Freezer Cooking!

Well I've been busy today! And after a night of no sleep I'm hopeing I can go to sleep tonight.
Brenden FINALLY went back to pre school today. He was out since Christmas, went back last Wenesday, and then had Monday off for MLK. He only goes Monday and Wenesday mornings so in real he's been out for close to a month. And no, I'm not saying I was glad to get my kid out of the house. But when I'm use to being able to spend those 3 hours doing stuff around the house or errands and then I don't get that for a month, I'm glad to have it back.

Anyways, today I spent my morning cooking. As you know my goal for 2012 is to save more money. Well it also came at the same time that we decided to start earting healthier (I went back on WW as well. Thats a whole nother (is that a word?) post Il save for another day. But overall, eating healthy can be more expensive. But while laying in bed last night I got to thinking about how much money we spend on frozen breakfast food. Brenden eats breakfast as soon as he wakes up in the morning and isn't patient enough for me to cook anything that takes more than 3 minutes from start to finish. So most morning we alternate between cereal, Eggo waffles, frozen french toast sticks, and Pillbury pancakes. Did I mention he eats ALOT. Like 3-4 pancakes/waffles at a time? Followed by fruit/more cereal/yogurt/ect. We can go through 2 frozen boxes a week. You might think $3 a box is fine. But when you add them all up this is pretty costly. Not to mention SO unhealthy. So I decided I was going to spend my morning making fresh homemade waffles and pancakes. I made a double batch of each and ended up with about 30 of each and froze them. No more store bought! Then I got to thinking, his favorite is french toast sticks. Could I make french toast and freeze these? Why not? Except they wouldnt be sticks. Or could they??

They could! I combined my regular french toast recipe with something to make it a little sweeter. I'm sure you could do this with any french toast egg recipe you normally use, but here is my suggestion:

You'll need:

• Loaf of bread (I used whole wheat). Works best if you lay it out on the counter for 20-30 minutes to get it a little hard. This way it wont fall apart in your egg.
• Melted butter. I used around 1/4 cup.
• 8 eggs
• Cinnamon. Around 1 Tsp depending on your liking.
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup milk

This made 2 and a half large cookie sheets full. You can half it if you'd like less.

Step 1: Using a pizza cutter, slice your bread into 3 pieces.

Step 2: Mix together your ingrediants in a large bowl for your egg mixture.

Step 3: One piece at a time, dip your bread into your mixture and rub off the extra. You don't want it soggy.

Place your sticks on a GREASED cookie sheet. I used wax paper and sprayed with PAM.



Step 4: Place in oven on top rack at 425 degrees (depending on oven you might go a little lower) for 8-9 minutes. Take out and turn over each piece (if not browned on bottom put it back in for a few more minutes). Place your pans back into the oven for another 8-9 minutes until the other side is browned and sticks are cooked and no longer moist inside. (You know, the french toast consistancy).

Pull then out and they're done! You can eat them right then if you'd like a healthier baked french toast! But that wasn't my goal so now on to freeze them!

Step 5: Let them cool for 10-15 minutes. Then place the entire cookie sheet into the freezer for around 30 minutes. Basically until they're frozen. One of our freezers only took 15 minutes while the other took close to 40. The point of this is to freeze them individually so then you can put them all into one container/bag without then freezing together. This way you can pull out exactly how many you want at a time.

So now just put them into whatever you are going to store them in and toss them back into the freezer.

When you are ready to ear them you can either place them in the oven for 4-5 minutes on a low/medium heat or toss them in the microwave for 1-2 minutes.

*I added the cinnamon and sugar to the recipe to add sweetness. It's simply for taste since I use whole wheat bread.

I also pre cooked a bunch of chicken today. We make alot of recipes that called for shredded chicken. In the past I cook the chicken in the afternoon either boiling or bake it, then using forks shread it which takes forever! Someone gave me the idea of crock potting (again, a word?) a ton of chicken at once and shredding it then freezing it. And boy am I glad I did!? This is the only way to do it!!

All I did was stick 8 boneless skinless chicken breast into the crock pot. I didn't trim/flatten/nothing. I filled it half with water/half with low sodium chicken broth. Enough to cover the chicken. And left it for 6 hours on medium-high. After 6 hours I just poured the entire thing into a large strainer above the sink to drain the broth and let it cool for about 25 minutes. The chicken was alraeady half shredded just from the crock pot cooking!!! Talk about easy!



After it cooled, me and brenden spent about 15 minutes shredding the chicken. It was so 'fall off the bone' (without the bone) that all I really had to do with pick it up and pull a few peices and it shredded itself.

After it was all shredded I used my food saver bags and put about 2 cups in each bag. You could use regular freezer ziplock bags as well. Labeled and tossed in the freezer. Now all I have to do is defrost when we're ready to use them with dinner! No cooking required!!!! This is going to make life so much easier! It actually looked so good I kept some out and mixed in some BBQ sauce and had a sandwich for dinner since Jake's not home tonight.

I can tell you spending 2 hours of cooking was SO worth the amount of time and money it's going to save us. Not to mention a TON healthier!  I mean look, the one on the top is homemade, the one on the bottom is frozen store bought? Which looks better to you??