Wondering what to do with all those tortillas laying around? Well…you need to do something. Mine expire in less than a month, and I’m sure yours do, too.
Of course, you could eat them, freeze them, or give them away and those are all fine ideas. Here’s what I did with just 2 packs of them yesterday: I made breakfast burritos!
I’d been eyeing the breakfast burrito recipe in one of my fav cookbooks Fix, Freeze, Feast
, but wasn’t sure I’d dig the potatoes in the burrito. But after my friends Jeremy & Samantha raved about them, I decided to give them a go! To respect the copyright of the book, I won’t post the entire recipe. But I’ll share some of the gist of it.
The most time consuming part? Prepping the potatoes. Even still, that only took 10 minutes max.
I wanted to make sure my spuds had a fairly small dice so they’d reheat well. The recipe called for ham, but I prefer sausage and guess what? I found some breakfast turkey links on clearance for $2.39 yesterday. Since these burritos were getting prepped and into the freezer the same day, I had no qualms buying meat right near the expiration. Once I had all my ingredients prepped, I created an assembly station, like this:
Having everything measured, mixed, and ready to go really speeds this last process up! Now ready for the fun part? After I’d made my 20 burritos…I realized I had 2 more tortillas! So somehow my two $0.04 packs of 10-ct tortillas included a bonus! Sweet.
These smelled SO good, and my daughter was curious about them, too. (You can see her hand nabbing one just as I snapped this pic!)
As I was cooking up eggs, shredding cheese, and boiling my potatoes, I was thinking how I’ve never cooked so much in my life until I started couponing! My pantry has far more basic cooking and baking staples than it ever did, and I’m exploring my culinary interests like never before! I’m sure if you’ve been at this awhile, you’re making the same observations right about now, too.
Ready for my fun total? I spent $8.63 on the ingredients I needed to make these 22 burritos. That works out to just $0.39 a burrito! Talk about a filling breakfast on the cheap! Think about it – I just made a filling, convenient breakfast from scratch for LESS than the drive thru. It can be done!
Consider doing your own freezer breakfast burritos! While I can’t give you the recipe I used, I can tell you eggs are cheap just about everywhere (last I was at Winco they were under $1…they are also $0.99 through today at QFC and $1.25 at Fred Meyer through Saturday). Tillamook cheese is also $1 a bag at Fred Meyer this week. So…there might be some options here, people!
And in case you wondering, I had one of these for breakfast this morning and it was good!
I'm so excited to share this guest post from Audrey at Tight Wad in Utah! She had 10 pounds of potatoes…and you'll just have to see what she did with them!
HI! I'm Audrey and I have been matching deals and coupons with recipes on my blog Tight Wad in Utah. I've been "couponing" since last summer and LOVE it! But then, here I am with 12 boxes of pasta and I need something to do with it all. So each Wednesday we post about what deals to stock up on, then post recipes using those items. Not all at the same time…… that would be a pretty funky meal. 
Recently potatoes have been on sale. I've seen them as low as .58 for a 10 lb bag! I consider it a bargain if I can get one for $1. But then this is what happens…I get a slight knot in my stomach……. can I use them before they grow eyes? Will the smell of them rotting remind me where I put them??
Soooooooo, here is my plan I found 3 recipes and I used the entire bag! Now all those potatoes are either digested or resting comfortably in my freezer.
Here is what I did with them:
1. Scalloped Potatoes
2. Rosemary Mashed Potatoes
3. Oven Fries
1. Scalloped Potatoes (8 potatoes)
This recipe freezes well, so I hear. I can't manage to have any left to freeze. The section that is gone was my "test" piece to make sure they were done
The recipe is pretty straight forward and uses ingredients you probably already have. If you're not going to eat it all at once like me, divide it into meal portions after its cooled from baking, seal in a freezer container or bag, label it with the name and date,freeze! Reheat in the microwave.
2. Rosemary Mashed Potatoes (10 potatoes)
Now, I KNOW these freeze well. And not because they aren't as good. My friend made them for me during a freezer swap. DELICIOUS! You can read all the rave reviews at All Recipes.
This is also an easy recipe to follow. I doubled the recipe using 10 potatoes and 5 yams.
Peel and cube them all, then throw them in some salted boiling water until tender. (20 to 30 minutes)
My pot was FULL! If you don't have a huge pot just turn it down from high so you don't have a raging boil with water splashing everywhere.
When done, retain 2 cups of the water.Then drain.
Then just mash it all with the other ingredients, except for half of the cheese that you sprinkle on top. In the recipe it calls for roasted garlic. I just used minced that I had on hand. And I used about 1 cup of the retained potato juice – 1/2 cup if you don't double the recipe. Refer to the recipe link for ingredients and added instruction.
If you've doubled the recipe put it in a 9 x 13 casserole dish, otherwise use an 8" dish. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.
After it's somewhat cooled, separate into meal portions and seal in freezer bags. I like to freeze them like this so that they fit in my freezer better.
Reheat in microwave.
I spent $3.44 in yams (not on sale) and $1.25 on cheese. The rest I had on hand. And now I have a fancy side dish for 5 meals! (one isn't pictured because we ate it.
3. Oven Fries (used the rest)
I love homemade fries, but I don't make them often because I think it's too much work for a side dish when I'm trying to get dinner done. So I found out how to freeze them. This way I can just take out how much I need and throw them in the oven! Nice, am I right??
So here's what you do: Wash, scrub and cut the potatoes into 1/2" fries.Toss them with oil (I used canola because I have lots) and add some salt and a little sugar (helps with crispyness – is that a word?)
Then place on baking sheets and bake for 20 minutes at 475.
When done, let them cool on paper or dish towels. Then put them in the freezer (on the sheet, or on something that will fit in your freezer – I used pie tins..lol). Keep them there until they are frozen solid. Half hour or so. All that's left is putting them in a freezer bag and labeling it!
When you're ready to eat…spray baking sheet with cooking spray and bake at 450 for 20-40 minutes (depends on size of fries).
*************
DONE! Now you have a 10 lb bag of potatoes making itself useful instead of stinking up your house.
I did make the fries and the rosemary potatoes at the same time. I just started cutting the fries while the rosemary potatoes were baking.
For more recipes feel free to check out Tight Wad in Utah!
A number of you have asked to have the recipes out that Terry and I cooked in our vlog here.
Herb Crusted Cod – from Season of Seafood booklet found at Albertsons
In a small bowl, mix together:
1/4 c. Japanese style breadcrumbs
1/4 c. finely shredded Parmesan cheese
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp garlic powder
Pat fish dry with paper towels. Place fish on baking sheet sprayed with olive oil. Spray fish with olive oil and sprinkle bread crumbs on top. Bake at 400 degrees until fish flakes with fork.
My Variation: I lightly coated my fish with olive oil, then dredged in the mixture and froze for later cooking.
Terry's Mediterranean Cod Burritos
Beer Battered Fish – adapted from AllRecipes.com
Mix together in a large bowl:
1 c. flour
2 TBSPS cornstarch
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
In a small bowl mix:
1 egg
1 c. beer (we used a lighter beer for this recipe, however a darker variety might yield a stronger flavor, if desired)
Mix in the beer/egg mixture into the dry mixture. Wisk quickly. Heat oil in deep fryer to 375. We don't have one, so we just used a deep skillet with a couple inches of oil. We chose Smart Balance. Dip the fish into the batter and then place in the fryer, turning once (it took about 2-3 minutes per side). I demonstrate this process in the vlog.
For the toppings:
2 TBSPs chopped dill
2 tsp. minced garlic
1/4 c. chopped fresh basil
1/4. c. pitted, chopped Kalamata olives
2 TBSPs capers, with a little reserved juice from the jar
2 TBSPs chopped sun-dried tomatoes
lemon zest from one lemon
Use same lemon and reserve juice
(We took this combination from a completely different recipe altogether – although the dill was Terry's addition. Modify the flavors to your taste.)
Place one-two pieces of fish (depending on how big you cooked them) in the center of a tortilla. Add toppings. Wrap in heavy-duty foil for the freezer.
By the way, my friend Rachel asked if the cod recipe could be adapted for chicken. I think that sounds really good! Have fun – burritos are great for the freezer – they're portable, fast, and yummy.
To see this cooking in action, go here.
Photo credit Bartlomiej Stroinsk
If you like freezer cooking or want to learn more about it, you need to check out this awesome post Money Saving Mom put up today! She's given you step-by-step instructions on how she plans her freezer cooking, PLUS free downloadable freezer cooking planning templates!
Seriously, check it out here!
So I really, really wanted a second freezer to expand my freezer meals. But how “frugal” is it to run off and spend several hundred dollars on a freezer so I can save money? Anyhow, I’m glad I didn’t race out and buy one because a friend of mine recently told me she had an extra she was hoping to get rid of and would I want it? Um, YES! It’s actually a combination fridge/freezer which I think will be perfect once we start our gardening adventures (I hope in the next month or two…stay tuned, veggie lovers!).
A few days ago I decided it was high time to organize my freezer space. So my first step was to take EVERYTHING out of the freezer and put it on my counter. It really shocked me how much I’d stuffed in there. I even found a pack of frozen breastmilk from my nursing days (which ended about a year ago! YIKES!).
I really have accumulated a nice stockpile of frozen dinners – it was good to see everything out like that so I could sort through it. Some of the older meats were…um…questionable, and they didn’t make the cut.
Here is my kitchen freezer after being all tidied up:
So here’s what I left upstairs: about 3 meals that I can easily pull out for the week, butter/cheese, fruits/vegetables, and quick lunch foods (burritos, chicken nuggest, vegetarian/vegan choices). Oh, and ice cream of course!
And here is my new fridge/freezer down in the garage:
I moved the bulk of my freezer meals here. The box is full of burritos my husband made recently and that I’m nagging him to blog here about soon…we’ll see if my nagging produces any results! (Wish me luck!)
If you want to learn more about freezer cooking and why I think it’s such a great idea, be sure to read posts from my Freezer Cooking category. I am actually participating in another swap next week and can’t wait to pack my freezers with even more good food!
If you've been following my blog, you probably know I've lately taken to freezer meal cooking. My friends Kellie and Becca (pictured above) got me started with this, and let me tell you…these gals are just amazing. They took it upon themselves to organize a freezer meal swap among friends at our church. They were inspired by the blog behind the book of Fix, Freeze, Feast: that shared a similar idea. The initial swap took place about 4 months ago now and 12 of us ladies piled into the church kitchen, and cooked our hearts out for two hours. At the end of it, we all went home with 12 different tasty freezer meals. The fourth swap took place last week, and there were nearly 27 participants…and the interest is growing.
I asked these ladies if I could chat with them, and we gathered last night so they could share with me how they've organized their swap and how you could do something similar with your friends too. Here is some of their best advice.
Start small! It's important that you have a group of friends that share the same level of enthusiasm and commitment to doing this. Becca suggests even starting with 4-5 friends would be perfect. You might find you wish to keep it small.
Stick with tried-and-true recipes. Becca and Kellie have tried a number of recipes from various cookbooks and have pretty much stuck to the core dinner recipes in Fix, Freeze, Feast: They have asked each participant to buy a copy of this book. They also frequently ask for feedback – if a recipe is too spicy, they'll note it for the future. Or if a recipe turns out better with black beans instead of pinto, that will be jotted down. By having a main set of recipes that folks get used to cooking and eating, you can ensure the quality of food everyone goes home with.
Cook together, or at home. The girls have done this swap two ways: where everyone cooks together in the commercial-grade church kitchen, or where everyone cooks at home and brings their meal to swap. Both have their pros and cons. Cooking at the church provides a fun night with friends and faster cooking times because the equipment is larger-sized; but cooking at home and bringing it means you can prepare the meals on your own time. In either case, I've enjoyed the chance to catch-up with friends. Try it both ways, or a mix – and see what works for you and your group.
Set guidelines on portion size. This has been one of the most challenging things so far. Some of the meals in our first swap were only big enough to serve about 2, and others were hearty enough to feed 6. Becca and Kellie decided after that to ensure each meal could easily serve a family of 4-5. For each meal, they request 20 meatballs per bag, 4-5 chicken breasts, 15-18 chicken tenders, and the like. While this might sound regimented – it means everyone leaves with full meals. For larger families, Becca has suggested they cook twice as much (so they could leave with twice as many meals). Whatever you decide to do, be considerate, but be consistent.
Keep organized. For last week's swap, I made my meals at home. When I arrived at the church, Becca and Kellie had big tables with signs indicating what meals went where. They also had prepared a sheet with cooking instructions for each of the meals for us to take home. These simple measures ensured a hassle-free event.
Be generous. Recently, Becca and Kellie have been thinking about how to turn this into a ministry-focus. For the last few swaps, they've given the opportunity for us to donate a meal or two back to the church kitchen. These extra meals have gone to new parents and struggling families. Is there someone in your circle who could use an extra meal? I bet you could think of someone if you tried.
Have fun! Why not turn this event into a chance to get together? The swap last week, Becca and Kellie had so nicely made cookies, banana bread, and set out coffee. It was a nice chance to chat with friends and take a break!
Freezer meals have become increasingly a part of what I do…and undoubtedly I'll be sharing more. I also want to encourage you to start out slow! For instance, if you're already making chili this week, why not double or triple batch it and freeze the extras? If you did that once per week – over the course of a month you could have 4-8 extra meals. Becca has slowly been building up her frozen meal stockpile and she told me last night if all goes according to plan, she will have enough dinners to take February off from cooking! WOW! That is smart – it's money and time saved.
Thanks, ladies, for sharing your tips with me! I hope some of my readers will be inspired to do a freezer meal swap, too. For more on this topic, be sure to check out the Freezer Cookingsection of my blog. I also noticed today that Crystal (AKA Money Saving Mom) has a Mr. Linky up for other bloggers to share their freezer cooking plans. I hope you'll check that out, too.
Reader Tonya got inspired by all my freezer meals posts, so she went to Albertsons last week, spend $200 (and saved $200) and turned it into a number of awesome meals for her freezer!
She writes, "I bought 16 pounds of chicken, a couple pounds of ham, some hamburger, and steak. I ended up cooking 10 different kinds of meals and doubled most of them, ending up with 17 freezer meals." Her meals included caesar chicken casserole, chicken noodle casserole, chicken and dumplings, baked chimichangas, white chicken enchiladas, ranch ham pasta, spaghetti pie, baked ziti, and teryiyaki steak. She also write, "each one I am proud to say is low in fat and low in calories." Here are her meals stored in her freezer:
WOW, Tonya! I'm entirely impressed! Generally when I do this, I keep it to 2-3 different meals of the same variety or meat – you really went all out! While you ended up putting up some expense and time to assemble these, I bet you will enjoy NOT having to cook (or shop!) for about another month! Thank you so much for sharing.
If you want to learn more about how freezer meals work to save you time and money, see my posts under the aptly named category Freezer Cooking.
So tonight I loaded up my
Cheesy Chilada Bakes and headed to the church to swap my meals. We had 27 ladies participating today, and we were divided into 3 groups of 9. We then exchanged freezer meals. Here are the yummy meals I ended up with (I apologize for the yellow lighting – I'm still learning how to take a decent picture!):
My meals include: honey glazed chicken, teriyaki chicken, mozzerella meatballs, broccoli chicken bake, chicken fajitas, black bean & vegetable chili, chicken parmasan, and chicken curry. Plus, the cheesy chilada bake from earlier (which was very yummy, by the way!). While this is a lot of chicken meals, I'm glad since you might remember all the steak and beef dinners I made last month. The yellow piece of paper (which is understandably hard to find in this rather yellow picture) lists cooking instructions for each meal. There are also some freezer cookies the church graciously gave us!
Getting all these dinners did require some of my "Master Cramming" skills. But I did it. I just have to remember to be careful opening the freezer door unless I want to get my foot slammed with a falling beef chuck roast. Here's my freezer as of tonight:
What do you think? Don't you think that looks WAY more interesting that just lots of frozen chicken breast and meat? These are actual prepared dinners using fresh, real ingredients! It's inspiring to look in there and choose a dinner for the next evening.
All the recipes we made tonight came from Fix, Freeze, Feast: I know a number of you have gotten into freezer cooking as a result of these posts. In the not-too-distant future, I'll be picking the brains of my friends Kellie and Becca who have graciously organized these swaps for the past four months. I'm going to see what I can learn from them to pass along so you can organize a meal swap like this, too. In the meantime, be sure to check out my Freezer Cooking category for more on this topic.
As some of you know, I'm into batch cooking and then freezing the meals. My friends Becca and Kellie got me into this, and they took it a step farther. They organized a group of us to "swap" freezer meals.
Think about it. Instead of running out and buying multiple ingredients for multiple meals, we each buy enough to make ONE recipe 9-12 times over. Then we get together and swap. We'll go home with meals such as lasagna, chili, cheese steak, stir fry, chicken curry, and sweet & sour meatballs. It feels like an extension of what I'm already doing with couponing to save money.
While it usually means I end up doing a huge shopping trip and spend 3-4 hours assembling meals once per month, it also means effort and time saved in the long run and I find it's well worth it!
We have a meal swap tonight, and I chose Cheesy Chilada Bake. I knew that with Superbowl around the corner, that I'd be able to find Mexican-inspired ingredients at low prices. Plus, I already had a stockpile of black beans to use, and I found a great sale on Albertsons cheese a couple weeks back ($0.88 for 6 bags!)
So last night I started prepping my ingredients. While the original recipe calls for green peppers, Becca uses a mix of red and yellow, too. I like that, so I followed suit.
I got all my meat cooked up and ready to go…and then I realized I'd totally missed a primary ingredient: tomato sauce! And unfortunately, I didn't have enough left in my stockpile. So I had to finish my recipe up today. My son was very happy to help this afternoon.
That's his famous "blue blanket" in the background, by the way. He doesn't go anywhere without it…a modern day Linus, of sorts. Even though he's three, I try to include him in whatever I'm doing. In fact, as I type this, I'm working on my desktop and he's next to me on the laptop watching monster trucks on You Tube. It's how we roll!
Back to the meals. My recipe mixes peppers, salsa, tomato sauce, meat, and spices and then layers corn tortillas and cheese. Here's what one looks like when it's done.
It's sort of like a Mexican lasagna. Very tasty! And it's also for dinner tonight. Here are all 9 of my Cheesy Chilada Bakes, ready for swapping!
So how much did all these dinners cost me? All told, I spent just $63.80 out of pocket to assemble these – and that includes the foil trays. I will end up with 9 meals at the end of this, which means each dinner will have cost me just $7.08. These dinners are often large, too, and many will easily be stretched into two meals. Tonight's for instance, will easily take our family through dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow, and possibly beyond!
If you're wondering where I get my recipes, I primarily use the book Fix, Freeze, Feast: . The recipes are really excellent for freezing, and they are not your typical "cream of mushroom soup casserole" type recipes. It's currently less than $10 on Amazon, and you could purchase it for about the same amount at Borders if you had one of those nifty 30-40% printable coupons. My book is covered with food bits and scribbles - probably my most "loved" cookbook at the moment.
Don't forget: we're still not done stretching that $175 grocery trip yet! My husband Terry will be whipping up a variety of freezer burritos later today and I'll be sure to share with you what he does!
If you noticed I was MIA today, well, there's good reason. I was busy cooking and cleaning. Maybe it's something about the end of the year, but I've been feeling a HUGE urge to purge. However, with two kids in tow, everything takes a lot longer. (If you have little ones, you know what I mean!)
Anyhow, I thought I'd share with you some more of what I did today with my freezer meals since it's a pet topic of mine and because some of you have indicated interest in learning more.
Last week, I found top sirloin on a 10-hour only sale for $1.59/lb. I ended up with 14 pounds. Now some may simply stick this in the freezer. Not me! I prepped my 14 pounds of steak into 7 meals. Here's what I started with:
Then, I gathered all the ingredients I needed along with my freezer bags and I ended up making: 3 Sesame Sirloin dinners, 2 beef fajita dinners, and 2 cheese steak dinners (mmmmm!). Here are the fruits of my labor (or should I say, "meats" of my labor?):
You'll notice one of the meals is in tupperware. That's our dinner tonight – no need to freeze!
Am I an old pro at this? Um, no. I've only really actually been doing freezer cooking consistently since this past fall (you can read about the freezer meal swap party that started it all over here). I have an awesome cookbook to help me along called Fix, Freeze, Feast. Why do I like this book so well? First off, the vast majority of recipes I've tried are winners. I also appreciate that the ingredient list is minimal. I've also noticed the authors like to use the same type of ingredients across recipes.
For instance, both the fajitas and sesame sirloin used soy sauce, lime juice, and garlic. And both the fajitas and cheese steak called for green peppers and onions. I really didn't have to purchase much beyond the steak! All told, I estimate the costs of these meals at just $5.50 each. Each meal contains 2 lbs of steak which means there will certainly be leftovers (as was the case tonight!)
If you are interested to buy this book, it's under $10 currently on Amazon. Another thought is to wait for one of those sweet 30-40% off Borders coupons (the book runs about $14-15 there). Finally, there's always the library – but I truly believe this book is worth owning. (And with an average 4.5 star rating from 79 reviewers, I'm not the only one who thinks so!)
Incidentally, I've decided to add a "Freezer Cooking" category to my blog. I know I have a ton o' categories (and I promise I'm gonna try to get this all cleaned up with my blog redesign – hopefully in March). But I wanted to give you a place to head for more of what I've written on this exciting topic.
