Let It Go, Be Happy, Blanch Some Veggies.

I'd like to start this post with a Weekly Challenge! This week do something for someone, even a complete stranger because we all need help. We ALL need help. Help someone because you may be the answer to that persons prayers. Love those who despise you. Love those who persecute you. There's too much hate in this world so lets LOVE each other. Let love fill up your life and let go of all that hate and I promise your life will be BETTER. I promise you will be HAPPIER. I promise better things will come your way. And you will be a better person because of it.

Now watch this awesome music video by OK GO...

LET IT GO

On to today's project...

 I have been trying to think of ways to make my life a little easier and less hectic. I really like to cook and usually make dinner almost every night, but sometimes I'm just too tired. I remembered seeing a blog where this woman would spend a few hours ever couple of weeks making ALL the meals at once and freezing them so she could just pull them out later and throw them in the crockpot or oven. It seemed to be a little much for me to process at the time so I decided to start out slow. Here's what I did.....


1.) Buy lots of freezer bags as well as regular ziplock bags to use for things that stay in the fridge.

2.) Go to your favorite grocery store and find out what day of the week the meat is on sale. For us it is mondays so we took advantage of all the meat in the sale section. We got steak and chicken and it was cheap!

4.) Signed up for digital coupons on our loyalty card at Smiths. Keep an eye out for the sales and try to match them with the digital coupons that pop up on their website so you can save more.

3.) We stocked up on fresh veggies and fruit. Don't worry about getting too many veggies because I'm going to show you how to make them last.

Here's what I did...

1.) Throw the chicken in the oven and bake until it is cooked all the way through.

2.) Find you some onion choppin' glasses because you're going to be chopping LOTS of onions while the chicken cooks... Swimming goggles would have been a great option. I looked completely idiotic so Im not posting the picture, but this worked perfectly!! I cut up about 8 onions and a bundle of green onions and didn't shed a single tear.

*IMPORTANT TIP-  Do NOT take your onion choppin' glasses off until you have taken the chicken out of the oven and have left the kitchen! Those onions are STRONG and linger like you're trying to get the last guests to go home so you can clean up after the party.

3.) Once you are able to step in the kitchen again, take that big bowl of the onions you just chopped (not the green onions) and a measuring cup and start scooping the onions into small ziplock baggies. One cup of onions in each little baggie. Trust me this is going to be convenient when you need them for future recipes. Label each baggie with the date and put them all in a big freezer ziplock bag. Then label the freezer bag. Also, I read that you can freeze onions without blanching them, so thats what I did. (We will get to the blanching later).

4.) Sometimes I like to save food containers and reuse them....after washing them of course.  I had an old parmesan cheese container and saw someone on pinterest put their chopped green onions in one, so that's what I used it for. Labeled it of course and stuck it in the freezer.

5.) When the chicken had cooled off, I shredded it, put it in a freezer bag, labeled it with the date I bought and froze it, and threw that in the freezer as well. This was soooo nice to have for any recipe we wanted to add some chicken to. Just throw some in a pan and heat it up (I dont use microwaves) and put it in with whatever recipe you're fixing.

6.) With the tortillas I left a small stack in a ziplock bag in the fridge for fast and easy use. The rest I put in a freezer bag and stored in the freezer until i needed them. Then I pulled them out to defrost in the fridge till I was ready to use them. (Sorry the picture is so bad)

7.) I washed and dried the fruits and veggies and used the regular ziplock bags to store them in the fridge. The freshness lasted much longer than  it would have if I had left them in the plastic bags I brought them home in. 

**I later read to leave the onions outside of any sealed bags so they stay dry (unless freezing them), so ignore the onions in this picture.

Here comes the blanching...Ready??

Okay, maybe not forever, but for a really really really long time!.... I love Squints by the way. If you don't know who he is, then you must have lived in the mountains away from civilization and caught squirrels to eat and talked to trees and wore shoes made of leaves... or you just never saw the movie.

Have you ever heard of blanching? Yeah, me neither. UNTIL NOW! It's a lot of work, but I'm telling you it's worth it...

Blanching is a must for almost all veggies before freezing them. If you blanch them first, they will last MUCH MUCH longer in your freezer. Click the link below to find answers to all your blanching questions...

 How To Blanch Veggies Before Freezing Them

Here's another link on blanching times...

More Blanching Times

* Though it seems there's a bit of a disagreement between different blanching sites whether or not onions need to be blanched, I will tell you that I didn't blanch mine and they were completely fine till the very end, and they were in my freezer for a few months.

*BLANCHING TIP-  Do NOT over or under blanch your veggies. If you do it will be worse than not blanching at all. Just make sure you time them. If you put your veggies into boiling water and the boiling stops, then start times from the moment the water begins boiling again.Follow the blanching times because they differ depending on the veggie. As soon as you remove them from the boiling water, submerge completely in ice water for the exact time it took to boil them. Make sure the water stays cold. Add ice to water as needed.

*Also remember when freezing food, that moisture is the enemy. After blanching make sure you remove any extra moisture. NO I don't mean dehydrate the food before you freeze it! I mean to either pat dry with paper towels or leave out to air dry before putting in the freezer bag. Trust me, your veggies will last longer. 

1.) I read that you can use shredded carrots as filler in meals to make more of something you have less of. For example... meatloaf. You can also use them in carrot cake. I shredded all my carrots and blanched them by boiling them for a short time and then dunked them in ice water for the same amount of time. Then I let them lay flat on paper towels till they had dried enough before putting them in the freezer bag. Remember that moisture is the enemy and the less we have in our freezer bags, the better. This actually worked well with a pasta dish i make. I like to make veggie pasta  (You know. The fun colored pene pasta made of different veggies?) with stewed tomatoes, sauteed onions, sauteed shredded carrots, steamed broccoli and a little bit of parmesean cheese. I know it sounds kinda weird, but it was actually really good. My husband even likes it!

2.) I also decided to blanch the broccoli. I cut it up into medium pieces. Of course I cut the florets and I also cut down the stem about half way. You get a lot more out of it that way. Let this air dry also, and don't forget to label the bag. (This is a terrible picture)

Wanna see what my freezer???

Its pretty bare but mama, I love organization! :-D

I'm telling you a couple hours of doing this with our new groceries really did make my life easier. I would just throw some onions and chicken into a pan to heat them up and toss them into a cheese quesadilla. Green beans or Broccoli in your pasta with a can or two of stewed tomatoes! Everything pre-cut or cooked and meals are snappy now. I loved this and I think I'm going to continue doing it, as well as experiment with complete freezer/crock pot meals. I'll post about that another time.

HERE ARE A COUPLE MORE TIPS: 

* Brown Sugar Bricks--  I Hate when your brown sugar turns into a brick! It's impossible to measure for recipes and breaking it up takes too long. Here's what you do...

       Put all of the brown sugar in a ziplock bag and throw a piece of bread in there. Seal it up and let it sit a couple of hours. Go back to check on it. The brown sugar will have sucked up all the moisture from the bread and be soft again. Remove the dried up bread, squeeze out the air from the bag and seal. It will stay soft and usable. If it hardens up again, repeat these steps. (See the bread in there?)

* Medicine Filing Cabinet-- I can never find the medicine I'm looking for, and when you don't feel good you don't really want to spend a lot of time looking. I usually just give up. So i thought I would take this little basket I had lying around and the extra baggies and make a "Medicine Filing Basket" to go in the cabinet. I gathered up all the medicine for colds and put them in a Ziplock bag and labeled the top by the seal. I did the same for Acid Reflux, Allergies, Nausea, Headaches, etc... Then I put them all in the basket so I could search through the labels on tops of the bags and pull out the one I was looking for. I LOVE IT!!

 Sometimes I think I go overboard with the organization, but then I remember that I know where everything is! :-)  Totally worth it.

Thanks for reading! STAY HAPPY!!!!