Breakfast Pizza (day 4)

The last week or so I've been looking for higher protein breakfast freezer meals--and there aren't too many options out there that meet those specifications! When I say "high protein" I don't mean that it needs to have 50 grams or be the equivalent of eating a 16 oz steak. I just mean breakfast for my family needs to have a bit more "umph" than waffles, cinnamon rolls or pancakes. Sure, we enjoy those high-carb/low-protein breakfasts on occasion, but afterwards we either end up with a sugar crash (if we laden the meal with the sugary stuff that usually comes with it), or looking for something more substantial 2 hours later. A "normal" breakfast needs to have a bit more staying power.

One idea I found in a few places is "breakfast pizzas." There were quite a few different takes on how to make a breakfast pizza, so I just made what sounded good to me. Here's how it came out:

First I halved one package (six) English muffins, and soaked them in eight beaten eggs. Think "french toast" here. I added just a bit of salt to the egg, and enough Tabasco to add flavor but not heat. While the English muffins were soaking I chopped up some slices of ham and cheddar cheese (using shredded cheese would be easier, but I had a block of cheese and it worked). I also soaked my freeze dried onions and mushrooms to add as toppings (I  have a pretty good store of freeze dried veggies in my pantry, and they often come in handy!).

 Once the prep work was done the English muffins had soaked long enough so I put six on a pan lined with aluminum foil. I tried to spoon a bit more egg over the muffins, like I did with my french toast yesterday, but discovered they don't hold the egg as well. It started running all over the foil. Oh, well.

I topped the English muffins "Pizza style" with the chopped meat, onions, mushrooms, and cheddar cheese. One thing I really like about this "recipe" is that it really is as flexible as your imagination when it comes to the toppings. Whatever sounds good to you will work!

After adding the toppings I was then able to spoon a bit more egg over the top without it going everywhere. Not only did the added egg add a bit more protein, it also helped hold everything together. I popped the pizzas in the preheated oven (400 degrees) for about 15 minutes (ish... truth be told I wasn't watching the clock at all. But I think it was about 15 minutes).

After pulling the first batch out of the oven I went ahead and ate a couple for breakfast. I've never made these before and though the ingredients would be hard to mess up, it's always good to check before working in bulk (besides, I was hungry). The pizzas were wonderful. We'd be eating these tasty pizzas every week if I'd known how good they were!

I did learn on the first batch that the pizzas stick like crazy to the aluminum foil. I assumed it was because I hadn't thought to grease it. The second six I put straight on the well oiled cookie sheet, thinking this would fix the problem. Unfortunately stick-to-it-iveness seems to be a feature of the recipe--probably due to the egg. Next time I'll use aluminum foil AND oil it.

Once the 10 pizzas had cooled thoroughly I put them in ziplocks and popped them in the freezer. Two (and a half...) more breakfasts down.

Real Marriage

Joining Lisa-Jo and others this morning for Five Minute Friday, where we cut the words loose for just five minutes, and see where they fall. No editing, just encouraging the others who play along. The topic today is Real.

Life has felt very "real" lately. I've been moving and running and doing, and this baby is just around the corner. I'm an organizer, and with my due date a month away it's time to be organized.  But being real is more than lists and strategies.  It's people. The people are what make the strategies matter. Baby is only one side of my interests.

Last weekend my hubby and I went to a marriage conference where we both faced some areas in our marriage that needed work. I'd stopped being real in marriage, I'd gotten lazy and we were drifting into being partners instead of real spouses. Marriage can be so much more than that, and the conference was such a good wake up call. I've noticed that things have changed since then, we are both being more real. 

I wrote in a letter yesterday, "Biblically my highest earthly relationship is with my husband. If I'm too busy for him, I need to cut back. If I'm too tired for him, getting more sleep is non-optional. If I'm taking him for granted, I need to fix my attitude."

God didn't make me to be my husband's partner, somebody who just works beside him to get the jobs done. He made me to be a helpmeet, a home-maker, and being a home-maker is so much more than just being a partner. It's being a playmate, a lover, an encourager, a looker-on-the-bright-side, someone to laugh with. It's not just getting the housework done, or checking the relationship off a to-do list. When I let the fun side of being a wife (the laughter, the cheerful joy, the irrepressible good humor) slip, I become just a housekeeper, not a home-maker.
And "home-maker" is the REAL I choose for our marriage. 

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!

Saving money with Mama

Lessons from mama is a weekly guest post from my mother, sharing different lessons on homemaking she has learned over the years. This was inspired after I interviewed her for the series "Teachers of Good Things."  You can head over to her interview to see a more complete list of the topics we will be covering (it is under the 5th question, What would you have done differently as a single woman to prepare for this?).


Money Saving Tips for Grocery Shopping


Shop once a week, stick to your list, and shop with cash. I am not great with the shopping once a week but I know it saves both money and time.

Unit Pricing--My best tip is be sure and check out the price per ounce/pound/piece. Just because it's in the big box, doesn't mean it's cheaper! Sometimes two smaller packages are cheaper than the big box.

Avoid commercial baked goods (breads, cookies, crackers, chips etc) . Popcorn is a very cheap snack and water and tea are cheap drinks.

If money is a major concern, start thinking of meat as a condiment. Use it in small amounts with lots of veggies or pasta or rice. Learn how to cook with dry beans.

If you are new to grocery shopping, you can learn what a “good” deal is by making a Price Book. Keep a record of the items you commonly buy with a date, the store purchased from and it’s unit cost. $1 a lb for apples is a good deal; Cheese should not cost you more than $3 lb; Buy cream cheese when it is $1 lb and $2 for butter is a good deal. These things you will have memorized after you have kept records for several months. Though prices have gone up, you can still find great deals.

For the healthiest and freshest foods, shop the perimeter of the store. Dairy, Meat and produce are usually found there. Convenience foods are found down the aisles and they are more expensive than cooking from scratch.

Alter recipes. Try adding 1/4 to 1/2 cup less sugar in your baking and drink mixes; you probably will not notice a difference. Reduce the amount of cheese you add to casseroles and sauces by one fourth..
Stretch recipes. Dilute concentrated juice a little further. We drink a gallon of tea a day. I started using 2 bags of tea instead of 3 and didn’t get any complaints. Add extra noodles, beans, and vegetables to casseroles and soups for additional servings (seasonings may need to be adjusted slightly). I’m not good with gravy so I buy envelopes of gravy mix but make them go further by adding corn starch and more liquid. I add noodles to Hamburger helper and rice to Rice a Roni.

Conserve electricity when baking and cooking. If you have an electric stove, turn off the burner three minutes before your pasta or rice directions call for. The residual heat will finish the cooking. In the summer I try to bake in the evening to avoid heating up the house during the day. .

Asian Markets – I have found one close to Walmart where I do most of my grocery shopping. I stop by “KoMart” on the way to Walmart. I often find great deals on produce. I can always find green leaf lettuce cheaper there. Seasonally they will have Great deals on fruit. I will buy up huge quatities of blue berries and freeze them immediately. Also I buy soy sauce and sesame seed oil there for much cheaper than anywhere else. Their soy sauce does not have MSG. Though everything is labeled in Korean (I think), it is also labeled in English.

Buy whole chickens. If you want only breasts, save the dark quarters, freezing for later use. Buying breasts alone is very expensive.

Turkey offers better value than chicken. Larger turkeys are more economical than smaller ones because they have a higher proportion of meat to bone. Freeze leftover turkey for use in sandwiches and casseroles later. I will frequently buy 6 to 10 turkeys in November. I will cook them all up, take the meat off the bones and freeze them in meal size zip locks. This is very convenient!

When I was first married I organized my permanent shopping list by the aisles of the one grocery store that I shopped in. I kept the list posted on the refrigerator and when I used things up I would mark it down on the list. This worked great for a couple years until the store rearranged their aisles.

A tip: put a can opener in your car, along with a plastic fork and spoon. Then you can run in, buy one can of a loss leader you're not sure you'll like, open and taste. Stock up on the spot, if it suits you.

A Substitution: Mashed potatoes for Cream of chicken or Cream of mushroom soup in casseroles. (Good way to avoid the MSG in canned soups)

I learned from my daughter to save the chicken and turkey bones and make broth from them.

When buying eggs check to see that none is broken. Aldis has their large eggs for 99c a dozen all the time. Their milk is also $2 a gallon all the time.

Get a rain check if the sale item is out of stock.

If anything you buy is spoiled, return it.

Watch as the sales clerk rings things up. Mistakes are common.

Freezer Burritos, day 2

Todays's freezer cooking session was fairly impromptu. I hadn't been shopping, but had the energy to do some work in the kitchen. So I made what I was able to make with what I already had on hand. It was a fun experiment, and I think it went pretty well!

Because I was hungry, I started with a meal for me. I had a can of wild salmon I'd purchased last week and never used, and fish sounded tasty. While I'd never heard of a salmon burrito, I thought surely there was a recipe out there for one! I found a few different recipes, cobbled them together according to what I had, and ended up with this. It has salmon, black beans, rice, monterrey jack cheese chunks, onions, lime (lots of lime!), garlic and bell peppers. I think I also added a little chili pepper and salt to taste. I ate one and froze the remaining 7.  

After fixing my burritos, I made another 10 for Richard out of the things I had on hand. I forgot to take a picture of those. They had chili beans, cheese, taco meat (leftover from my last freezer cooking day), rice, bell peppers, onions, salsa, and corn. Maybe other things too--I forget! I love burritos because I can make them out of almost anything, which means my hubby can have a lot of variety while still sticking with a convenient brown-bag form (the wrapped tortilla). 

This picture made me laugh when I saw it. My belly gets into EVERYTHING these days--even this picture, apparently! 

For dinner I fixed a batch of beans and rice, based (very loosely) on this one from AllRecipes. With all the additions I made we came out with a pretty big pot of it. I asked Richard if he thought it would be good stuffing for a burrito, and he said it would. So after dinner I measured some of the leftover beans into a bowl, and added extra hot salsa, and a chopped up a spicy Nolan Ryan hotdog for a protein/flavor boost (it was the last one left, and usually Richard needs two hotdogs for a lunch). I only had three tortillas left, so I filled those up and set aside the rest of the mixture in a Ziploc bag for a future burrito stuffing day. There was just enough beans and rice left to make one more bag for either a dinner or more stuffing. 

While I was making the first batch of burritos I ran out of rice. I remembered reading on MoneySavingMom that she often froze her rice, so instead of making another small batch I made up nearly all the rice we had (it wasn't a lot). After using it for the burritos and dinner, I had about 4 cups left. I put them in freezer bags, and we'll see how well freezing rice works for me. I prefer not to use instant rice, so the idea of having normal rice in the freezer ready-to-eat intrigues me. I'd use rice a LOT more often if it didn't take so long to cook up. 

Here is a picture of the burritos I made today. Richard has 13, and I have 7 (they are divided in the middle because his are WAY spicier than I care for. If I accidentally grabbed one of his I probably wouldn't be able to eat it!). If you aren't sure how to make a freezer burrito, I give instructions here on how to wrap them.

Freezer cooking in May

This month one of the things I'm focusing on is getting a store of freezer cooked meals for use after Baby arrives. With my estimated due date just a little over a month away, we're getting pretty close!

 Ideally, I want to have a full month in the freezer, if not more. I would like to have at least 20 breakfasts, 20 lunches for Richard, and 30 dinners. As we will probably eat out a few times (whether ordering food, or with family), the church will provide one week, and family members will be over to fix a number of meals also, I believe this number of freezer cooked meals will keep us for about 6 weeks (maybe a bit longer) following delivery.

I'm planning on the bulk of the cooking to be done along with my normal cooking routine. Instead of making one dinner, I'll triple the batch and well eat one and freeze two. I've found this to be the most successful method of freezer cooking for our family, as it doesn't leave me exhausted afterwards.

I WILL be doing at least one "real" freezer cooking day this month. Mid May Zaycon is doing a chicken event in Texas. We have really enjoyed the Zaycon chicken in the past, and I've been planning on stocking up if they had an event before the baby. I'm planning on getting a full 40 lb case, which should just about take care of all the dinners I want to have ready (even allowing that some of the dinners will be shared). As I also ordered half a case of Tilapia (to come in next week) we should be set on dinners for awhile.

Later today I'll be sharing what I fixed in my first freezer cooking session.

Frozen Grape Pops

The recipe I'm sharing today is so simple I'm not sure whether I can even truly call it a recipe. It's definitely the easiest thing I make, but it is quite tasty! As the weather warms up outside I've really appreciated having a bag of these available for a quick (and healthy) snack.

Ingredient:
bunch of grapes

Wash grapes, separate from stem.

Place in a single layer in pan and flash freeze. Transfer to ziplock bag. Store in freezer.

And that's it! One ingredient and freeze! You can coat the grapes in sugar if you want to, but I don't think that step is necessary. I've done the same thing with orange slices and had excellent success there as well.

I'm an ice-cream lover, and I've found that eating a handfull of frozen grapes will actually scratch the ice cream itch without involving real ice cream. I don't even feel like I'm "saying no" to sweets when I choose the grapes, because they are so sweet already. Having a few snack bags of these on hand definitely helps me stick to eating healthy!