Putting On One Income On Hold

I apologize for skipping on posts this past week, but I’ve been busy doing a lot of reflection on this blog and how it fits into my life. I’ve come to the conclusion that at this moment I can’t give the blog the attention I would like without other areas suffering, such as my duties as wife and mother. I have decided to put this blog on hold for a time to focus on more important things. I may pick it up in a few months, I may pick it up in a year, or I may just post once or twice a month.

Thanks to everyone for reading my posts and sharing in your comments.

~Chelsea

Filling My Freezer: Cooking Up the Meat

I went shopping earlier this week and scored on some meat. I found hamburger reduced to $1.21/lb and pork ribs for under $1.00/lb. I stocked up on the beef and some ribs and then came home to quickly cook it up before the expiration date.

I try to always cook up any hamburger or chicken before I freeze it. The simple reason is that when dinner time rolls around the last thing I want to do is defrost and cook up some meat to go in the meal. If I can just take out a bag of precooked chicken or beef then dinner progresses much more smoothly, and we eat a healthy, balanced meal.

Hamburger Meat

I bought 7.5 lbs of hamburger and expected to get 15 (1/2 lb) bags out of the dish. I simply dumped a package of meat in the pot, added onions and garlic and let it cook. I then drained the grease from the pan and set the meat aside to cool.

I repeated this twice more to cook all the meat. After I had all of the meat cooked, I decided to save the last two lbs for runzas.

After the meat had cooled I added taco seasoning to some of it. I divided the meat into ziplok sandwich bags and then put three sandwich bags every freezer bag. I ended up with seven small bags of taco meat and six small bags of plain meat. Somehow I had stretched the meat farther than I expected, as I still had two lbs for runzas, but I didn’t worry about it.

Crockpot Barbecue Pork

I also made barbecue pork by putting my pork ribs in the crockpot and adding garlic and barbecue sauce. I set it on low and let it cook all day. It came right off the bone and we served it in sandwiches and put the leftovers in the freezer. This turned out really yummy and next time I’ll have to be sure to buy more pork, as I only bought enough for two meals.

Filling My Freezer Plan

This week I have decided to do a bit of batch baking. I found a lot of meat on sale and stocked up. I needed to quickly cook up the discounted meat, and so I have already made the first three items on the list. I’m hoping to have the last two done by Saturday night.

7 1/2 lbs of ground beef

Runzas

Crockpot bbq pork

Waffles

Pancakes

Chocolate Crinkles

I will post recipes and pictures in the next couple of days.