Freezer Cooking: March 2010, all wrapped up!

Good morning all, I'm still here. Sorry for the lack of postings over the weekend. I was up to my elbows in pizza sauce and white chili! I'll be getting this weeks shopping list posted today.

With the exception of one batch of garlic bread, I was able to complete everything on my task list for March!


Sunshine Chicken x2
Lemon Pepper Chicken x2
Pizza Sauce x4
Pizza Dough x4
Homemade Mac & Cheese x3
Brown Rice x3
Garlic Bread x4
Italian Sausage & Veggies for Spaghetti Sauce x2
Italian Sausage for Pizza x4
Lasagna x2
Cooked, Diced Chicken Breast x2
Whole Wheat Rolls x3
Kung Pao Chicken Kit x2
Jasmine Rice x2
White Chicken Chili x2

It was a long, exhausting weekend, but what a relief to have all of our dinners and lunches for the month ready to go.

Later today I'll be doing a total freezer inventory (right now all my work from the weekend is in the refrigerator, waiting to be moved to the freezer). This will help me put everything away in some sort of order and get a full list of all available meals (some of Feb meals are still in there too!)

Thanks for following Pinch The Penny!

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Freezer Cooking: March 2010, in progress....

Well, we are under way for March! I got off to a very late start so I haven't made too much progress yet, but nothing on my task list was too complicated or time consuming, so I'm not too worried about it.

Sunshine Chicken x2
Lemon Pepper Chicken x2
Pizza Sauce x4
Pizza Dough x4
Homemade Mac & Cheese x3
Brown Rice x3
Garlic Bread x4
Italian Sausage & Veggies for Spaghetti Sauce x2
Italian Sausage for Pizza x4
Lasagna x2
Cooked, Diced Chicken Breast x2
Whole Wheat Rolls x3
Kung Pao Chicken Kit x2
Jasmine Rice x2
White Chicken Chili x2


Yes, I changed Tacos to White Chicken Chili. I found a new recipe this week, which we tried out a couple of nights ago and it was delicious!! Simple and inexpensive to make too, so I decided to make a substitution for it this month and add it to the menu.

I'm hoping to make some additions to this site to be able to include some of my favorite recipes, so watch for that soon. Back to the kitchen!!

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Freezer Cooking: March 2010

After a great day of shopping yesterday, I was able to pick up most of the ingredients I didn't already have on hand for our meals for the month. I do plan on one trip to Sam's Club to pick up just a few more things, and then we will be set.

After I got our meal plan for March figured out, I was able to break down my task list for my cooking day(s). This is what it looks like:

Sunshine Chicken x2
Lemon Pepper Chicken x2
Pizza Sauce x4
Pizza Dough x4
Homemade Mac & Cheese x3
Brown Rice x3
Garlic Bread x4
Italian Sausage & Veggies for Spaghetti Sauce x2
Italian Sausage for Pizza x4
Lasagna x2
Cooked, Diced Chicken Breast x2
Whole Wheat Rolls x3
Kung Pao Chicken Kit x2
Jasmine Rice x2
Taco Meat x2


It may look like a lot, but it will all cook up pretty fast. I actually think this month will be faster and easier than last month since I'm not doing two soups.

The first two tasks are actually really simple. I like to get my chicken fresh (not frozen) so that I can mix up all of my marinades and divide my chicken into freezer bags and then store them in the freezer with the marinade. Then, the night before I would like to serve, I can pull it out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator to thaw. The next day, all I have to do is pull it out and either throw it in the over or throw it on the grill. All of the prep, marinade time, etc. has already been done.

Like I've mentioned before, we LOVE homemade pizza. So I'll make up a huge batch of sauce, enough for eight pizzas, plus an extra recipe or two to make pizza pockets for quick lunches with the kids. The dough is really easy to whip up in my Kitchenaid and it freezes really well. We usually make a mixture of whole wheat and white flour, but I recently discovered 'white whole wheat flour', so I'll be using that for this our dough this month.

Macaroni & Cheese is of course a kid favorite, and my husband and I enjoy it too, so it's an occasional side dish. We haven't had it in a while, so I'm going to make a few batches. I discovered a new way of making it, with sour cream and sharp cheddar cheese to make the sauce. I've tested it a few times and did find that it needed just a tiny splash of milk to smooth it all out, and just a pinch of sugar to offset the sharpness of the cheese. It's very good though.

Brown rice is always a nice side to a chicken dinner, but I seem to always time it wrong, so that everything else is done and ready to eat and the rice is still cooking on the stove. (and brown rice takes longer to cook than white rice!) So last month I made up two giant pots of brown rice all at once and froze it in meal size portions and it worked out so well. It only took about five minutes to heat through and it was ready to serve. I'll be doing this again for March.

I'll admit it. I'm very picky when it comes to spaghetti sauce. Very picky. There is one and only one brand of jarred sauce I will buy, and even that needs to be.... doctored. :o) We add really good italian sausage, green bell peppers, fresh garlic and onions and a few herbs to the jarred sauce or to canned tomatoes, which ever we have on hand. If I'm going to brown up one pound of sausage, I might as well brown up five pounds and get it over with for the whole month. So I'll chop all the veggies and saute with the browned sausage and get it all ready to go. I'll package in meal size portions in freezer bags, and its ready to be tossed with sauce whenever we are serving spaghetti. I use virtually the same mixture for lasagna too.

Speaking of lasagna, that's probably one of my favorites for fresh-home-cooked-meal-meets-convenience! I'll make up two pans this month, but I've been known to make four or five pans of lasagna at a time. Once I'm making one pan, it doesn't take too much more work to do a few more. I got a huge pack of disposable pans at Sam's Club a while back and they work really well for making up pans of lasagna, enchiladas and other 'pan' food and they work great in the freezer. I take my lasagna strait from the freezer, to the oven and it takes about one hour and its ready to serve. Not a single dirty dish involved in getting this meal on the table at dinner time!

Since I'm hoping that spring really is around the corner here, I'm not going to make soups for this month. Instead I'm making my husband's favorite Chicken Salad. Obviously a cold chicken salad wouldn't do well being frozen in its entirety. The veggies wouldn't taste so great after thawing. But, I will cook up all of my boneless, skinless chicken breast, chop it and divide it, so that it's ready to be tossed with the veggies and dressing when its time to eat. Although it's not totally prepared in advance, doing at least this one step will greatly cut down on the prep time and mess.

Another great idea is to make up dinner kits. Some things can't be frozen all together, but could be separately. Like my Kung Pao Chicken. I'll mix up the marinade and put that and the chopped chicken in a freezer bag. But I'll also mix all of the ingredients for the sauce that goes on after the chicken has been cooked, and I'll place that in another freezer bag. I'll place both items together with a batch of Jasmine Rice in one big freezer bag, and label it "Kung Pao Dinner Kit". Not totally ready to serve, but much of the time consuming prep work will be done.

Aside from all of this, I'm going to also make a few breakfast items and baking kits for March. I'm shooting for Saturday to get it all done, but maybe I'll get a head start tomorrow.


If you are interested in trying out Freezer Cooking, I highly recommend you checking out what FishMama and Crystal have to say. They certainly are the experts!

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Meal Planning & Freezer Cooking: March 2010

Wow, it's March already. The month is already in progress and I'm just now sitting down to think about our meal plan for the month. I'm just getting started as everyone else in the world of blogging is finishing up their cooking for the month!

Good thing I went overboard last month with my freezer cooking, we still have lots of meals leftover. Homemade Pizza will continue to be a weekly feature, I can make the sauce, dough, and prep some of our favorite toppings all in advance, and it's super fast and easy to put together later, and sooooooo yummy!

This is what I'm planning for the month... well, three weeks. I'm not going to do my big cooking day till Thursday at the earliest, but possibly not till Saturday. I'm going to stock up on a few items at Rainbow this week to get my started for the month.


Beginning with Sunday, March 7th

7. Crock Pot: BBQ Pork
8. Grilled Chicken, Homemade Mac & Cheese & Veggie
9. Pork Tenderloin, Brown Rice & Veggie
10. Spaghetti & Garlic Bread
11. Grilled Sandwiches & Salad
12. Steak, Sweet Potato Fries, Salad
13. Homemade Pizza
14. Chicken Salad, Whole Wheat Rolls & Fruit
15. Grilled Sandwiches, Salad
16. Chicken, Brown Rice & Veggie
17. Spaghetti & Garlic Bread
18. Zuppa Tuscana Soup & Bread
19. Grilled Sandwiches, Salad
20. Homemade Pizza
21. Wild Rice Soup & Whole Wheat Rolls
22. Sunshine Chicken, Brown Rice & Veggie
23. Lasagna & Garlic Bread
24. Grilled Chicken, Homemade Mac & Cheese & Veggie
25. Kung Pao Chicken with Veggies & Jasmine Rice
26. Tacos
27. Steak, Sweet Potato Fries, Salad
28. Homemade Pizza
29. Chicken Salad, Whole Wheat Rolls & Fruit
30. Grilled Sandwiches, Salad
31. Lasagna & Garlic Bread


I can't begin to explain how much this helps us on a day to day basis. I have the meal plan on our refrigerator, so we all know "what's for dinner tonight". :) Having everything made up in advance, or at least much of the prep work done is such a time saver, money saver and makes for fewer dishes!!

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Weekend Wrap Up & This Weeks Deals

I can't even begin to express how tired I am right now. I cooked all weekend and we are ready for February to begin. After bagging up the last little big of the world's best ever homemade pizza sauce, here's how my punch list is looking:

Wild Rice Soup x4
Zuppa Tuscana Soup x5
Lasagna x2
Sunshine Chicken x4
Brown Rice x6
Pizza Sauce x5
Chili x2
Spaghetti Sauce x2
Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls x4
Garlic Bread x4
Cornbread Mix x2
Pizza Crust x5

Yes, that's right. All of my cooking is completely finished! Hooray! I decided to leave the few baking items till tomorrow, since my knees are going to buckle if I'm standing upright at the counter for another second. But I'd say that's not bad for one weekend! I did all of my cooking both Saturday and Sunday in the evenings, and that was the main reason it took both days. If I had started in the morning, I should have been able to do it all in one day. Maybe next month.

As I am so exhausted from all this cooking, I'm going to head off to bed now and work on my shopping lists for this week early in the morning. Stay tuned, there should be some good deals this week. A few highlights I've seen already are:


Avocados - $0.39 each at Aldi

Nabisco Crackers - FREE with doubled coupon at Rainbow Foods

Tostitos Chips and Dip - $1.00 each with coupons at Target

Philadelphia Cream Cheese - $0.50 with doubled coupon at Rainbow Foods


Also, don't forget to check all your favorite online coupon spots in the morning, as most of them will be resetting their stock and loading up fresh new coupons! Goodnight all!

(I'm not going to bother with a Saturday Savings Summary this week. I shopped a LOT and I saved a LOT this week. I also cooked for an army, so we'll get back to that next week.)

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Freezer Cooking: February 2010, part 2

Amazingly, I got a lot done yesterday for my February Freezer Cooking. My progress so far:



Wild Rice Soup x2
Zuppa Tuscana Soup x5
Lasagna x2
Sunshine Chicken x4
Brown Rice x6
Pizza Crust x5
Pizza Sauce x5
Chili x2
Spaghetti Sauce x2
Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls x4
Garlic Bread x4
Cornbread Mix x2



Yes, Zuppa Tuscana Soup increased from x2 to x5, I made a bit more than I planned on making. My Wild Rice Soup ingredients are all finished, I just have to throw it all together. The pizza makings are very easy and quick to make so they will be done in no time, spaghetti sauce and lasagna go hand in hand, and then I just have my baking items, which I think I will finish this evening. A great start to the month of February, when I'm trying lots of new things to stretch our budget and save some money.

I've also been pouring over the grocery ads in today's paper, I've starting my deal lists and will hopefully have those done tonight or early tomorrow morning.

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Freezer Cooking: February, in progress....

I'm off and running in my efforts to cook for the month of February. My stove top is full of pots, bubbling away. This is what I'm working on
accomplishing today:



Wild Rice Soup x2
Zuppa Tuscana Soup x2
Lasagna x2
Sunshine Chicken x4
Brown Rice x6
Pizza Crust x5
Pizza Sauce x5
Chili x2
Spaghetti Sauce x2
Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls x4
Garlic Bread x4
Cornbread Mix x2




In all likelihood, I won't get it all done today, but I hope to have it finished by the end of the day tomorrow. Now, I'm off to pick up a few deals at CVS now!

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Meal Planning & Freezer Cooking: February 2010

January has already come to an end. I can't believe how fast it went. I'm working on our meal plan for February, this month trying to keep it really simple. I only got about half of my meal plan for January finished in advance since I had so many sick and teething little toddlers in the month of January. This month will hopefully go much more smoothly.

Freezer Cooking has been a fantastic way for us to cut down on our grocery spending, and seriously cut down on the amount we might spend eating out. Knowing there is a fully cooked, delicious homemade meal already at home is a good way to keep us out of the fast food drive-thru. It really simplifies dinner time too, since I'm not making every meal from scratch every single night.



So for this month, here is the plan:


1. Wild Rice Soup & Bread
2. Lasagna
3. Sunshine Chicken, Brown Rice & Veggie
4. Chili & Cornbread
5. Steak, Sweet Potato Fries & Veggie
6. Homemade Pizza
7. Crock-pot: Beef Roast with Veggies
8. Zuppa Tuscana Soup & Bread
9. Grilled Sandwiches
10. Kung Pao Chicken & Jasmine Rice
11. Spaghetti
12. Sunshine Chicken, Brown Rice & Veggie
13. Homemade Pizza
14. Crock-pot: BBQ Pork
15. Pork Chops, Brown Rice & Veggie
16. Lasagna
17. Wild Rice Soup & Bread
18. Grilled Sandwiches
19. Sunshine Chicken, Brown Rice & Veggie
20. Homemade Pizza
21. Crock-pot: Beef Roast with Veggies
22. Pork Chops, Brown Rice & Veggie
23. Grilled Sandwiches
24. Spaghetti
25. Zuppa Tuscana Soup & Bread
26. Steak, Sweet Potato Fries & Veggie
27. Homemade Pizza
28. Crock-pot: BBQ Pork

I'm planning for (hopefully!!) one big Freezer Cooking Day, possibly tomorrow or Sunday of this weekend. I'll be getting back into full swing grocery shopping (with coupons, of course!) this month to restock the cupboards and freezer. It was really nice to cut back on shopping in January and work with what we had on hand.

Looking forward to cooking up a storm and getting great deals in February!

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Eat From The Pantry Challenge: My Plans

I am excited to be joining up with Life As Mom and Money Saving Mom in their month long challenge for January: Eat From Your Pantry! You can read more about this here or here.

I've already posted my month long meal plan, which you can read here, although I'm going to be adjusting just a couple of items from what is listed.


So my plan for the month will be this:

1. Freezer Cooking Day(s), beginning on January 1st, hopefully ending on the 2nd. I'll be using a lot of the items I purchased during my shopping trips in December and also using what we already have in the pantry and freezer.

2. Spend no more than $225 for groceries in the month of January. This is BIG goal for us. We are thrilled with the amount of savings we were able to accomplish in December by really cracking down on spending and shopping wisely, so I'm setting this goal with a lot of confidence that we will be able to reach it. I still plan on going out for my weekly trip to Rainbow Foods on Wednesdays to help me stock up on items I will need for February's menu or fresh items during January.

3. Find a really, really good casserole recipe. I have a big aversion to 'cream of anything soup' and nearly every casserole, or as we Minnesotan's say... "hot dish" recipes call for some sort of canned cream soup, and I just can quite get my head in to that cooking method. I did find a really neat 'universal casserole' recipe this week, so my hubby and I have been brainstorming our own ingredients to come up with something healthy and tasty. I really only need one good recipe, to fill two nights in a month long menu. I like to have what I call "pan food" for Tuesday nights, since we are busy and usually rushing to leave the house. I want to serve up something healthy and delicious, but also something that requires nothing more than 'freezer removal, oven insertion'.


I'm eager to get starting with my freezer cooking for January and to see if we are able to stay on track for the month. I plan on posting weekly what our meals are and how we are doing on our grocery spending goals. What to join in the fun? Click here to link up your goals!

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Meal Planning: January 2010

As a very busy mom to three toddlers, cooking has never been my favorite activity. But I have recently found much more enjoyment in preparing delicious and nutritious meals by learning and implementing the idea of Freezer Cooking. If you would like to learn more about it, check out the great posts here and here.

(LittleMan & I preparing one of our four pans of lasagna to go into the freezer last month)

My freezer cooking efforts last month have seriously paid off. Dinner time is not stressful, since I have a variety of home cooked meals, already prepared to choose from if I have neither the time or energy to make something from scratch that particular day.

So here is my Master Plan for the month of January:

1. Sunshine Chicken, Brown Rice & a Veggie
2. Homemade Pizza
3. Turkey Wild Rice Soup & Bread
4. Baked Pork Chops, Brown Rice & a Veggie
5. Lasagna, Salad & Garlic Bread
6. Beef Roast with Potatoes & Carrots and Bread
7. Chicken Broccoli & Cheese Stromboli
8. Baked Chicken, Brown Rice & a Veggie
9. Homemade Pizza
10. Chili & Cornbread
11. Baked Pork Chops, Brown Rice & a Veggie
12. Enchilladas & Fresh Guacamole
13. Sunshine Chicken, Brown Rice & a Veggie
14. Phili-Cheese Steak Stromboli
15. Grilled Steak, Sweet Potato Fries & Homemade Mac n Cheese
16. Homemade Pizza
17. Zuppa Tuscana Soup & Bread
18. Baked Chicken, Brown Rice & a Veggie
19. Lasagna, Salad & Garlic Bread
20. Baked Pork Chops, Brown Rice & a Veggie
21. Chicken Broccoli & Cheese Stromboli
22. Grilled Steak, a Veggie & Homemade Mac n Cheese
23. Homemade Pizza
24. Turkey Wild Rice Soup & Bread
25. Baked Pork Chops, Brown Rice & a Veggie
26. Enchiladas & Fresh Guacamole
27. Sunshine Chicken, Brown Rice & a Veggie
28. Phili-Cheese Steak Stromboli
29. Baked Chicken, Brown Rice & a Veggie
30. Homemade Pizza
31. Chili & Cornbread


Some items are actually already done, I have the crusts and sauce prepared and in the freezer for a few of our Pizzas. We have Sunshine Chicken & Chili already prepped and frozen still from last month. Most of the makings for all of these meals are already in our freezers or pantry, so I plan on one more shopping day specific to this meal plan to fill in just a few gaps.

Right now, I am planning to tackle this list on January 1st. I'm looking forward to it!

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