Recipe: Squash Patties

Several people have emailed me about this recipe, so I thought it would be easiest to just post it. I typically make huge batches of this in the summer and freeze to cook throughout the year. It multiplies beautifully and doesn't have to be particularly exact. We're not big onion fans, so I usually skip the onions & double up on the green peppers. Enjoy!

Southern Summer Squash Fried Patty Recipe:

• 2 cup summer squash (cooked and mashed or blended until fairly smooth)
• 2 eggs (beat well)
• ¾ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp pepper
• 1 TBSP sugar
• 2 TBSP milk
• ¼ cup onion (chopped fine)
• ¼ cup green pepper (chopped)
• 1 cup self-rising flour

1. Cook and mash squash or thaw and drain pre-prepared squash.

2. Beat the egg and add salt, pepper, sugar, and milk.

3. Stir in onions and green pepper.

4. Sir in self rising-flour until smooth.

5. Cover bottom of a skillet about 1/8 inch with vegetable oil or a combination of oil and butter and heat to medium.

6. Use a small measuring cup or large spoon to drop batter into hot oil where it will cook similar to pancakes or potato pancakes. Tap lightly on top and around edges immediately after dropping the batter if it does not spread neatly.

7. Fry until brown on bottom (edges will start to look firm and set) and then flip and brown the other side.

8. Place fried patties (makes around 6) on a plate covered with a paper towel to absorb any excess oil.

To freeze: Scoop batter onto cookie sheets, flash freeze patties until hard frozen, then transfer to freezer bags and freeze.

Not sure of the source - sorry!

Recipe Review: PW's Cinnamon Rolls & Cinnamon Bread

I spent today pretending I was the Pioneer Woman by trying my hand at her Cinnamon Rolls and her Cinnamon Bread. I love her blog and have her cookbook. When her novel comes out in a few months, it will be on my "To Read" list. Just love her!

First off I must confess that I was SCARED of both of these recipes because they use yeast. Yeast & I are usually not friends unless I can dump it in my bread machine. However, I have officially conquered my fear because both turned out marvelously!

I did learn a bit as I went along with the Cinnamon Rolls, which are delicious, but have unholy amounts of butter.  Here is some of the mess from my first round of dough with insane amounts of butter, sugar, and cinnamon. She warns that some of the filling may spill out...little did I know how much!

Island-o-Mess

Excess Filling

Dripping down the cabinets...

all the way to the floor!

The taste and quantity more than makes up for the mess. I made 7 pans of Cinnamon Rolls (2 large rectangular, 1 medium square, 4 rounds), sent some to the neighbors for Christmas, some are going with my hubby to the office tomorrow, some are staying here for us to eat on, the rest are in the freezer.

Only one of my pans actually looked "pretty" and nicely rolled, but I think taste of appearance wins out here (not to mention the maple glaze sort of covers any imperfections).

I don't have any pictures of the finished rolls or bread, but just know they are wonderful!! They are not overly sweet, just pure deliciousness! 

Update: Here's a picture of the cinnamon rolls...yummy!

Meal Plan Monday & August Freezer Cooking Wrap-Up

I'm all done with my freezer cooking! I ended up ditching two recipes (Monster Cookies & Breakfast Scones...we have plenty of breakfast items & I don't need any more cookies!), but I still have plenty of food for us to eat. 

Final Freezer Cooking Count:

Granola - gallons size bag

Granola Bars - 20 bars (diminishing quickly!)

Cinnamon Rolls (tons!)

Cheesy Sausage English Muffins - 21

Buffalo Chicken Wraps - 12

French Dip Sandwiches - 2 meals

Blue Cheese Stuffed Chicken - 16

Stuffed Shells - gallon size bag full!

Lasagna - 3

Chicken Divan - 2

I'm going to start making use of these meals in our Meal Plan this week!

Monday - Lasagna & Salad

Tuesday - Chicken Divan

Wednesday - Roast Beef Sandwiches

No need to plan for more than that, because we're off to a mini-vacation with some friends. 

5 kids under 3.5 years old. Should be loud & fun!

Of course we'll be eating out of the freezer for breakfasts and leftover for lunch. Yay for less cooking! 

Two tips that really worked well for me during this freezer cooking frenzy:

1) Break up your cooking. I ended up spreading out my freezer cooking over 4 days, when it was convenient for me. I'd cook until I got tired and then I stopped. I got it all done without getting burned out.

2) Make portions work for your family. In my family, we have my hubby, Little Man (who's two), and myself. Little Man sometimes doesn't eat what we eat at dinner (due to pickiness or time of our dinner), so I generally plan for two servings + lunch leftovers. Many recipes are too big for just what we need, so I flash froze a ton of food so now I can just take out a few servings. 

I use the Pioneer Woman's recipe for Lasagna. She has 4 older kids plus cowboys to feed. That recipe is simply too much for us to eat at once, so I split the lasagna recipe into 3 smaller containers. This is the PERFECT amount for us, plus I'm saving money by spreading this recipe out into three meals + leftovers. Wahoo for saving money!

My Little Man was AWESOME at self-entertaining while I cooked away. Thank you God!

And obviously my multi-tasking skills were lacking when I made yet another sink of dishwater. Caught this just in time!

Be sure to check out lots of other meal plans at OrgJunkie!

Recipe Review: Cheesy Sausage English Mufflins

This is a recipe my mom has been making for us since we were kids. We loved it then and still love it to this day (she made them last weekend when we were visiting...yummy!). They are perfect to make ahead of time, keep in the fridge or even freeze (which is what I did). Here's the recipe.

Ingredients:

Breakfast Sausage (hot or regular...your preference)

Velveeta

Cream Cheese

English Muffins

Shredded Cheese

Directions:

1. Brown sausage and drain fat.

2. Return sausage to pan, then add Velveeta & cream cheese to your liking (For 2lbs of sausage, I used about 1/3 big block of Velveeta and 1/3 block of cream cheese - both cut into small chunks). Melt cheeses in pan with sausage until completely combined. Remove from heat.

3. Split English Muffins in half, then spoon sausage mixture on top.

4. Top with shredded cheese.

ready to be baked or frozen - your choice!

To bake now: put in oven at 350 until cheese is melted and slightly brown.

To freeze: flash freeze, then transfer to freeze bag or freezer safe Tupperware. To eat one, take out and microwave for about 30 seconds, then put in oven/toaster oven to crisp up. To eat many, let sit out for a few minutes, then bake in 350 oven until cheese is melted and slightly brown.

You can really kick this recipe up a notch by adding some Rotel...YUMMO!

Recipe Review: Whole Wheat Blueberry Pancakes

I frequently make up a big batch of pancakes, flash freeze, then we'll eat them for breakfast. This is a favorite of both mine and Little Man's. I was trying to think of a way to make them a little healthier, so I tried out this Whole Wheat Pancake recipe and added blueberries. Verdict: Little Man LOVED them and I did not. Glad he likes healthy things...I'll stick to my regular pancakes, thank you very much!

Freezer Cooking: Thursday Night Update

First, let's take a moment to enjoy a clean kitchen...it happens so infrequently!

OK, now that we've basked in the cleanliness, let's review what I got done in less than an hour:

(1) chicken slowly cooking (decided to do that overnight so I can get finished a littler earlier tomorrow)

(2) made homemade granola bars (btw...chopping dried cherries is gross)

Update: I just cut into these and they are YUMMY! My sweet hubby even gave his approval.

(3) homemade granola in the oven (it will be done in the morning)

I took pictures of all my ingredients as I was going along. I wasn't going to post them, but as I looked at them I started to die laughing! Notice a common theme? I think Walmart should pay me for free advertising of their Great Value brand. What can I say, it is a great value (read: it's cheap!).

Now my kitchen is clean again, the chicken is slowly cooking, the house smells like delicious cinnamony goodness, and I'm enjoying an amazing glass of wine while watching the Panthers pre-season game. 

What a great way to end the evening!

Freezer Cooking Plan

It's Thursday night. We've eaten dinner. The kitchen is clean & organized. I'm no longer afraid to open my Tupperware cabinet. I just sat down to make a "plan of attack" for my August freezer cooking. Here's what I've come up with.

Thursday night:

1. Make Granola Bars & freeze
2. Make Granola (leave in oven overnight)

Friday:

1. Start Cinnamon Roll Dough in bread machine
2. Cook Chicken in Crockpot for Chicken Divan & Buffalo Chick Roll-ups
3. Make Blueberry Pancakes, flash freeze, & eat for breakfast. 
4. Roll out, slice, & flash freeze cinnamon rolls.
5. Assemble Stuffed Buffalo Chicken & freeze
6. Assemble Chicken Divan & freeze
7. Assemble Buff Chick Roll-ups & freeze

Excited to NOT cook dinner after all that time in the kitchen...celebrating our nephew's 13th birthday with PIZZA!! :)

Saturday:

1. Make Oatmeal Raspberry Scones – eat for breakfast & flash freeze the rest.
2. Brown sausage & assemble Cheesy Sausage English Muffins (I'm sure my guys will choose to eat these immediately. It's a crowd pleaser!)
3. Cook beef in crockpot for French Dip sandwiches
4. Make lasagna & freeze (this makes a HUGE 9x13, so I'm going to make 2 smaller 8x8 pans) 
5. Make stuffed shells & freeze
6. Assemble French Dip Sandwiches for freezer
7. Make monster cookies & freeze

After all that, I'll be wiped out but we'll have plenty of easy meals and I won't have to cook for quite some time! :)

August Freezer Cooking: Recipes to Try

I seem to have lost some all of my cooking mojo this summer. I'm not sure if it's the heat, laziness, or what, but I just don't have much desire to cook. Our food budget has definitely shown my kitchen slack and it's time to get everything back in check.

My plan is to do a big round of freezer cooking this weekend to help us get back on track. I've been perusing lots of food blogs to pull together some new recipes, as well as some of our favorites to freeze this weekend. Here are the recipes I plan to make. If you have any other suggestions for meals that freeze well, please share them!

Breakfasts
Blueberry Pancakes
Oatmeal Raspberry Scones
Cheesy Sausage English Muffins
Cinnamon Rolls

Lunch/Dinner
French Dip Sandwiches
Buffalo Chicken Wraps
Lasagna
Chicken Divan
Stuffed Buffalo Chicken
Stuffed Shells

Snacks
Granola
Monster Cookies
Granola Bars

I should add that many of these recipes stemmed from Once A Month Mom. Love to adapt her cooking plans to work for our tastes!

How I salvaged Taco Night

My Meal Plan called for Tacos on Monday night. Well that didn't actually happen until Tuesday night (we're flexible with our meal plans). I decided to get creative and make a burrito bake - just a twist of boring tacos. After browning/draining my hamburger, I put about half a pound in with black beans and taco seasoning (that I scored for FREE at Harris Teeter on a coupon deal). After I stirred that all up and got it going, I glanced at the ingredient list on the seasoning. To my dismay, the first ingredient was YELLOW CORN FLOUR. 

Ugh! I'm pretty sure flour is NOT a seasoning (in my opinion) and was really frustrated considering my corn allergy. I went ahead and filled the burritos with the meat/bean mixture and some shredded cheese, but now I had seven burritos and my hubby was the only one who was going to eat them. I knew he would get sick of them this week before all seven were eaten, so I cooked three that night and rolled up the other four individually in foil to freeze. Now my sweet hubs can take out one or two for lunch (on days that we have no leftovers to take) or a quick meal if he's on his own for supper. 

YAY! No wasted food and future meals ready to go!

Please ignore the random painting supplies drying behind the pan of burritos...this is Real Life.

By the way, hubby really enjoyed this variation on our Taco Night - he thought it was delicious! He is typically not a fan of black beans. It was also pretty frugal since I used half the amount of ground beef I usually do and pulled the black beans from my freezer (made them from dried beans in lieu of canned). A win-win despite the fact I couldn't eat any of it.

Meal Plan Monday

After being snowed in since Friday night, I finally escaped today (thanks to my MIL rescuing me & the Little Man) and where would I go except to the grocery store?!?! We stopped by Harris Teeter (to stock up on some good VIC deals), Sam's Club, and Walmart. 


My goal is to stock our freezer with oven-ready meals (we've run out!), but I'm just not up for a whole day of cooking to accomplish that. Instead, I'm going to double/triple some of the meals I'm making over the coming weeks, as well as cook extra meat to shred and freeze for meals like tacos, chicken salad, etc. I guess this is my own slow version of Life As Mom's February Freezer Days.


Monday: Deconstructed Broccoli & Cheese Stuff Chicken (make 2 extra to freeze)
Tuesday: Pot Roast in the Crockpot (shred extra beef to freeze)
Wednesday: Buffalo-Chicken Spaghetti (make 2 extra to freeze)
Thursday: Taco Salad (using precooked/frozen ground beef)
Friday: Pizza Night
Saturday: BBQ Chicken (shred extra chicken to freeze)
Sunday: Super Bowl Foods - yummy!!


Check out over 400 other Meal Plans at I'm an Organizing Junkie.

Freezer Cooking: Waffles

Don't those waffles look delicious?!?! Trust me, they were this (snowy) morning and will be as we eat them over the coming month. I had more than 4 cups of Buttermilk left that was going to spoil soon, so I needed to use it up - hate to waste! I immediately thought of Buttermilk Pancakes. However we already have a bag of pancakes in the freezer that I made about Monday. I decided we could go with Buttermilk Waffles instead - something yummy to add to our breakfast menu. Little Man eats a pancake or waffle each morning with his yogurt anyway, so making a big batch today (that will probably last all of February) will save me some time over the coming month.

After making two dozen waffles, I flash froze them and then put them in freezer bags for easy access (same way I freeze the pancakes). Each morning I will pop the waffle in the toaster oven & in about a minute, Little Man has a hot breakfast! If I switch it up and give him a pancake, I simply put one in the microwave for almost a minute at about 75% power.

This is just the beginning of my Freezer Days stock-up. Instead of one or two power cooking days, I'm just going to continuously build up over the coming week (maybe 2) by doubling/tripling some recipes to stock the freezer. I will definitely be making these again - we have already eaten all of them!