Freezer Crockpot Meals - NAILED IT

A week or so ago, a colleague of mine recommended a website with a set of freezer/crockpot meals, and a few of us at work decided we would all give it a try. Kelly from New Leaf Wellness has done a lot of the legwork for us in that she has grouped recipes together and included a consolidated shopping list for the whole bunch. The idea is simple:

-          Do all your shopping and prep on a weekend

-          Freeze everything in large Ziploc bags

-          Throw your chosen meal in the crockpot on a weekday morning

-          Enjoy stress-free meals all week long

Sounds GREAT to me! I printed out a whole schwack of recipes, then checked my freezer and pantry to see what ingredients I already had on hand. I also looked at every single local grocery store’s weekly flyer to see what meat might be on sale (answer: nothing I needed, dammit).

The website promises that you can prep eight freezer meals in an hour, but in reality I can’t even get the shopping done in an hour. Even so, I think this was still a time saver. I spent 50 minutes in Superstore where I was able to get every ingredient on my list except for two. I also bought several other items for our breakfasts and lunches. My total bill came to $60, of which approximately $25 was for the crockpot meal experiment and $35 was for other food.

My husband then went to Save on Foods to get the two items I hadn’t found at Superstore, which included “two bone-in pork shoulders, often called Boston butts or pork butts”. Apparently these were really hard to find; he couldn’t even get anyone to help him at Save on Foods, so ended up at local butcher Nesvog’s, who sold him the two shoulders at a total cost of $40. I felt this was hugely expensive and I probably wouldn’t have chosen to buy all this meat at full price. Oh well.

Then it was time to prep the meals. This was about an hour and a half of chopping and slicing. I am not very fast at this task, but I did cut some corners – for example, I used baby carrots instead of whole, so I could skip the whole washing-peeling-chopping chore there. I think a good food processor would be a real boon here, and I may try using mine next time.

The difference between these freezer-crockpot meals and those I have tried before is that Kelly recommends doing no pre-cooking of any ingredients – yes, even the meat. So when I made, for example, chicken fajitas, I chopped the chicken and all the vegetables, put them in the bag with spices and condiments, and then put the whole thing in the freezer. Very straightforward.  The snag, I realized, is that I tend to buy my chicken breasts by the case (on sale, whenever possible) – and they are already frozen. So I had to thaw the chicken just enough to be able to dice it, then put it in the bag to refreeze. Technically you are not supposed to refreeze raw meat that has already been thawed, so I guess if I make a habit of this I will have to start buying fresh chicken. I’m not sure how fresh chicken and frozen chicken compare, price-wise, but I guess I will find out.

It took me about 90 minutes to fill my freezer with the following meals:

One Balsamic Chicken with Pears
Two Chicken Fajitas

One Beef Roast & Carrots
Two Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork Roasts

Though on the surface this looks like six meals, it will actually feed us for more than twice that. I have to assume that when a website says a meal will feed four, they are including two gigantic teenage boys. My teeny six year old doesn’t eat too much, so we always have loads left over for lunches and even full repeat dinners.

The website recommends thawing your meal in the refrigerator the night before you want to cook it, which is a great plan because then you don’t have to worry about cramming a gigantic frozen chunk of meat into your crockpot. We ate our first crockpot meal last night – Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork - and it was delicious! It was quite spicy and we were a little worried that Gwen wouldn’t eat it, but she loved it too. Both Chris and I ended up having a second pork sandwich after Gwen was in bed, and I’m looking forward to having another one for lunch today. Thumbs up, all around. And now we’ve learned that while the website recommended a 3.5 pound pork shoulder (remember that $20 cut of meat?) I could actually make two separate freezer meals with that much meat (just in case we get tired of eating pork every meal for the next week and a half). So that will be a cost savings next time around. 

By the numbers:

$65 in groceries

90 minutes prep time

10 full family meals plus extra lunches

So every meal is worth approximately $5 (I’m rounding down to account for lunch leftovers) and takes 6-8 minutes of preparation (I’m rounding up to account for actually putting the meal in the crockpot in the mornings).

Fully worth it, especially when you add in the intangible but invaluable worth of not having to worry about meal prep all week.

Slow Cooker Spicy Dr. Pepper Shredded Pork from New Leaf Wellness

Yields: One gallon-sized freezer bag of slow cooker spicy pork

Ingredients

• 3-5lb bone-in pork shoulder (sometimes labeled as “Boston butt” or

“pork butt roast”)

• 1 small onion, peeled and sliced

• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

• 1, 7oz can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

• 3 cups of Dr Pepper (2 cans) – I think you could also sub root beer or

cola *not needed until day of cooking*

Directions

1. Place pork shoulder in your slow cooker and add remaining

ingredients.

2. Cover, and cook on “low” setting for 8-12 hours (depending on the

size and strength of your slow cooker). You’ll know it’s done when

the meat easily falls off the bone.

3. Use a fork and knife to separate meat from the bone and shred

meat.

4. Strain remaining juice, onions, and peppers left in your slow cooker.

Discard what you catch in the strainer and keep the juice that

strains through.

5. Return juice and shredded pork to your slow cooker, and stir to

combine.

6. Serve on soft tortillas with your favorite taco toppings.

To Freeze

Combine all ingredients – except Dr. Pepper - in a gallon-sized plastic

freezer bag. Remove as much air as possible and freeze for up to three

months. When ready to eat, thaw overnight in refrigerator. Add to slow

cooker with Dr. Pepper. Cook on “low” setting for 8-12 hours, or until meat

easily pulls apart with a fork. Shred meat and serve!

Check out New Leaf Wellness Freezer Crockpot Meals here:

8 Meals in 75 Minutes

6 Meals in 30 Minutes

7 Meals in an Hour

Two Ingredient Pancakes - NAILED IT

It sounded perfect. Pancakes! Two ingredients! Gluten free! Protein rich! And they just looked yummy! Observe:

I know, right? They even LOOK like real pancakes, so easy to convince the kids that they are. It seemed like such an awesome idea that I doubled the recipe. Instead of two eggs and one over-ripe banana, I used four eggs and two bananas.

Easy! Stick it all in a blender. Let a child press the buttons.

Pour it into a frying pan with the lubricant of your choice.

They're a little thin, and they spread out larger than expected.

Not too bad on the first flip.

Kinda fell apart on transfer from pan to plate.

First taste test. He liked it.

Umm, waitasec. Second batch isn't going so well.

Third batch... screw it. Way too much work flipping these suckers. The rest became weird, overly sweet (but sugar free!) banana flavored scrambled eggs.

Original recipe and instructions: The Skinny Confidential

Frozen Peanut Butter Chocolate Banana Bites

Last week, I saw this recipe on my Facebook feed and resolved to try it.  There are three ingredients: bananas, peanut butter, and chocolate.  All of those things are awesome and could only be made more awesome by their powers combined.  Plus, the recipe seemed SUPER simple. 

I followed the step-by-step instructions on Snapguide, with one exception: I made double-decker versions instead of open-face.  First, I cut the bananas into coins and put them on a parchment-paper-covered cookie sheet.

The next step called for me to spread peanut butter on each of the banana coins.  I chose to melt the peanut butter a bit, because nearly everything delicious becomes more delicious when melted (see: cheese, butter, chocolate, ice cream).  I applied the peanut butter with my frosting thingy, which made it look either adorable or like runny poo, depending on your point of view. 

The next step is to put more banana coins on top of the peanut butter layer.  Around this time is when I started to remember that banana coins are pretty unpleasant to handle.  All squishy and slippery.  The top coins did a lot of sliding around and sometimes took the peanut butter with them as they slid right off the bottom coins.  Annoying!

Then I put the tray of double-decker banana bites into the freezer for about 10 minutes to help them firm up.  This is what the inside of my freezer looks like.  Awful, isn’t it?  I can never find ANYTHING.

In retrospect, I can tell that I should have left those suckers in there for 30 minutes or more to make sure the bananas lost their slipperiness and really embraced their new role of peanut-butter-delivery-system.  But I didn’t.  And that is why things started to go horribly wrong in the next step. 

Now I have to add chocolate.  The guide says to do this via dipping the sandwich into melted chocolate which is at a “dipping, not spreading” consistency.  I dipped a few of them, but they often fell apart in the dipping bowl, and they also returned to the tray with a LOT of extra (i.e., wasted) chocolate.  I ended up melting way more chocolate than I would have anticipated (about 2 cups of melting wafers) and as you can see, the chocolate didn’t so much enrobe the bananas as languish in their presence.

Because the giant pools of melted chocolate took up so much room, I ended up having to use a second cookie sheet.  This one had to go in my deep freeze.  There wasn’t any room for a cookie sheet (even the small ones that I use) to go into the freezer and remain level.  So guess what happened?  The cookie sheet tipped over and spilled banana-peanut-butter-chocolate-goo all over my deep freeze.  I anticipate I will be finding frozen chunks of this mess for months to come.  But there is an upside to this catastrophe: it gave me the idea for an upcoming blog post, “Ten Things I Really Hate About My House.”  Stay tuned!

So after being in the freezer for a few hours, I took the bananas off the cookie sheets and transferred them to an airtight container.  Here is a picture of how much chocolate remained on the parchment paper when I did that.  It is a TRAVESTY.

And here is a picture of the super-appetizing, “completed” peanut butter banana bites.  Yup, I nailed that one so hard they’re going to have to start calling me “Hammer”.

They are about as delicious as they look.

Nailed It: Rhubarb Dump Cake

Last weekend I was supposed to bring contributions to two meals.  First, on the Friday night, we had a wedding rehearsal dinner for two dear friends who were finally tying the knot: our daughter was the flower girl, hence our presence at the rehearsal dinner, which was to be a potluck.  Second, we were invited to Father's Day dinner at my in-laws' house, and I was to bring dessert.  Figuring I'd save time and energy, I decided to make the same thing for both: Rhubarb Dump Cake.  I shopped accordingly and bought a bunch of rhubarb.  (Aside: am I the only one who finds it annoying when recipes give weight or cup measurements for produce?  I have no idea how to relate stalks of rhubarb to cups of rhubarb, so I ended up buying way too  much.  This isn't really a hardship, because I love rhubarb and will happily stew the extra and enjoy it over vanilla ice cream.)

This is probably the first time I've ever paid for rhubarb in my life, because generally people who grow rhubarb grow way too much and I am always eager to respond when people offer free rhubarb.  I learned that rhubarb from the grocery store is expensive.  Oh well.  By the end of the week when I was ready to make my first dump cake (this recipe REALLY needs a better name), the rehearsal dinner plans had changed and it was no longer a potluck.  Now I had a LOT of extra rhubarb.  I offered to make an extra cake for a friend, because I'm crazy that way.

On to the cooking!  The recipe I'd found online prompted me to cut up 1 pound of rhubarb and put it in a greased 9x13" pan.  With the help of my trusty kitchen scale, I soon learned that one pound equals 4-5 stalks.  (Recipe writers!  How hard is that to write?!)  Then sprinkle on top one cup of sugar.

Already my mouth is watering.

Then sprinkle Jell-O (or off-brand, which is what I used) strawberry gelatin powder on top.  And then sprinkle yellow cake mix on top of that.  I got all annoyed at this stage because I couldn't find my yellow cake mix anywhere.  Either I forgot to buy it, or my kitchen is so disorganized that I can't find it.  Both of these are equally likely and both of them make me very annoyed.  Anyway, I did find some white cake mix and figured that would work just as well.

The final step was to add 1 cup of water on top of the cake mix, and then melt 1/4 cup of butter and pour that on top as well.

I'm feeling somewhat skeptical about this.

I did all this and was overjoyed to note how few dishes I had used in the entire process.  Even making the cake mix, without rhubarb or gelatin, would have created more dishes.

Measuring cups (dry and liquid), bowl to melt butter, knife to cut rhubarb, kitchen scale.

Into the oven for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.  When the timer dinged, this is what I found.

NAILED IT.

 This doesn't look like a cake.  Blech!  There are still large patches of dry, unmixed cake powder.  There were also juicy bubbling craters of rhubarb-and-gelatin goodness, though, so I used a spoon to push down the powdery bits into the bubbly bits, cranked up the oven to 450, and put it back in for another 10 minutes.

Better.

Now we are at the "close enough" stage.  I'm still super thrilled about the recipe's very low dish-usage, though.  The dessert was delicious (especially with vanilla ice cream) and received good reviews at Father's Day dinner.

When I Googled "rhubarb dump cake" this morning to write this post, I found the actual recipe at the Kraft website (as opposed to the random photo that I'd seen on Facebook the previous week).  The official recipe calls for a bit more effort in the cake mix area, which I think would help immensely.  Instead of just sprinkling on the dry cake mix and then pouring water and melted butter on top, this recipe suggests that you stir these three ingredients together just until moistened, then pour on top of rhubarb/sugar/gelatin.  It would require dirtying another bowl, but I think it would be worth it.

The recipe (from Kraft Canada):

what you need

1 lb. (450 g) fresh rhubarb, chopped (about 4 cups)

1/2 cup sugar

1 pkg. (85 g) Jell-O Strawberry Jelly Powder

1 pkg. (2-layer size) white cake mix

1 cup water

1/3 cup butter, melted

1 cup thawed Cool Whip Whipped Topping

make it

HEAT oven to 350ºF.

PLACE rhubarb in 13x9-inch baking dish sprayed with cooking spray; sprinkle with sugar and dry jelly powder.

STIR cake mix, water and butter with fork just until cake mix is moistened. (Do not overmix.) Pour over rhubarb; spread to completely cover rhubarb.

BAKE 45 min. or until golden brown. Serve warm topped with Cool Whip.