It's a perfect storm for kitchen trouble right now: pay day which means a trip to the grocery store and a trip to Sam's Club, ripening produce in the garden, and a fridge full of leftovers. There is nothing wrong with leftovers, but I'm going to need that fridge space in a couple days! Hello, freezer!
Tonight's dinner will be omelets using the leftover grilled venison from Monday. There are a few marinated mushrooms floating in the jar in the fridge, and we'll slice them and stuff them in the omelets too, freeing up even more fridge space. Tuesday's chili will be portioned into rectangular 1 cup snack containers and stacked in the freezer; tomorrow I'll pop the chili "bricks" out and put them two to a quart bag and put back in the freezer - I even have toddler shoe boxes that will hold them upright. Last night's venison tips in gravy is going to be a little more work. I have a desire to have meat pies in the freezer again, so I'll thin the gravy slightly with a bit of broth, pull the chunks of meat into bite size pieces, add in sliced carrots, chopped onion, diced baked potato, frozen peas, and heat it all to get the gravy moving. No recipe because it's all tailor made for each cook and done by feel. Roll out pie crusts to fit foil individual pot pie pans (the secrets to the pie crust: use lard, a basic crust recipe, and roll out between sheets of plastic wrap so you aren't incorporating more flour which toughens crusts!). One recipe for a double crust 10" deep dish pie crust will make four pot pies with double crusts (crusts on top and bottom). Assemble, freeze, wrap well in foil, and label. When we want meat pies, we pull out of the freezer, preheat the oven to 350, and bake for an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. I know every single thing that went into them, they are homemade, and they are convenience food - fantastic!
On a side note from yesterday's post, the cake was wonderful! Moist, firm, flavorful, and easy. I highly recommend it!
I'm also planning tomorrow's dinner already. We'll have chicken fajitas on a Friday night - perfect! I keep BL/SL (boneless skinless) chicken breasts in Chili's copycat fajita marinade in the freezer. I will pull a bag of this chicken out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to thaw today, and tomorrow evening I will have thawed chicken that has been marinating as it thaws. More to follow tomorrow!
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I really am impressed with everything you are doing. I could tell from your posts that you were a knowledgeable cook, but the tips and cheats are terrific, and an unexpected bonus.
ReplyDeleteSomething else that is a benefit for me in reading your blog is that it looks like Maddie has a milk allergy. We've avoided dairy until she turned one, but the first few tries seem to be yielding bad consequences on the back end (ahem). So I need to learn about a dairy free diet, and your timing for starting this is perfect!