Busy in the Kitchen!

We have been busy in the kitchen lately and last night was no different! I baked the chicken cordon bleu that I posted about yesterday.

While that was baking I also made twice baked potatoes from the Test Kitchen of Melissa Fallis. Here is our attempt the twice baked potatoes:

Shells... notice the sucky ones... those were all me.

Filled, time to freeze them before vacuum sealing

Lots of potatoes to go in the freezer... I'm running out of space!!

It is way harder to scoop out potatoes leaving a nice shell than it seems! Trey was way better at this than me. 

And to go with our chicken cordon bleu we made green beans and caramelized onions :) I'm sure Gordon Ramsey would insult my dish and say that they don't compliment each other but oh well... it's what I was in the mood for.

Cooking Green Beans

Caramelizing onions

Dinner!

All in all it was a pretty good meal and we have twice baked potatoes ready for another night! I'm so glad my hubby is so willing to help me in the kitchen. I'm definitely not the best chef but with his help it turns out pretty good.

Chicken Cordon Bleu Bake

I found a recipe here for a chicken cordon bleu freezer dish. It is set up to be a make one, freeze one but I got the motivation to prepare it when it wasn't time for dinner, so I decided to just freeze both! It was really pretty easy and looks delicious. I'll update after we eat it in the next couple of days :)

Chicken, covered in a layer of ham slices, covered with soup/milk mixture and some cheese

Topped with stuffing!

Finished off with more cheese

Teriyaki Chicken

We ate another of our freezer meals this week! I got the Teriyaki Chicken out of the freezer Sunday evening and let it thaw in the fridge for the next 24 hours. Monday night I cut open the bag and put it into our crockpot and put that right back in to the fridge. Tuesday morning I put the cold crock pot base into the crock pot and plugged it in before I left for work. It wouldn't really make a difference if the base is cold already or not, but since I leave for work at 6:30, I figured less to do in the morning and then it would need longer to cook would all work out well for me.

Ready to go in the crock pot

It turned out pretty good! I would probably go back and add more carrots to it next time and make the onion slices much bigger - it basically faded away since it cooked all day long!

I heated up one of my bags of pre-cooked rice in the microwave and made an easy meal :)

Chicken Cacciatore

We are finally eating some of our freezer meals! We took the chicken cacciatore that I posted about here, out of the freezer the night before and let it thaw in the fridge. It was to be heated up on the stove, not in the crock pot so I just prepped it right before we wanted to eat. I made spaghetti to serve it over and some zuccini and squash to go on the side. Overall it was pretty good! It definitely had some zip to it, from the red pepper flakes that are in there.


Heating up on the stove



Our dinner



Paired with a raspberry brown beer from Lost Coast Brewing


For dessert I made a peanut butter snack - spread peanut butter between two graham crackers and put them in the freezer. They are best if they have been in there a day or so, not eaten immediately (they get a little bit softer, then are easier to bite). Yummy!!

Overall, I would say it was a successful dinner. And lunch the next day :)

More Freezer Meals!

This weekend I am going to attempt to put together more freezer meals! We haven't even "run out" of other freezer meals but I am excited to try these recipes, plus my weekends in March get pretty busy so I won't have much time to do a big freezer cooking day. Just wanted to post my ideas and recipes that I am going to try, then I'll post about the outcome!

This chicken cordon bleu bake looks so delicious. It is a make one, freeze one type of recipe. I do that when I make manicotti and I love it!

I love a good pork chop, this is marinated and baked pork chops! I'm sure they will be great. This could be made the day of and just baked but I love to have freezer stuff ready to go, makes my life so much easier on a week night.

Here is an entire post about freezer cooking from the Test Kitchen of Melissa Fallis (a friend who's freezer cooking posts are all over pinterest!). She posts about how to make a whole slew of freezer meals at the same time, but I am going to do just a few of these (or I will run out of freezer space!). I am going to make the twice baked potatoes, marinated steak and chicken with honey sauce.

This isn't really a freezer meal but to go on the side with my meals a great side of green beans and carmelized onions. I am going to attempt that with dinner in the near future!

Sorry it's a boring post with no pictures but hopefully soon there will be lots of yummy pictures of food!