The April 2002 Issue of Chewin' the News from 30 Day Gourmet Freezer Cooking . . .

Greetings from warm and sunny Indiana! Ha – you thought I was going to say Florida or something didn’t you? Not a chance. What a crazy spring it’s turning out to be. A few weeks ago we were sweltering here. It was 88 degrees and the kids and I were begging Bob to turn on the air conditioning. Since there were still traces of snow melting in our back woods, Bob just couldn’t do it. He finally gave in when the dogs kept us awake panting at night from the heat!☺ Have you found that out about dogs? When your kids are about 7 and 10 years old, they beg for a pet and all of sudden the kids are 14 and 17 and the dogs are sleeping by YOUR bed every night.

It’s cooled down to about 65 degrees here now. Perfect spring weather. Time for those spring resolutions, huh? I have them for every season, do you? Get the yard mowed before the neighbor for once, pack away the winter clothes, start walking again (for exercise, that is) and have a big cooking day before school gets out for the summer.

This month I tried something different. I know that many of you have done your freezer cooking by “meat type” for years and it always sounded like a good idea to me but I had never tried it. Since I announced that I would provide some “cooking day” menu plans in this newsletter I thought that I’d better get out of my 30-entrees-in-one-day rut. And guess what?! I like it! It makes everything easier (and maybe quicker too) when you are only dealing with one type of meat. So enjoy the Recipes and Meal Plans section. I’ve got a Chicken plan that used 64 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breast and made 22 entrees plus 20 cups of cooked, diced chicken. All that for only $150.00. My beef plan was just as successful. I bought 26 pounds of ground beef and made 18 entrees along with 20 cups of cooked ground beef and spent just $82.00. Check out my plans, tips and recipes below. There are also several different plans available on Robbyn’s Friendly Freezer site at: http://snider.mardox.com/plans.htm

Chicken Plan:
Debbie’s Chicken in Marinade – 6 entrees (7 breasts each meal)
Parsley Parmesan Chicken – 6 entrees (7 breasts each meal)
Chicken Pot Pie – 6 pies (6-8 servings each)
Chicken Spaghetti – 4 entrees
Cooked, Diced Chicken – 20 C.
*to be used for chicken salad, burritos, quesadillas, chicken divan, tetrazzini, etc.

Beef Plan:
Cheeseburger Quiche – 6 entrees
Hamburger Stroganoff – 4 entrees
Pizza Burgers – 40 burgers
Make Ahead Chimichangas – 64 chimichangas
Cooked Ground Beef – 20 C.
*to be used for sloppy joes, taco filling, spaghetti, etc.

Tips for Success:

Debbie’s Chicken in Marinade – This recipe is from the Freezer Cooking Manual. I like having lots of these in the freezer because they are so versatile. Great on the grill or easy to bake or broil inside. You can strip them up for stir fry or fajitas. You can really use any marinade recipe that you like. Buying pre-made marinade mix is pretty spendy. Making your own doesn’t take much time at all. I buy my Red Wine vinegar, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce in bulk at a restaurant supply store. This recipe also calls for dry mustard which can be expensive unless you are purchasing your spices in bulk. You can substitute prepared mustard (I always seem to have plenty of that around.) 1 T. prepared = 1 t. dry

Parsley Parmesan Chicken – If you’ve never tried this recipe from the Freezer Cooking Manual, you really need to. It’s just great! You can use fryer parts or breasts – whatever’s on sale. Kids love it. We call it our “fake fried” chicken.

Country Chicken Pot Pie – This recipe from our message boards was featured in our November 2001 newsletter along with other recipes that you could use for cooked, diced chicken (or turkey leftovers). I just froze the filling and have the pie crusts on hand. Each pie gets 3 cups of filling. If you’d rather have less crust and a really thick pie use 6 cups of filling – the hearty man version.

Click here to see my two favorite men enjoying their pot pie.
Click here to view/print the Country Chicken Pot Pie recipe.

Creamy Chicken Spaghetti – Here’s a great Recipe of the Month winner from May 2000. I assembled mine but it would be easy to use the cooked, diced spaghetti and toss this one together on the day you want to serve it. Most of us have spaghetti, and canned soups in the pantry. The Velveeta cheese adds great flavor. My kids loved this!

“Dump” Chicken Recipes – I think it was the gals at the Friendly Freezer egroups list who first coined this phrase. It refers to recipes that can be made quickly before serving from meat that is already cooked and frozen. Here are a few good “dump” chicken recipes on our site:

Another great thing to do with cooked chicken is to shred some of the chicken for quesadillas. Every time we drive by Taco Bell my teenagers try to talk me into spending $2.39 for these things. I finally thought – duh – how hard can they be to make? We’re talking two tortillas, salsa, shredded chicken, and cheese here. I don’t have one of those cool little flip over gadgets but I’m getting pretty good at flipping mine in a skillet with two large spatulas and not losing much of the filling. I use my big pizza cutter to cut them into wedges (that is VERY important to the ambiance).

Beef Plan:

Cheeseburger Quiche – This recipe actually came from a fireman here in Brownsburg who is a friend of mine and was featured several years ago in our local newspaper (before featuring firemen was in style). It’s the sample recipe in the Freezer Cooking Manual. I always just freeze the filling and keep the pie shells on hand. Always a hit!

Hamburger Stroganoff – This is an easy recipe to put together and always tastes yummy. You have to be sure that you’ve got the sour cream on hand since it goes in just before serving. This recipe came from the hamburger plan on the Friendly Freezer website at: http://snider.mardox.com/plans.htm.

Pizza Burgers – This is one of our winning recipes of the month. If you have kids, anything with pizza in the title will at least get a look. My four all like these. It’s sure a lot cheaper than pizzas and they are wrapped individually for easy snacking. I agree with Tatum that it’s best to go ahead and put the filling in the buns instead of freezing the filling and keeping the buns on hand. Why? Cuz they are never there when you need them. Why is that?

Check out my crazy kids and a neighbor eating Pizza Burgers.
Click here to view/print the Pizza Burgers recipe.

Make Ahead Chimichangas – Another favorite recipe of the month winner! These can be frozen individually or in a casserole dish for a whole meal’s worth. You can also make these with shredded chicken.

“Dump” Beef Recipes – Here are a few great recipes on our site that can be made quickly with cooked ground beef.

So if you’re still “studying” freezer cooking but haven’t jumped in yet, decide now to try one of these plans. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is and how much time and money you’ll save.

Recipe Corrections:

Coconut Carrot Wedding Cake – Several of you had trouble accessing the link for the cake recipe. Here ya go:

Orange Fruit Freeze – I told you that this recipe tastes great either refrigerated or from the freezer. That’s true but I found out the hard way that you can’t mix the two. On my third batch of this we happened to discover that if you took it out of the freezer, ate some and then put the leftovers in the refrigerator the liquid separates. I’m sure that there is a scientific explanation for this but since I only took a year of science in college, I certainly can’t offer one.
Just don’t do it, k?

Don’t forget – we’ve made some changes to our contests for 2002 and I’m lovin’ them already. Lots of you have sent great entries. Keep ‘em comin’. You don’t need to re-submit your entry each month by the way. I’ll keep them all and choose from the whole file.

Our apron winner will now be chosen from our Crazy Cook’s Stories. I know you’ve got ‘em so send ‘em on. I love reading about all of the zany things that happen to you because you cook the 30 Day Gourmet way. You can submit your story by e-mail or on the message boards.

Our Cook of the Month contest is changing to the “My Cooking Story Contest” contest. Tell me how you use 30 Day Gourmet cooking to help others and if your story is chosen I’ll send you $25. Again, you can submit your story by e-mail or on the message boards. It’s okay to nominate someone else, too.

The April “My Cooking Story Contest” winner is Amy C. from Kirklin, Indiana. Get the tissues!

To have your recipe considered for the Recipe of the Month contest, and your chance for $25 cash, just post it under the appropriate category on the message boards. Be sure to include freezing directions! As we said in last month’s newsletter, we will be doing away with the Recipe of the Month category on the boards. I’m working on getting the recipes from that category moved to the correct recipe category… beef, fish, sides, dessert, etc. So please post your recipe under the appropriate category… poultry, soup, breakfast, etc. All recipes posted under the recipe categories will be considered for the contest. Good luck!

April’s Recipe of the Month winner is Jessica of central VA. Jessica’s winning recipe is for Ice Cream Shop Pie, and is from Jello Easy Entertaining. There are 4 different variations of this pie, and I tried 2 of them. What a tasty quick and easy recipe! This is the kind of recipe to keep in your freezer to serve unexpected guests. And if you serve it to your family, it’s easy enough to make another one to replace it! The hot days of summer just around the corner is another reason to keep this dessert on hand. The hardest part will be deciding which flavor to make!

I made the Rocky Road Pie and the Strawberry Banana Split Pie a couple of weeks ago while my husband was out of town. I served the Rocky Road Pie for dessert after he got home. I put a slice of the pie on a plate and drizzled some chocolate syrup on it. When I put the plate in front of Rob, he looked from it to me and said “You made this???” I’m not sure… is that a compliment?!? He was impressed! We love chocolate at my house, so this pie was a big hit.

The Strawberry Banana Split Pie was by far our favorite though! Rob said he thought it was one of the best desserts he’d ever had. We like our desserts, so that’s quite the compliment!! The recipe only used about half the container of strawberries, so I put a scoop of berries and some juice on each slice when I served it. Last week I made a second Strawberry Banana Split Pie, using the sugar-free pudding, and fat free Cool Whip. It was just as tasty as the original version!

The recipe doesn’t specify what size graham cracker crust to use. When I was in my grocery store, I saw that they now have two sizes… the standard 8”, and also a 10” crust. The first two pies I made with the 8” size. They were full to overflowing with filling, and I still had some left over. You can invert the plastic crust liner over top of the pie as a cover, but it was too full to do that. The third pie I made using the 10” crust. It was perfect! Held all of the filing, and wasn’t too full to use the liner as a cover. I will use the 10” crust for future pies from this recipe.

Jessica told me she planned on making this pie into individual serving sizes next time she made it using foil cupcake liners. Another great idea! If you try that, instead of putting a little graham cracker crust filling in each cupcake liner, use a Vanilla Wafer cookie. Put the cookie in the liner rounded side down, and fill. I’ve seen quite a few recipes for making mini-cheesecakes that use the wafer cookies as the crust. What a time saver!

This is a great recipe… you won’t be disappointed! Thanks, Jessica, for sharing it with us! Your prize-winning check is on the way!

Q.	Is there any software available for me to do all of my freezer cooking calculations with?
A.	I’ve been exploring this subject for quite a while. I have looked at many cooking software packages. Most of them have some great features but none of them would quite do what a freezer cook needs done. We need cooking software that: gives us a way to input any recipe and multiply the quantity has the recipes from the manual pre-loaded and gives me a way to create recipes on the site so that our cooks can import the new recipes into the software when the quantity is multiplied I want the software to know that 2T. x 6 = 3/4 C. not 12 T. categorizes my recipes to correspond with the 12 categories on our site. automatically creates a shopping list based on my recipes and adds all of the measurements together instead of listing onion and then: 1/2 C., 2 T., 1 medium onion takes my on hand inventory into account and reminds me to bring it to cooking day And most of all, it needs to be very user-friendly. Lots of our cooks have never used a computer until they visited our site. It’s got to be easier to use than just hand-writing everything! SO – what have I found? Well – all I can say now is that I have found something great and I think that you are going to be very excited about it. I’m working out the details. Hopefully, I can tell you about it soon.
Q.	I’d like to make my own notebook. Could you publish a list of the 12 categories that you use for the information and recipes on the website?
A.	No problem - Here they are: Information Worksheets Beef Poultry Pork & Fish Meatless Breads & Breakfast Soups & Sandwiches Sides & Salads Snacks & Desserts Miscellaneous Appendix Note: If making your own notebook sounds like too much work, you can order one from us. They are $12.95 and come with 12 tabbed divider pages along with 13 extra page protectors. Personalized cover.

My seminars have wound down for the spring. I generally don’t travel out of state in the summer since the kids are off school and it’s a literal zoo around here. Give me a call if you’d like to do something local though (within a few hours of Indianapolis).

If your civic group, conference, retreat, church or local library is interested in having me come for a seminar, click here for the details. With airline tickets as cheap as they are now, I’m thinking about offering free transportation for cities where I can come and do at least 3 programs. Your group would only need to pay the speaking fee ($400). I’m looking at Texas, Florida, and Colorado for fall and winter. These are a bunch of fun and a great way to get your friends (and yourself) motivated to start freezer cooking. Many groups sell tickets, collect wonderful door prizes and actually come out MAKING money.

It’s time to get out of the stone age and update my seminar from slides to power point. This will enable me to include lots more info and photos. I would love to share many of your stories and pictures. Click here to see what I need. If your photo or story is chosen, I’ll send you a certificate for a free ebook. Thanks!

We had four new consultants join us in April. Click here to check out the whole list with contact info on the website. Please contact them if you’d like a 30 Day Gourmet speaker for your local group of frustrated cooks!

DATE REPORT
Some of you have asked how our “date” went. Okay – I’ve always been honest with you, right? Well just as I was finalizing my menu lo and behold I got my $25 gift card from Cool Savings in the mail. (Free for signing up for their no fees credit card from the link on our site). So I took that as a sign from God and we went to Red Lobster and had a nice romantic dinner – for FREE! I’ll cook him that great dinner next time – unless another coupon appears in the mail of course.

Have a great week! Please e-mail me if you have any questions, suggestions, or great stories to tell me.