Productive weekend in the kitchen

Before I get into my actual post, I must first say that my house is a mess. My bathrooms didn't get cleaned this weekend; the laundry is not done; I'm not sure when my kitchen floor was last mopped. I just don't want you to have any Martha Stewart illusions when you read this next part.

(As PW would say, "I'm just keepin' it real.")

Having said all of that, I did have a very productive weekend in the kitchen. We bought a chest freezer and I have officially run out of my current freezer stockpile, so it was definitely time to do some make-ahead-and-freeze meals.

Hamburger, chicken breasts, and pork loin were on sale this week, so I picked up about five pounds of each and made the following recipes this weekend:

Cajun Curry Chicken
Jerk Chicken
Chicken Sate
Sesame Chicken Bites
Porcupine Meatballs
Meatloaf
Sloppy Joes
Hamburger Patties

(This week I will also cook part of the pork loin in the crock pot and then shred it for BBQ sandwiches or pork tacos, and will cut the rest into pork chops and freeze them.)

This combination of chicken recipes seemed to work well because several ingredients overlapped. My kitchen smelled heavenly from the freshly grated ginger and lime zest, although this made me realize that I might want to invest in an actual zester instead of using the stand-up grater.

Most of these recipes made enough for two meals for us, so I currently have about 15 meals in the freezer. Woohoo!

In other news, the potty training has taken a step backwards. I'm not surprised, and won't let this discourage me. At least Kaitlyn understands all of the concepts - now it's just a matter of Mike and I being consistent and reinforcing the behavior.

The good news is that she has no problem going #1 or #2 on the potty, and she prefers to go on the big potty instead of her little one. That works for me - I prefer to not have to clean up the mess from the little one!

More good news: my mom is officially done with her chemo!!! Yay! She'll go on March 9 (which is also my niece's 13th birthday) for a CT scan. Please agree with us in prayer that they won't find any trace of cancer.

Another prayer request: my sister will have chemo treatment #3 on Tuesday. We are very thankful that her second treatment was oh so much better than her first one, and pray that this next one will also go well.

That's all for now... Have a great week!

My new favorite kitchen tools

I am finally participating in Alaina's Keeping Creative Kitchens! I've meant to have a post up for this for many, many weeks, and I'm so excited that my planned topic just happens to fit this week's theme perfectly. The theme is cookies and candy, which, of course, is extremely appropriate considering that Christmas is a week away.

One week! Where did the time time go??

Anyway, I want to share with you something that I bought for my birthday in November. I invested in two baking sheets that are basically the full size of my oven. I got the idea here, and here is where I found the right size cookie sheet.

FYI, I discovered that there are two (or three?) standard sizes for baking sheets - full, half, and I think I also saw a quarter-size. The full size is made to fit in a professional oven, and is just wee bit too big for a conventional home oven. This site has a size that is specific for conventional ovens, and is called the "home" size, which is what I ended up getting.


One of the things that I LOVE about having these is that I can maximize my time. On the day after Thanksgiving, I made shortbread cookies with Kaitlyn, and was able to make almost all of a double batch of cookies in one shot!

I also used parchment paper for the first time, and I fell in love with that, too. Easy clean up!

Here are both sheets of cookies in the oven:


After taking them out of the oven, I slid the whole sheet of parchment paper onto cooling racks. (Which is a lot easier to type than it is to do. For about 1.2 seconds I thought all of my cookies were going to slide right onto the floor. Hopefully I will get better at this technique.)


One of the things I've always hated about making cookies is the time it takes to bake them all. Put them on the cookie sheet, set the timer, wait 5-10 minutes, take them out, let them cool, take them off the cookie sheet, put new ones on the cookie sheet, repeat. It always seems to take FOREVER! But making them this way was so quick and easy. If you do a lot of baking, I would highly recommend investing in these sheets!

Of course, I can't end this post without showing some pictures of Kaitlyn. She had a blast "helping" me with the cookies. I gave her some dough and some little cookie cutters and let her do her own thing. She loved it!


Here are her cookies:



A happy girl! (With some crazy hair!)


I also want to share one of my favorite holiday cookie recipes, which comes from my mom. If we don't have these cookies, it just doesn't seem like Christmas!

Mom's Christmas Pastel Cookies

2 cups soft butter
2 cups sifted confectioner's sugar
4 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Mix butter, sugar and salt thoroughly. Add flour and blend into dough.

2. Divide dough into thirds, placing each third in a different bowl. Add a different food coloring and flavoring to each third. (1/2 to 1 teaspoon flavoring per third.) We traditionally use green/mint; red/cherry; and yellow/lemon. Use your hands to work the coloring and the flavoring throughout the dough, until it is a consistent color. (Use as much or as little coloring as you want, and expect to walk away with a lot of color on your hands!)

3. Mold each third into long, smooth rolls, about 2 inches in diameter. Roll in colored sugar or nuts. Wrap each roll in waxed paper or plastic wrap, and chill until stiff - several hours or overnight. (Can also be frozen.)

4. When you are ready to bake, slice cookies 1/8-inch thick, place on ungreased cookie sheets and bake at 375* for 7 to 9 minutes. Do not brown.

Yum!

Head over to Meant to Be for more creative kitchen ideas!

Good news (and chocolate)

Good News:
Monica and her husband have received some wonderful news regarding their finances. I'm not sure if I'm at liberty to talk specifics yet, so I'll just leave it at that. God is good!

Chocolate:
On Sunday, I made more of the Christmas treats I mentioned last week and wanted to finally share the recipe with you. I modified this from a recipe for "Crockpot Candy", but since I didn't use the Crockpot, I'm at a loss for how to title this. I guess I'll keep it simple...

Erin's Christmas Candy
1 lb. white chocolate (the stuff I used was called "candy coating")
8 oz. semi-sweet chocolate (either chocolate chips or baking chocolate squares)
1 oz. unsweetened chocolate
12 oz. salted peanuts
2 - 2 1/2 cups crushed cinnamon graham crackers*
2 - 2 1/2 cups mini marshmallows

Put all of the chocolate into a double-boiler to melt, or melt it in the microwave. (Or throw it in your crockpot on low, go do something else productive for a few hours, then come back and proceed.) After it is melted and smooth, add the peanuts and graham crackers, and stir well to make sure they are completely coated with chocolate. Then add the marshmallows, and again, stir well to make sure they are coated with chocolate.

Spread the mixture out on cookie sheets lined with foil, and allow to cool. (I put mine in the garage, since it cools more quickly out there.) When the candy has hardened, break it into pieces.
That's it!

*With the graham crackers, I don't crush them as fine as I would for a graham cracker crust - I try to leave them in fairly big chunks.

Other notes about this recipe...

• Last year I tried this with crushed pretzels and caramel. It turned out ok, but the caramel got really hard and it was a workout to eat it. :-) I might get ambitious and try it again this year, using only the pretzels.
• If you want the marshmallows to be more melty (I'm sure this is an official baking term, right?), just throw them into the chocolate before the peanuts and graham crackers. This will give them more time to heat up and get ooey and gooey in the chocolate.
• I used 12 oz of peanuts the first time, and it seemed like too many, so I used less on the second try. Adjust all of this to your own preferences and tastes.
• If you can think of any other variation for this, please let me know. This is so easy to throw together and it got rave reviews last year, so I would love to have lots of different ways to make it.

Mmmmmm. I also made candied popcorn using this recipe, and plan on trying this recipe for caramel corn. I don't know if I'll ever get around to making cookies this year, but even if I don't, I think I'll have plenty of yummy holiday treats!

Efficiency cooking

I have been busy, busy, busy in the kitchen tonight.

Well, I'm not sure if my activity qualifies for three "busy" labels, but it does qualify for at least two. (It does. I checked the rules and guidelines on using the word "busy" and according to the powers-that-be, I am completely justified.)

(I just made that last part up.)

(Like you didn't already know that.)

Yeah, so anyway, back to tonight's "efficiency cooking." I'm calling it this because I cooked several things tonight that will make my meal preparation for the week a breeze. I also have some surplus that will go in the freezer for future meals. Yay!

So, first, here is my menu plan for the week:

Monday
Pork chops in the crock pot, stuffing, cooked carrots

Tuesday
Goulash, salad

Wednesday
Rush off to church night - leftovers, or whatever we can find

Thursday
Chicken stir fry, rice

Friday
Sloppy Joe's, fries, and some form of vegetable

And now, the efficiency part...

In the past couple months I've made an effort to stockpile things in my freezer. This means that I try to make extras of what I'm making already, or I am intentional about prepping foods ahead of time so they are easier to use down the road.

There are three things that I did weeks ago that will help me immensely this week. First, I bought a big beef roast on sale, made it in the crock pot, then sliced it and froze it.

Second, I made a triple batch of sloppy joe's when we had company two weeks ago, and froze the extra.

Third, when I make pasta or noodles, I try to make double what I need so I can freeze the rest. I figure if I'm going to have to wash my big ole pasta pot, I might as well make enough for several meals!

Now on to what I did today. Kroger had chicken breasts on sale this week so I picked up several packages, and I threw all of the chicken in the crock pot when we got home from church today. I cubed all of it tonight, and what I don't use for my chicken stir fry will go in the freezer for use at a later date.

Next, I pulled out some bell peppers, carrots, and mushrooms and chopped them up. I stir fried all of the carrots, and half of the peppers and mushrooms. I tried to leave them a little undercooked so that when I reheat them on Thursday (adding some of the cubed chicken that I cooked in the crock pot), they'll be just right.

In the same pan that I used for the stir fry, I cooked the rest of the peppers and mushrooms, along with some chopped tomatoes. Then I diced my pre-cooked roast, threw that into the mix, and eventually added my pre-cooked macaroni, a can of tomato soup, and some tomato sauce to finish off my goulash. This is now in the fridge, ready to be reheated and eaten on Tuesday.

Since I am using the crock pot tomorrow to cook my pork chops, and since my sloppy joes are pre-made and waiting for me in the freezer, all of this cooking tonight means that I won't have to do much cooking for the rest of the week. Woohoo!

Oh, and tomorrow I am making more pork chops than we can possibly eat (like the chicken, I bought extra because they were on sale this week), so guess where those will end up? In the freezer! For a future meal!

(I seriously need to get a stand-alone freezer.)

Another thing I accomplished tonight was making all of our lunches ahead for the week. I made enough sandwiches for the whole week and bagged up a bunch of chips, then set all of the other elements (cans of pop, fruit cups, 100-calorie cookie packs, pudding) together on a shelf where I can easily grab them in the morning.

Yeah, AND I set the coffee for tomorrow morning.

This was more than I wanted to do on a Sunday night, but knowing that I'm pretty much set for the week makes it all worth it.

Here are three more things to be excited about this week:
1. My birthday!
2. As of Wednesday, no more political ads.
3. My first bloggy award! (Thanks Whitney!) I'll be back to post about this tomorrow.

Head over to orgjunkie.com for more great meal plans!