I love my family and want to feed them good, healthy, tasty food that they all want to just gobble up with zero complaints (I said I want this, not that I actually expect to get ALL of that every day but I try). You know what else? I want lots of time to quilt too. These two wants can be in direct opposition without a bit of fairly easy planning and a deep freezer - the appliance this time, not our weather since I woke up to -35C out this morning. Yes, green dot day again.
I am going to try "Make It Monday" posts to combat this issue. So, if I post a recipe here, I have figured out some way for that recipe to make it easier for me to quilt with peace of mind.
This week I went with something simple but, being new at this, forgot to take a picture before I served up some of it. My son wanted to know just why I was taking pictures of supper.
Baked Beef Pasta Casserole1 lb lean ground beef
1 lb whole grain rotini pasta, cooked and drained
1 small onion, diced
2 small cans tomato paste
2 small cans tomato sauce
1 tbsp. instant beef bouillon
2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
Preheat oven to 350C. sauté ground beef and onion in large saucepan, stirring occasionally until beef is no longer pink.
Add tomato paste, tomato sauce and beef bouillon. Cook, stirring occasionally for 10 to 15 minutes or until flavours are blended.
Layer ingredients as follows in an ungreased 9x13" baking dish: 1/2 pasta, 1/2 sauce and 1/2 cheese. Repeat layers and cover. Bake for 45 minutes or until heated through and cheese is melted.
So, how does this help me quilt? Well, a few ways.
One thing, I could do up all of the work first thing in the morning while I am doing other things. So, while my children are eating breakfast I could be also getting the water boiling on the pasta and getting the meat and onion cooked, all while multi-tasking the children out the door. Even if I don't multi-task very well, I can still get all of this complete after I get home from dropping the kids off at school, get everything in the casserole dish and in the fridge and no more thoughts of dinner until I start getting ready to go get the kids. I can turn on the oven at 3:00, pop the casserole in and by the time we are back and ready to eat it, everything is ready to go.
Another thing that I could do, is double, triple or quadruple the recipe. For the most part, this adds very little time. Cooking three or four pounds of beef doesn't take much more time than cooking one pound does but, cooking one pound of beef on four different days takes much more time. Cleaning one slightly larger pan doesn't take much longer than cleaning one smaller pan and so on for each step.
For preparation, I cook everything like the original but then let everything cool and then instead of layering the ingredients I just mix it all together, including about 2/3ish of the mozza. I then put about 1.5 pounds or so into a medium sized freezer Ziploc. I remove all of the air and freeze it flat. This amount is good for my two children with very little left over when my husband is out of town. If I am using the frozen food when more people are there I just pull out more bags and everything else is the same.
On a day I am using my homemade convenience food, all I have to do is pull out a freezer bag in the morning, I peel the bag off immediately and put the "puck" into a bowl to thaw. Later in the day I can finish thawing in the microwave, put the pasta mixture into a small casserole, sprinkle with a bit of cheese, place into oven like original and I have a home cooked meal for the kids with the effort of convenience food! Love it. More quilting time for me!
All right, still figuring out this blogging thing so Make It Monday went up on Tuesday. Hopefully I get better at this and next weeks actually goes up on Monday!
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