Baking and Freezer Meals

I have been busy in the kitchen the past few days. My friends were teasing me that it was more nesting, and maybe it is. I have just had the urge to cook and bake and stock up on freezer meals.



Here are the desserts I have made...


Apple Oatmeal Crisp. I doubled the recipe to get a few servings of dessert for the 6 of us. I add 1 tsp apple pie spice, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt to the flour and use 1/4 C less sugar and 1 C more apples than the recipe calls for (regular size recipe, double this for the double recipe). I have tried many, many apple crisp recipes. This one is by far my family's favorite.


I also made a double portion of the crumble topping to put in the freezer. Next time I want to make an Apple Crisp it will save me a lot of time and dirty dishes.

On Saturday I got this recipe for Cherry Dump Cake from Aunt Sandy. It is very yummy and super simple with only 4 ingredients.

You just dump in a can of crushed pineapple, then a can of cherry pie filling, and then sprinkle on a box of dry yellow cake mix and add thin pats of butter (roughly 3/4 cube) to the top. Bake at 350 for about 45 min. Mmm

Today the girls and I made a batch of choc. chip cookies.

A great resourceful website I heard about from some homeschool friends is Hillbilly Housewife. I love their recipes and money saving tips. The next couple of recipes I got from them.

Buttery Parmesan Rice Mix. You can save money by making your own rice mixes instead of purchasing the box rice mixes at the store. Costco sells a big bag of Organic Short Grain Brown Rice. This makes it a lot cheaper than the organic boxed rice mixes.

Start with the rice and then dump each ingredient in a ziploc baggie. I made up 8 of these.

I wrote the directions on each bag so I wouldn't have to look up the recipe each time.

This rice recipe needs to be stored in the fridge or freezer because of the parm cheese. I stacked them in a loaf pan to save space.

Beans and Rice mix. I made this the same way.

These are the casseroles I've been working on...

Baked Spaghetti with Roasted Vegetables

Chicken Noodle Bake

SW Chicken Taco Bake. I made up 5 of these to have some in the freezer.

All assembled and ready to freeze.

Lasagna. I made 3 of these today.

So that's it for now. I'm planning on making some more soon. I will see if I can find the recipes for the casseroles online so I can post those too. I am not up for typing them all out right now. :)

Thursday Night Scrappin'

I have been inspired by some of the crafty ladies on the MOMYS forums to scrapbook at least once a week. I picked Thursday evening as my weekly crop night.

Friends are more than welcome to come by and scrapbook with me, or work on any craft project they have. It's much more fun to craft with friends. :)

Last night my sister Brenda was able to come over. We stayed up until 1am and had a great time. Alas, I am slow, so I was only able to complete 3 very simple 8x8 pages for the baby album I'm hoping to have pre-made and ready before Baby arrives.

Next week I'm planning on working on a Father's Day mini album. Anyone wanna come over?