Baked Ziti

Last year I made a meatball pasta baked dish.  I haven't posted yet because I haven't quite gotten the proportions right, but it is one of my favorite freezer meals.  Due to having a baby recently I haven't had the energy this year to make it.  That many meatballs is a big project.  Instead I made this baked ziti.  It is much faster and easier but has a similar flavor profile.  I will eventually get back to my meatball casserole, but this delicious meal fills that slot for now.

Difficulty: Easy
Category: Simple Side
Recipe Column: DN

Get the recipe at Smitten Kitchen.  I pretty much make the recipe as is.  Undercook the pasta slightly and rinse it with cold water after draining to stop the cooking process.  Also I don't bother to cut up the spinach.  I just add the whole leaves to the sauce.

To freeze:
Divide the pasta into containers, bags or pans. If you do pans you can top with shredded cheese before freezing.  I use containers to save space in my freezer, so I leave the cheese off.

To serve:
Thaw the pasta in the fridge overnight.  If you haven't already, transfer the mixture to a pan and top with shredded cheese.  I use a pre-shredded Italian mix.  Cover with foil and bake at 375 degrees until heated all the way through, about 45 minutes.  Serve with salad or vegetables.

Coconut Green Curry

I have been working on this recipe for about a year and a half now.  The first time I made this it was very tasty, but I wasn't fully satisfied with the proportions of the different ingredients to each other.  I wanted to try again but still had five batches of the original in the freezer that needed to be eaten first.  When we finally did finish eating all of them it took me a while to get around to making it again.  So, here we are a year and a half later, and I am finally posting the recipe.  This is why posting here is so irregular.  The development process for freezer meal recipes is a long one.  This curry is delicious though.   I think it's worth the wait.

Difficulty: Moderate
Category: Simple Side
Recipe Column: CF

Prep tip: Leeks

I love leeks, but they tend to be full of sand.  It's very unpleasant to be eating a delicious meal and bite into some sandy grit from leeks that haven't been cleaned well enough.  Here's how I clean them to make sure that doesn't happen.

Trim the root end, but leave the root intact.  This will hold your leek together, making it easier to slice it. 

Green Vegetable Tart

This tart is delicious and packed with nutritious green vegetables. It is one of my husband's favorites and to my surprise my kids really liked it and ate it all up.  I usually post recipes for single batches, so everyone can multiply it to fit their family's needs. This is a quadruple batch.  I post this as a larger batch because it works easier with the amounts some of the ingredients are sold in.  Leeks are generally sold 3 to a bundle, and this utilizes all of them. It also uses a 32 oz container of ricotta cheese which is one of the two sizes it's sold in.

Adapted from: Savoring Appetizers
Difficulty: Moderate
Category: Freezer to Pan
Recipe Column: U

Yields 4 pies.  Each pie serves 6

Chicken Fajitas or Tacos

It's summertime which means once again I have smoked,shredded and frozen several chickens for convenient summer meals.  When I started doing once a month cooking a couple years ago, these chicken fajitas were one of the very first meals I tried as evidenced by its location in column L of the 'Recipes' tab. They turned out all right.  

I combined the marinade with the sliced, raw chicken in one bag and froze it.  In another bag I combined the pepper and onion slices and froze them separately.  I thawed the chicken, cooked it and then cooked the peppers and onions from their frozen state. The fajitas tasted pretty good, but the vegetables were a little mushy. If I were to try to it again I might consider using a frozen veggie mix from the grocery store as the flash frozen vegetables may not be as mushy.  Or I would just go with fresh vegetables like I did for this newer rendition.

I realized with my frozen, pre-cooked chicken I can make fajitas or tacos fairly easily and this replaced having dedicated fajita meat in the freezer.  It is fairly easy although it does require prepping the peppers and onions on the day of.  You may be able to save some time with pre-cut peppers and onions from the produce section or salad bar at your grocery store.

Chicken Potstickers

I love potstickers and now my daughter has declared them one of her favorite meals as well.  They are a bit time consuming to make, but they cook quickly straight from the freezer.  They'll definitely be a regular in our freezer meal rotation.

Difficulty: Difficult - They aren't difficult to make, but they are time consuming.
Category: Freezer to Pan
Recipe Column: DM

Yields about 50

Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole

As I mentioned the last time I posted, I recently had a baby.  I'm still doing my freezer meals.  After all it's the easiest way to stay on top of feeding my family.  But since I currently have a needy, helpless and unpredictable little person to take care of those freezer meals need to be easy in every sense.  They need to be easy to put together before freezing since I have little time and energy for cooking right now.  They need to be easy to cook or reheat on the night that I'm serving the meal since the baby is most likely to be fussy right when it's time to start making dinner.  They even need to be easy to eat since I will most likely be eating the meal one handed while the other snuggles a tiny baby who doesn't want to be put down.  Oh and they need to be delicious.  Fortunately this casserole meets all of these requirements.

Adapted from: Joy Filled Eats
Difficulty: Easy
Category: Simple Side
Recipe Column: DL