this dish, besides the ease of reheating them whenever you need them is that they take up very little room in the freezer because you can stack them up into ziplock bags. 

You can find the recipe for my Breakfast Egg Sandwiches by reading the blog under that same name.

But let's take a look at what we ended up with after all that cooking.   She had quite the stash indeed:

The lower half of her freezer
stocked up and ready to go!

• 24 Breakfast Egg Sandwiches: 12 sausage and cheddar & 12 Pepper, Onion and Bacon - - One tasty sandwich had to be sacrificed in the name of quality control and taste testing but that is the price we have to pay for cooking tasty food.
• 3.5 lbs of BBQ pulled pork:  We portioned it out into single servings so she could defrost and reheat the portions as she wanted them.  They are also perfect when you have unexpected house guests who you need to feed! 
• 16 Veggie Burritos - About 8 servings if you figure you'll eat two of them at a sitting.   
• 8 Servings of Turkey Chili 

Mary Beth has reported back that all the food tastes great, and she wants to get together again in a few months to do it again, so I am extremely happy with those results.  Who knows, I might have a cooking convert on my hands!  

I want to thank my friend MaryBeth so very much for sharing her home and kitchen with me and for trusting me to help her create these fabulous dishes.  I had an absolute blast teaching her the recipes, talking about food and cooking techniques and most of all spending quality time with a good friend.  If you have the opportunity to cook with a friend and take advantage of planning ahead and making pre-made meals for those busy weekday dinners (and breakfasts!), I encourage you to do so.  There is nothing quite like that feeling you get when you open the freezer and see all the tasty meals just waiting to be enjoyed....

Mission Accomplished! 


BBQ Pulled Pork Recipe:
Ingredients: 
2 medium yellow onions, thinly sliced
4 medium garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 cups chicken stock or low-sodium chicken broth
1 tablespoon packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 (4-1/2- to 5-pound) boneless or bone-in pork shoulder (pork butt), twine or netting removed
2 cups of your favorite BBQ sauce (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS:
Place the onions and garlic in an even layer in the slow cooker and pour in the stock or broth. Combine the sugar, chili powder, measured salt, cumin, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Pat the pork dry with paper towels. Rub the spice mixture all over the pork and place the meat on top of the onions and garlic. Cover and cook until the pork is fork tender, about 6 to 8 hours on high or 8 to 10 hours on low.

Turn off the slow cooker and remove the pork to a cutting board. Set a fine-mesh strainer over a medium heatproof bowl. Pour the onion mixture from the slow cooker through the strainer and return the solids to the slow cooker. Set the strained liquid aside.

If the pork has a bone, remove and discard it. Using 2 forks, shred the meat into bite-sized pieces, discarding any large pieces of fat.  Return the shredded meat to the slow cooker, add the barbecue sauce, if using, and mix to combine. If you’re not using barbecue sauce, use a spoon to skim and discard the fat from the surface of the strained cooking liquid, and then add 1/4 cup of the liquid at a time to the slow cooker until the pork is just moistened. Taste and season with salt as needed.