Procrastination has its own rewards.

I needed to write out a bunch of instructions for y’all about freezing marinades, and then one of my fab, fab, readers did it for me. Here is a perfect (and succinct) description of how to freeze marinades from Mary at Canay’s Corner (BTW, adorable blog!) Here is what Mary had to say:

Thanks for all you have done so far. You have really inspired me. I marinated two flank steaks the other night. I had bought three like you suggested but I ended up having one that night. I didn’t use the recipe I put in the previous post because I found a recipe that I used to make when I was first married and decided to use that. I haven’t read how to do the marinated meats yet. But what I did was just put the meat and the marinade in a Ziploc bag and then put that Ziploc bag in another Ziploc bag with the zipper part going the opposite way. Looking forward to seeing how you recommend. Rest up and we will see you later…

 

Thanks for the break Mary!

Now – on to Meal Swapping or Six Chicks Freeze and Fix

When my kids were in elementary school, there were a few years where I was working flexible, but full-time hours and I needed to do the whole Freezer Cooking thing on speed.

I believe it was my friend Vikki who came up with the idea of six of us doing a Freezer Swap. (But I do say with a stupid amount of pride that I came up with the name Six Chicks Freeze and Fix.)

At first we tried to all cook together. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun, but then we realized we were giving up one of the greatest benefits of Freezer Cooking – the ability to cook when it is convenient to you.

After our first time, we each cooked at our own homes and then met to swap.

Here is how our group worked:

Each of us chooses three recipes to cook for our group and then we each send out the suggested recipes to the rest of the group for discussion. (Example: if someone suggested doing a bell pepper dish, I, being a hater of all things bell pepper, would ask for either a different dish or swap a substitute dish.)

Here are the three types of recipes that we would exchange:

1 Marinade (half the group does chicken breasts, the other half would do another meat such as flank steak, pork roast or pork chops. Then we would swap meats the next month.)

1 Casserole

1 Wildcard (this is something like a soup, another marinade, another casserole, a chili, etc.)

Each of these recipes would be x6.

So here is a sample of what I would make:

Six family sized-meals of Teriyaki Chicken

Six family sized-meals of Baked Ziti

Six family sized-meals of Chicken Cacciatore

Once I had all my meals prepared, packaged and frozen, I would pack them all into my cooler and go to the pre-determined time and place of “the swap”. (Usually at church or in the parking lot of our local Costco before it’s open.)

That way, each of us would go home with 18 different meals. Cool, huh.

OK, now you have the basic concept. Tomorrow I will give you some of the etiquette of meal swaps and how to remain friends while swapping Dreamy Spaghetti.

 

 

 

Here are the winners:

*J. Wong

August 26, 2009 at 8:07 pm

*Christine

August 25, 2009 at 10:50 am

*Jessica Fall

August 24, 2009 at 10:35 am

Ladies, please send me your mailing addresses and the books will be in the mail.

OK – I am going to give away three more books this week – leave a comment and I will put you in the drawing (yes, I love y’all that much.)

The rest of this week I will be answering your questions.

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