Keepers of the Home - Basic Cooking

Things to help you save time, and money:

Cook once/eat twice: *If you are planning to freeze soups or casseroles, omit noodles and cream, as they do not freeze well. Add these items when you take out of the freezer and reheat them.

1. Dry beans hydrate dry beans overnight, or do the quick cook method. Do enough beans so that you can bag up the extra and freeze them for future use in recipes.
2. Chop veggies  once for the whole week. You could chop all the green peppers, red peppers, onions, carrots, etc. for the whole week and put them in baggies and this will save you a lot of time. You can also freeze chopped onion and peppers into baggies and just pull them out when you need them. Freeze in one cup amounts. Use a food processor to do this. *I have found food processor’s at the thrift store for very little money. A lot of people don’t use them and so they give them away. Bread machines are another wonderful item to find at thrift stores for about $5.00. We make fresh whole wheat bread every day. If I put all the ingredients in when I get up, we have wonderful, healthy, hot bread ready for lunch. :) (And it makes our home smell soooo good!)
3. Baked potatoes are a wonderful thing to cook once and eat twice. Regular potatoes and yams and sweet potatoes work with this and are so good and tasty. They are wonderful as left overs, and warm up so nicely. At Wal-Mart there is a bag of large baking potatoes for under $4.00. There are 9 to 10 large baking potatoes in it. (Costco, has a 20 lb. bag of large baking potatoes for about $7.50) This is very inexpensive compared to other stores for baking large baking potatoes. This would be wonderful for either a large gathering at your home to provide a potato bar of baked potatoes and many different type of toppings like broccoli, cheese, chives, bacon, sour cream, chili, tomatoes, salsa, black beans mixed with salsa, left over taco meat, chicken, left over veggies…the ideas are endless for what you could offer as some toppings. When baking this many potatoes, I pierce them with a fork on both sides and then wrap them with foil. You can brush them with olive oil and roll them in sea salt before wrapping in foil, if you would like to. Then I put the foiled potatoes in the oven. We do this many at 400 degrees for about 2 to 3 hours…depending on your oven. I would suggest that even if you are not serving these potatoes to guests that you go ahead and make the entire bag of them, and then eat them once more as baked potatoes or make home made scalloped potatoes with garlic, heavy cream or ½ and ½, shredded cheddar, parmesan and provolone. You could also cube these cooked potatoes and make a sort of hash brown potato with onion alongside of a meatloaf, or chicken or to serve with eggs. You could also make a very quick and easy potato soup with the left over baked potatoes. You would just slice them up and put them in a pot with some ½ and ½, butter, chopped onions, frozen peas, garlic, seasoned salt, and pepper….heat through and serve! :)
4. Scrambled eggs. This is another dish that reheats so nicely. When you make scrambled eggs, make twice as many or three times as many. They will last a whole week in your fridge. When reheating, you can add chopped ham, green pepper, onion, salsa, shredded cheddar cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, or scallions.
5. Casseroles. Most casseroles reheat so nicely and most freeze well. Lasagna is a wonderful dish to double. You could eat it twice that week, or take it for lunches. Or when cooled freeze ½ of the lasagna for another meal for your family at a later date or to share with another family who needs a meal. When preparing you could use two pans and just divide ingredients as you go to fill both pans, that way you’re only baking one pan and the other you can cover, seal and freeze. We make a veggie casserole that is so yummy and so good for you. This casserole is so wonderful to reheat and even tastes better the second time as do most spaghetti and lasagna dishes. J Rice Sabrosa, zucchini boats, baked spaghetti, tuna noodle, macaroni and cheese (could put in spinach, to add a veggie). I have found foil pans that are wonderful for freezing at the dollar store. This is also a wonderful place to purchase foil pans of different sizes to be able to take meals to other people and not have to worry with getting your pans back.
6. Oatmeal. Is a another wonderful thing to make once and eat twice. We make baked oatmeal and this is so yummy and so healthy. You could easily cook this once and eat it for several morning breakfasts. We also serve this with plain yogurt or vanilla yogurt. It is healthy, tasty and inexpensive.
7. Homemade Granola. We serve this over plain yogurt that we mix with brown sugar. It is so yummy! This is a wonderful thing to make ahead and put in Tupperware or baggies. It is also nice to give as gifts at Christmas time!
8. Soups. Most soups are wonderful as leftovers. They reheat so nicely and will last for a week or more. They also freeze well. So definitely consider cooking at least twice to three times as much soup each time you make it. Leftover soup is wonderful for lunch as well. Freeze your soup in Tupperware containers or large freezer baggies. Soups can be cooked in a crockpot. You could put ingredients in first thing in the morning to have soup ready for lunch….or at rest time to have ready for dinner. Our family’s favorite soups are cream of potato soup (could put broccoli or peas in this soup or clams and make New England clam chowder), beef barley soup, veggie/beef soup, split pea soup, chicken noodle soup w/ broccoli and carrots, corn chowder, clam chowder, tortilla soup, white bean chicken chili, regular chili, 15 bean soup, black beans and rice, red beans and rice, chalupa and navy bean soup. All of these are pretty inexpensive to make and so good for you! :)
9. Chicken and Hamburger: You may have heard about the type of cooking where you cook everything when you get home from the grocery store. As your putting the groceries away you would begin to brown all your hamburger. You could put onions in part of it or all of it and then divide it up into the serving size you’d need for most of your meals and freeze it. You could also add taco seasonings to some of the hamburger to have this step done ahead of time as well. The same goes for chicken. You could boil your chicken at the same time and then shred it up and bag it and freeze it in serving sizes for most of your meals. If you know that you’re having chicken in several meals that you’re serving that week…just boil all the chicken at one time and then allow it to cool and bag it. Keep in the refrigerator until ready to use for your menu. *I purchase frozen chicken breasts at Wal-Mart. I spend about 7.50 for 3 lbs. Which is usually about 6 breasts. I put these frozen chicken breasts into a pot of water and boil them. I don’t defrost them. I also bake chicken using the frozen chicken breasts….I don’t defrost them first unless I’m making parmesan/bread crumb chicken then I do defrost it. Baked chicken is also so yummy if you make twice as much as you need and then reheat left over chicken for lunch or dinner. When I grill chicken, I will often put it on frozen as well. When I make meatloaf, we love to make twice as much so we can serve meatloaf sandwiches for lunch. :)

Big Gatherings: