French Toast and Orange pops (day 3)

Yesterday I spent some time mapping out a plan for my freezer cooking goals this month. I have a list of recipes now that I plan to make, and have divided them by weeks. If I do a little bit each work day I should have a pretty good store of food by the time baby makes an appearance. I'll post the full list sometime next week.

Today's project was French Toast. I'll share my recipe for french toast on Tuesday next week, but french toast has been a LIFE SAVER during this pregnancy. A couple months ago I discovered that french toast can be made in advance and frozen. I was so excited--though I did feel a little silly for not thinking of it before!! Now I can have a high protein meal for breakfast, and not spend the time making it (or cleaning it up). Perfect!

Prepared to be flash frozen

Today I made our favorite french toast recipe, based loosely on this one from AllRecipes. I've modified it for us, and will post my version next week. I made 12 slices, which should be enough for three breakfasts. Because I needed to zest oranges as part of the recipe, I flash froze the remaining orange slices and put them in snack bags to be Orange Pops.

After flash freezing the french toast slices, I divided them with small squares of wax paper. I'm not sure if sticking together would have been an issue or not, but now I know it won't be one!

I'd had in my head that I was going to store the french toast in the original loaf bag, protected by aluminum foil or something along that line. However, four slices (a meal for our family of 2) fit perfectly into a quart ziplock. That seemed simpler to store and use, so I made three baggies for the three meals.

Just as a note: My plan of having frozen fruit to substitute for ice cream cravings is working wonderfully. Last night my hubby got some ice cream for dessert after dinner. I wasn't craving ice cream, but did like the sound of dessert. I decided to eat one of the snack bags of grapes that I made up my first freezer cooking day to see if that sufficed. After finishing off my grapes I didn't feel any desire for ice cream. Score one for healthy treats!