Lots of Recipes

Last week was full of good food wins - lots of items used up and getting a bit creative/ trying new recipes.

Of course it started out with a good organize of the freezers. We have one big chest freezer downstairs and then our regular freezer drawer upstairs in our kitchen. I like to keep upstairs minimal with only a few fruits, veggies, frozen herbs and any items I know I’ll use up during the week. I took a mental inventory as I was cleaning and have some meal ideas for the future. We have used up all our homemade pre-made meals, except for one veggie soup portion I have frozen still.

Last Saturday I took three large ziplock bags of frozen vegetable straps (1 bags each of: carrot peels and ends; celery ends and leaves; and onion skins) and made 28 cups of veggie stock! I let it simmer all morning and then started to process of slowly freezing it all. I have a silicon ice cube tray that has marks for 1/2 cup and 1 cup portions so I was able to freeze a few different combos to have handy. 

On Saturday I also roasted my first whole chicken which I had gotten on sale at NoFrills a few weeks ago. I looked up a few recipes but this one (linked below) was highly rating but also a very simple recipe. I’m not going to lie: I thought the recipe was too good to be true. The chicken is only stuffed with celery then seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder and cooked for 1 hour 15 minutes (with a 30 minute rest time). Best chicken ever! Will definitely make the recipe again. We used it in a few different recipes during the weekend and week, G even made a buffalo chicken pizza on a flatbread that turned out really good.   

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/83557/juicy-roasted-chicken/

During my freezer organizing, I was reminded of the many many pounds of ground beef we own. So we used 8 pounds, making two different recipes. We made 4 pounds of kabobs to have for lunches during the week and 4 pounds of sundries tomato burgers, which we also had for lunches and meals throughout the week.

G had a few days off during the week so smoked a chuck roast (also from the freezer) which turned out amazing! I guess they call chuck roast the “poor mans brisket”, and it did remind me of a nicely smoked brisket. I’ll have to compare the prices next time we are in the city to see what the price different really is. 

We were also in the mood to bake this week. Monday evening I made a blueberry/cranberry skillet cake (recipe below). It was good, not too sweet, but I might add some nuts or granola next time to add a different texture. This used up frozen blueberries and a bit of the frozen cranberries I had in our freezer. It was a nice ‘healthy’ treat to have with my coffee each morning.

https://snack-girl.com/snack/blueberry-skillet-cake/

G had to feed our sour dough starter and made 9 loaves of bread with the discard and some of the starter. Most of these loaves will be frozen for later eating, which helps restock our freezer because we had no loaves left in there. 

- M