Getting Caught Up!

This post is for Andrea. Hopefully we can get you up to speed. I would recommend reading all of the posts and comments so you have an idea of what is going on. I would especially concentrate on reading the first post about the guidelines and also the recap post from our first meeting. The only thing that has changed on the guidelines is there are 13 meals to prepare instead of 10. Other than that, everything is the same.
Other things, post your family food allergies and food your family hates on the widgets on the left hand side of the blog. On the right side of the blog there is a widget titled "MMMMs favorite links". There are three links to different sites that are recipe websites that allow you find out the nutritional value of your recipe. You need to calculate the nutritional value of your recipe and then post it on the post labeled "What we are cooking for our first attempt." That way poeple who are watching what they are eating can know calories, fat, etc.
Other than that we are meeting on Monday, September 13 at 9:30am at my house (Savanna's) to exchange our meals. Make sure they are frozen and that you bring something to hold 13 meals in.
If you have any questions or concerns then just post it.

New Member

FYI-My mother-in-law decided that she doesn't want to participate, but no worries, Andrea Henich has joined the ranks. Welcome, Andrea! So still cook 13 meals and have them ready by Monday, September 13 at 9:30am.

Link

Here is a great link that lists foods that are high in Vitamin K. Again, if the recipe you are planning on making calls for items that are high, I will have Kam and Ellison eat it. Thanks girls for being so flexible about my diet. It makes me feel slightly normal!

http://www.drgourmet.com/warfarin/vitaminkcontent.pdf

Notes from Our First Meeting

Here are the notes from our first meeting to use as a reference while we are getting ready for our exchange. Please don't let all of these tips/helps make you feel over whelmed. That is not the point. Just take several of these points at a time and use them while you are cooking. Don't worry if you forget them, just review the tips the next time you cook and add a few more to your regime and pretty soon you will be a pro at it. This really is NOT as daunting as it may seem. Just start cooking and you will realize how easy it can be.

The Maples Moms Making Meals

Food
A general rule: If you see it frozen at the store then it can probably be successfully frozen at home.

Raw potatoes do NOT freeze well in any recipe.

Cubed potatoes in some soup type recipes are usually good-like chowder.

Mashed potatoes can sometimes be frozen. Make the mashed potatoes very thick and test freeze a small portion.

Boxed dehydrated potatoes such as Scalloped Potatoes can be frozen.

Frozen potatoes such as hash browns freeze well.

The freezing process softens vegetables-such as stir fry. Better to just add in later.

Fresh, raw vegetables, except onions and peppers, need to be cooked briefly, or blanched prior to freezing. Cooking for about 2 minutes in boiling water is usually sufficient.

Add toppings such as buttered crumbs and French fried onions at baking time. Place in a small zip lock baggy and freeze with the meal.

Top with shredded cheese at the end of baking time or else it will stick to the foil when you uncover it after it has been baked. Instead, include the topped cheese in a zip lock baggy.

If your recipe calls for ham but you only need a little bit then go to the deli section of the grocery store and ask for what you need. It can be cheaper that way.

When making enchiladas, consider tearing the tortillas or making layers instead of rolling each enchilada.

If you don’t want to take the time to mince garlic or chop onions, replace it with bottled minced garlic or dried onion flakes or powder. 1 medium onion=1 tsp dried onion powder, 1 clove of garlic=1/8 tsp garlic powder.

Pasta can be frozen successfully but it should be under cooked. Cook the pasta 2 minutes less than the shortest recommended cooking time. Only add the pasta AFTER the water is boiling and set your timer as soon as you drop the pasta into the boiling water.

An exception to this method of cooking pasta is lasagna. You don’t need to cook your lasagna noodles at all. And you don’t need to buy the expensive “no boil” kind, either.

Manicotti can successfully be made using uncooked manicotti tubes as well. They are also much easier to fill when they are uncooked. When filling manicotti tubes, place the filling in a small resealable freezer bag. Cut the corner off the bag, fit the opening into one end of the manicotti tube, and squeeze the filling into each one. Place the manicotti on a bed of sauce and cover completely cover with sauce so the pasta has a source of moisture.

Instant rice turns mushy and disintegrates. Deep fried foods lose their crispiness. The crispiness can be regained somewhat by placing it under the broiler in your oven or toaster oven for a minute or two.

For dairy-based sauces and gravies/soups they can be frozen and reheated. Sometimes the recipes thicken a bit and you may need to stir in a little milk, broth or water. Heat and stir, and they usually blend right back to a beautiful consistency.

Some recipes that call for marinating beef, pork, turkey or chicken can be marinated in the freezer. Simply prepare the marinade, pour it over the meat and freeze in a freezer bag.

The test for “freezer-worthy” is, “Do you like it after it has been frozen?” You are not freezing leftovers.

Fully cooked meals such as Slow Cooker, Stove Top and Oven recipes should be frozen as soon as cool enough to go into the freezer. Assembly recipes should be frozen as soon as preparation and packaging is complete.

Most frozen meals can be baked for about three hours at 300 degrees. Cover the dinner with foil and place the frozen dinner in the oven. Program your oven to bake for three hours at 300 degrees and go.

If you are going to be gone for an hour, you can have potatoes ready to mash right when you get home. Before you leave, bring a pot of cubed potatoes to a full boil. Turn off the heat, but leave it on the burner with the lid on. The potatoes will be ready for mashing when you return.

For perfect rice every time, even when you are not home, measure rice and water into a pan. Bring to a boil. Turn off the heat, but leave the pan on the burner with the lid on. The rice will be fluffy and perfect in about an hour.

Things that will make your life easier while cooking:

You will need two different sets of measuring cups and measuring spoons-one for dry measurements and one for wet measurements.

A canning funnel for filling quart or pint sized freezer bags.
Have several large mixing bowls. Popcorn bowls are inexpensive and fairly easy to find.

Have several large mixing spoons.

Have a permanent marker handy for marking your food. When marking your food include the oven temperature, baking time, topping with crumbs or cheese, etc. You can either write directly on the foil or bag or attach a label.

Use paper bags as trash cans. Place several around the kitchen where you will be working. This saves time having to walk back and forth to the garbage.
Have your recipe on a 4 x 6 card that you can carry around with you. You can also write on the card to adjust serving sizes etc.

Make a list of the recipe titles. As you take a meal from your freezer, mark off the meal and then you know what you have left for later. Date the list or date the meal. With a list you have an immediate “menu” for your family to choose from. Tape your List of Recipes that you have prepared, on the door of the freezer, on the inside of a cupboard door or some other convenient place where you can refer to it often and keep it updated.

Making a shopping list is an absolute must. Group the items on your list by category. If you are extra ambitious then you can list your groups in the order you come upon them in the store.

Disposable Foil Baking Pans

You will need to cover the foil pans before putting them in the freezer. Use EXTRA HEAVY foil. It is much wider and heavier than regular foil. There is heavy duty foil that is slightly heavier than the regular foil but it is not freezer foil. You don’t need to wrap the entire pan, just the top. Cut the foil about 1 inch larger than the pan and crimp this excess under the edges of the pan. Press the foil right down on top of the food to eliminate as much air as possible.

Non Stick Cooking Spray to grease the foil pans. Lay out all your pans and spray them at once. It saves time.

Freezer bags

Most dinners can be frozen in freezer bags. As long as it isn’t layered you can put it in a zip lock bag. Good quality zipper freezer bags are the best. Look for ones with thick plastic and strong seams. Also look for ones that have a good zipper.
Fold down the freezer bag before filling. This will protect the zipper and it helps it stand up on its own.

Freezer bags can be placed in a baking dish when you are ready to heat and serve the meal.

Label your freezer bag before you put the food into it.

Be sure to press all the air out of the bag before you seal it. This is a very important step since air causes freezer burn.

If you are unsure about the amount of recipe to put into a freezer bag, measure each portion first.

Disposable plastic storage containers

If using disposable plastic storage containers make sure they are freezer and microwave safe. Leave 1/4 –inch head space so the food has room to expand as it freezes. Press a piece of plastic wrap onto the surface of the food and replace the lid.

The Day Before:

Do not shop on cooking day. It can be exhausting to do both the shopping and cooking in one day.

When you get home do NOT put everything away. Place the non perishable items on the counter where you will be using them. For example place all your cans near the can opener.

Get out all of your food items you already have in your house like your spices. This way they will be handy and available when you need them.

Choose a place that you will package your dinners for the freezer, such as the kitchen table. Place everything you will need there such as your freezer bags, cooking spray, tin foil and magic marker.

Cook your meat the night before. If you can, place it in a slow cooker (crockpot) over night so that when you are ready to cook in the morning, all of your meat is cooked. Then divide it evenly.

Shred your cheese, chop your vegetables and thaw out your meat.

Cooking Day:

Choose a day to cook that you have no obligations that will interrupt you and take you away from the kitchen. Eliminate the need to run errands and arrange for someone to take your kids.

When you adapt your own recipes for the freezer you may need to add 50% to the recommended baking time.

The Freezer:

Each meal should be cooled completely before putting it into the freezer.
Lay them out flat in your freezer until completely frozen. Then you can stack others on top.

Try using your vertical space in your freezer by using three tiered stacked utility bins in your freezer.

Thawing:

Meals in freezer bags that have thawed can be conveniently poured into baking dishes for the oven, into dishes to be heated in the microwave, or into pans for heating on the stove top.

Meals frozen in foil baking pans will need to be thawed before baking, in order to be ready to serve in the baking time recommended on the recipe.

Frozen meals should be thawed in the refrigerator. Ideally, you would remove a meal from the freezer the day before so that it has time to thaw by the time you need it. However, if you don’t remember add approximately 50% to the baking time and 50 degrees to the baking temperature.

Recipes with pasta in them should be allowed to thaw undisturbed. Forced thawing and any stirring can cause the pasta to get mushy and fall apart.

An easy way to remove a frozen meal from a freezer bag is to cut or tear the sides of the bag at the seam.

Take out the guess work of determining if the meal is hot by using an instant read thermometer.

Food.com

I posted the Food.com (formerly Recipezaar.com) to our favorite links. This site is awesome! There are thousands of free recipes and a whole section for OAMC (Once a month cooking) and freezer meals that already contains 6,000+ recipes! You can create your own profile where you can submit recipes to viewed privately or publicly. When you submit your recipe it also calculates the nutrition info for it too. You can have your own community of chefs (I'm still trying to get this all figured out) where you can share recipes, I believe. There are also lots of cooking tips and other cooking helps on this site! Hope you like it! I would love to hear feedback about the site too! So let me know what you think!

P.S. I should have told you how to view the OAMC/Freezer Meals recipes from site... when you get to the site there will be a little button on the left side, under login , that says recipesifter. Click on it and you can navigate through the types of cuisine, meal, etc. Click on Preparation, and then it will show another menu that will show OAMC/Freezer Meals click on that and it will say 6,577 recipes found and view them.

Meals for the First Attempt

What are you bringing for our first attempt at our meal exchange?

Savanna: Chicken Rice Brocolli Bake
Carrie: Tortilla Soup
Bobbi: Apricot Chicken
Lisa: Green Chili Casserole
Natalie: Ritzy Chicken
Tawni: Meatball Stone Soup
Brandie: Lasagna
Brooke: Cornbread Stuffed Pork Chops
Mara: Sweet and Sour Chicken Bowls
Jen: Cola Chicken
Nanci: Chicken Cordon Bleu
Tiffany: Meatloaf

Add your meal to the rest and don't forget to comment on the nutritional value.

Don't forget, Monday September 13 at 9:30am at Savanna's house for our first meal exchange. Put it on your calendar now.

Love this!

I just had to share this picture. This is my dream freezer, but I don't think mine will ever look like this. I do like how they label their food on the edge, so you can actually read it when it is stacked. Should we do this?

The First Meeting Time

According to the poll for our first meeting, it is a tie between Saturday and Tuesday. So in making the executive decision I've decided to have the meeting on Tuesday. If anyone has any problems with that and will not be there, let us know. I can always post notes on the stuff we talked about during the meeting.
If anyone can't come because of kid issues then I can con Aaron into babysitting the kids out in the backyard.

Please come with a freezer recipe or two, that way we have an idea of what everyone will be cooking. Also, I'm not an expert with freezing meals, so please come with tips or concerns you would like to share with the group.

The meeting shouldn't be longer than an hour. I don't know if I can talk about cooking for any longer than that. It should be good though. I'm excited.

Hope to see you all there.

SparksRecipe Issue!!

Thankfully, Tawni tried inputting a recipe and adding it to our cookbook and found out there is a little problem with adding individual recipes from personal accounts and recipe boxes to a shared cookbook. We think we have circumvented the problems by creating a universal login and password for us to all use.

Username: maplesmoms
Password: dinner

When you login this way you can easily use the recipe calculator and add the recipes to our recipebox and The Maples Moms Making Meals Cookbook.

If anyone else experiences problems with this site, please let me know and we'll try to figure things out.

Is everyone okay with using the universal login? You can make your own account and cookbook and add our maplesmoms recipes to it, but for some crazzzzy reason it won't work the other way! Sorry for the hastle! I hope this will still work for everyone!

New to blogging

Can someone show me how to add our likes and dislikes on the left side of the blog. I'm not a blogger and can't figure out where to add that info. Thanks!

Eating Smart

So Brooke had a great idea. She (along with some others) had voiced concern about exchanging food when she is trying to watch her calories. (I'm just watching them as I quickly consume them...that was supposed to be humorous :) ) So she found a great website that calculates the nutritional value of a recipe. Just enter the ingredients of the recipe and it will calculate calories, fat, fiber, etc. So to help out all those calorie-conscious mom's here is the link.

http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/cookbooks.asp?cookbook=271006


I actually think that every recipe should be calculated this way. What do you think?

Administrative Rights

As you accept the invitation to belong to our blog, I will give you administrative rights so that everyone can help add to the blog. I won't feel bad if someone decides to change the look or add to the look of the blog. I'm not a blogging expert and in fact put this together pretty quick. So feel free to take part in making it better. Also this will give you access to add to the lists (Allergies and I Would Rather Eat Snails Than...)so that we can know everyone needs.

Our First Meeting

As several of us have been talking, we have mentioned the need for one meeting before we start exchanging food. In this meeting we would go over tips on freezing food, what to expect from the meal exchange group, as well as getting to know each other. I have posted a poll to see what day works best for everyone. So please vote on which day you would like to meet. Whichever day we do meet it will be held at my house (Savanna Sorensen's) at 7416 Sunset Maple Drive. If we choose the Friday in the morning I will get several young women from our ward to come and babysit the kids out in my backyard. It shouldn't be very long, maybe less than an hour tops, and this way we can all be on the same page before starting. If by chance you can NOT come then I'll include what we talk about on the blog.

Welcome Moms!

Welcome to our freezer meal group. We are excited to get this up and running. Hopefully this will be a great experience for everyone and make life a little bit easier.
To get started, there are a few guidelines we should go over so that we are all on the same page.

• This blog will be our way of communicating between the ten of us. Everyone will have administrative access so that we can add to the lists and polls. Feel free to post ideas, thoughts or even concerns and complaints on the blog. We will have lists on either sides of the blog that list what our Food Allergies and Food Dislikes are so that everyone is aware. Also we will have polls on different recipes, whether we liked them or not, and also good times to get together and have our food exchanges.

• You will be required to make and freeze 10 meals to exchange with our group. This is the same recipe just increased to make 10 meals.

• Try to spend around or below $75 for all costs.

• Your meal should feed 6 adults. (If item is in a disposible tin pan, please use a 9x13 pan.)

• You will need to package your meal either in freezer bags (heavy duty/double zip ziplock bags)or disposable aluminum pans covered with heavy duty (made for freezer) tin foil.

• Write on your packaging with permanent marker what the meal is, the basic instructions, and the date (example: Chicken Casserole, Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, 9/12/2010). You will probably have to pull the meal out of the freezer ahead of time so that it can thaw. Write the cook time that should be used once the meal is thawed.

• Please only make meals that you and your family have tried and enjoyed. Don’t experiment on the group!

• If you are stumped about what to cook and what freezes well, there are great books that have all the tips and recipes that you’ll need. Some examples are: Girlfriends on the Go by Suzie Roberts and Dinner is Ready by Deanna Buxton.

• Type up each of your recipes as well as suggestions for what vegetables or side dishes to serve with the meal. Make a copy for each member of the group so that we can put together a binder specifically for Make Ahead Meal recipes. Include your name on the recipe as well as from where you got the recipe. (Fun information to add to the recipe would be how much it cost you to make it.)

• Bring the recipe you plan on making for next month and a back up recipe with you to the exchange. Then we can discuss what everyone is making for next month so we don’t all make the same recipe.

• We want everyone to have fun. Obviously your family is not going to love every meal, but hopefully they will enjoy the majority and that will make it all worthwhile. If there is a particular meal that your family absolutely does NOT like then you can either trade with another member of the group or use that meal to take to someone in need. The most important thing is to take some stress out of your day so that you can spend more time with your family doing fun things, not cooking and cleaning.

• Please bring your meals already frozen. Plan ahead! If you cannot make it to the exchange, please drop off the meals in an ice cooler (with ice) prior to the exchange. If you are not prepared, each person will keep their meal until you deliver your meal and pick up theirs from each group member. Obviously situations can arise that are beyond our control that could cause problems, however you need to either make arrangements to find your own substitute for the month or let Savanna Sorensen know with plenty of time to make other arrangements.

We will meet every second Friday of the month at Savanna Sorensen’s house (unless notified otherwise)to exchange and tell about our dish. It shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes.