Food and Stuff

Sorry yesterday's quick post was incoherent. By the time I sat down and tried to post something, my poor brain was done.

I didn't plan on having a cooking day yesterday, but as it turned out, I did. It started with needing to do something with some roma tomatoes before they went bad, so I decided to try to make a homemade tomato paste. I'm still not entirely sure how it turned out, but I'll let you know. I started that before lunch, then right after lunch I put Kaycie down for a nap and needed to start dinner - dough for rolls, peas on to cook, and I had bought a big pack of cube steak on sale that I needed to prep/freeze. So I did. All of that. I'll post the roll recipe in a minute cause YUM. My sweet picky hubby raved about them, and ate the leftovers for breakfast! The cube steaks I cut into strips and doubled breaded using flour, cornstarch, and some of the roast chicken seasoning (I just made a huge a batch and keep it in a jar now). I made up the whole pack, cooked enough for dinner (8, which turned out to be too many) and put the rest on a cookie sheet to flash freeze for a couple of hours before transferring to a ziplock bag and tossing back in the freezer.

I also had a big pack of pork chops I had gotten on sale, so I went ahead and made saucy chops (my new name for the baked chops) and froze them in ziplocks in 2-3 chop servings. I also made up two extra servings (3/4 cups each) of the sauce and put those in the freezer for quick use as topping/dipping sauce when I cook the chops. Which will likely be tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I made my rolls but didn't need 24, so I when I got to the part where I roll them into balls and let them rise, I put six in the pan to rise and put the rest on a cookie sheet destined for - you guessed it - flash freezing. I needed to get them in the freezer before they started rising again, so I hope I made it in time. I have one of those and one of my frozen soft Italian bread sticks thawing now for a test run to see if it's going to work.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm on a mission to stock my freezer periodically with pre-prepped food. I've done a really good job the last couple of weeks of planning meals (I've got 4 more weeks planned already!) and trying to make enough extra to freeze so that meals can get a little easier. I've been struggling, particularly since Kaycie gets really nuts around 3pm every day, especially if she doesn't have my full attention. And I'm making Wednesdays "new food day," where I make something new to see if we like it. If not, we can always supplement with leftovers or taco bell! Ironically, just as I explained this policy to Greg this week, he suddenly had to go out of town for work today and won't be home in time for dinner. Coincidence? Hmmm*...

*It really is a coincidence. They've got a guy in filming a documentary and Greg had to take him to one of their sites so he could do an interview this afternoon. Wasn't really Greg's fault.