Wow.  I might have been deluding myself when I thought I could try new and original recipes while staying at home with two young children and teaching seventeen piano students every week.    I’m sure I’ll get back to it, but for now, my days are a haze of diaper changes, preschool pickups, music theory workbooks, and bedtime routines.  We still eat dinner at home the vast majority of the time, but I find myself cooking two or three times a week and freezing a lot of food to thaw and reheat on busy nights.  A friend who is adopting a baby from China asked me recently if I could recommend any recipes that are particularly good for freezing.  These are some of my favorites.

Lentil Soup (from Ina, of course)

Lentil Soup with Sausage (also from Ina)

Indonesian Chicken (another Ina favorite – I freeze the chicken in the marinade)

Chicken Sweet Potato Soup

Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini (sometimes I substitute green beans for zucchini, or whatever we have on hand; I freeze the soup before adding the tortellini, and then add the tortellini when we re-heat)

Lasagna freezes well – you can use Ina’s recipe, or this one  (I use whole wheat noodles, and nobody has complained)

Meatloaf or individual meat loaves  (mashed potatoes (white or sweet) also freeze well once prepared, but I find that most potatoes do not freeze well)

Black Bean Soup (I start from scratch using dry beans)

Chili (chicken or beef)

Swedish Meatballs

Chicken Tetrazzini

Thai-Style Pork Stew (we serve this with brown rice, which is now available in microwaveable frozen packets)

Ham and Bean Soup – I tend to wing it with this with dry white beans or mixed dry beans, and add any number of vegetables like onions, leeks, kale, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, celery or celery root.  I cook the beans all day in the crock pot with a ham bone, and add the vegetables throughout the day.

Red Beans and Rice (again, I would use the frozen brown rice)

Sloppy Joes

Chicken Pot Pie or Ina’s Chicken and Biscuits (make the filling ahead of time, and add biscuits or pie crust after thawing, then bake)

Chicken Noodle Soup (I freeze it without the noodles or any starch, because they tend to get mushy when thawing.  I thaw the soup, simmer and add noodles long enough to cook them right before serving)

Weeknight Bolognese or this freezer marinara are great to freeze alone, or combined with pasta and cheese for something like baked ziti

Beef Stew – I assemble this all in a freezer bag and put the contents of the bag in the crock pot on low for the day (one large bag containing three smaller bags:  1) cubed stew beef dredged in flour, salt, pepper and paprika, 2) vegetable bag with carrots, leeks, onions, parsnips, celery, celeriac, or some combination of these, 3)sauce bag with soy sauce, tomato sauce, worcestershire sauce).  Once thawed, add contents of bag to crock pot with cubed potatoes and beef stock.  The same process could be used with pot roast.

Stir fry and taco/fajita mix – just chop meat and vegetables for the stir fry and freeze in a zip-loc bag or freezer-safe container with soy sauce and some fresh ginger and garlic, and taco/fajita mix cooked together with spices and vegetables.  For the stir-fry, I would serve with frozen brown rice, and for the tacos/fajitas, I would freeze some tortillas and cheese alongside the mix.

Pesto

Italian Wedding Soup

Meatballs 

Mexican Chicken Soup

Roasted Vegetable Soup

Rosemary White Bean Soup

Winter Squash Soup

Asian Grilled Salmon (freeze with marinade, and then thaw before grilling)

Herb-marinated pork tenderloin 

For the most part, cream-based soup and sauce do not thaw well from the freezer.  If you’re just looking for a meal that can be made in advance and refrigerated until reheating gently at dinner time, I like Roasted Potato Leek Soup and this recipe for chicken wild rice soup.  These are especially nice to bring to families with a new baby, especially if you know they’ll be eating it soon.

Here are some other links to crock pot recipes:

Skinny Taste Crock Pot recipes

Crock Pot Chicken Taco Chili

Cooking Light Slow Cooker Favorites

And links to freezer-friendly meals:

Cooking Light Best Freezable Recipes

Once a Month Cooking

Another soup I’d like to try, but I’d freeze everything before adding the pasta and cheese, and add those after thawing:

Lasagna Soup

And a slow cooker cookbook I’m dying to try – I’ve heard rave reviews.

When bringing a meal to a family that is welcoming a new baby, or grieving the loss of a family member, or recovering from an illness, I like to bring as much as possible in disposable containers, or something that doesn’t need to be returned to me.  If I can, I include paper products, salad or fresh fruit, bread, and a little dessert.  New moms especially need things to grab quickly and eat with one hand – at least I appreciated that!  This pumpkin bread or any of Ina’s muffins or scones are great for that, as breakfast often gets neglected.  Really, though, I was appreciative of anything edible that came through the door!

What are your favorite freezer-friendly, slow-cooker, or otherwise make-ahead meals?

Now it looks like this, and gets used at least once a week.

And how about this raspberry vodka?

Now it looks like this.  It’s not only pretty, but it tastes good, too.  If you drink enough of it, you stop caring that there’s dust on the furniture, as evidenced by this photo.

What’s your favorite thing that’s worth the wait, or gets better with time?

For me, it’s this right here:

We can’t seem to get enough of these beautiful tomatoes.  I can’t think of any other food that when it’s good, it’s very, very good, and when it’s bad, it’s horrid.  Right now, they are very, very good.  We have a friend who says that there are some days that are so hot that all he wants to eat is a tomato.  I’ve never been that hot.  But I have enjoyed some of these fresh tomato recipes.

First, Tomato Mozzarella and Basil (Barefoot Contessa Family Style).  This might be my favorite tomato recipe, and we used the fresh heirloom tomatoes from our CSA box for this.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made this salad, and this is probably the ugliest batch I’ve ever made.  But guess what?  Still awesome.

Next up:  Tomato Mozzarella and Pesto Panini (Barefoot Contessa at Home).  There’s a reason that this isn’t an actual panini.

My dad had a panini maker for his grocery store’s deli.  He sold the store, and kept the panini maker, and then generously gave it to me.  The catch?  It was an industrial-grade panini maker, which only plugged into an industrial-grade electrical outlet.  In other words, we’d have to unplug our dryer to plug in the panini maker.  Realizing how impractical that was, we sold the panini grill, and suffered through with an electric griddle for these sandwiches instead.  We didn’t even have any fancy crusty bread, so we used regular boring sandwich bread.  Even with all of those intervening forces, these sandwiches were amazing.

Finally (for now), Greek Panzanella (from Barefoot Contessa:  How Easy is That?).  This was simply amazing, and even though the leftovers were a little soggy a day or two later, I still gobbled them up, and happily.  I approached panzanella with some trepidation, since I’d never made or eaten it before.  I needn’t have worried – as it turns out, as weird as “bread salad” sounds, it tastes pretty good.  Think of a salad with more croutons and no lettuce, and there you go.  The oregano and red wine vinaigrette used in this recipe would make a great marinade for grilled chicken to top a green salad.  All of these vegetables came from our CSA box.

Bonus item:  This is not a Barefoot Contessa recipe, but maybe it should be.  I met my friend Amber during my first week of college, and we reconnected a few years ago.  Amber is one of the funniest, most delightful, interesting, and interested people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.  I love that we can keep in touch through her food blog, Awake at the Whisk.  I made her Roasted Heirloom Tomato Freezer Sauce last week, and it could not have been easier.  (If you’re keeping track of how many tomatoes we’ve eaten, add in some BLTs for four adults over the weekend, and yes, I had to go to the farmers’ market to buy more tomatoes.)  I used the marinara on Eggplant Parmesan, and we gobbled it all up.

Here are the tomatoes ready to be roasted.  We had a little extra excitement as I brought in the fresh basil from the back porch – a little green worm stowed away and tried to make it into our sauce!  Luckily I spotted it before I added extra protein to the recipe.  Yikes!  I must grow really good basil if even the worms want some.

I’d love to hear about your favorite tomato recipe.  During the summer that my husband and I first met, he told me “I just love a plain tomato.  With salt and pepper.  And white bread.  And mayonnaise.”  I had to break it to him that that wasn’t exactly a “plain” tomato.  What’s your favorite way to eat tomatoes?

My husband and I try to get out for a date night whenever we can, but sometimes our schedules and our budget don’t allow for a babysitter and a night out.  So, we made our own date night on our screen porch.  We turned off the TV and turned on the baby monitors, lit some candles, and listened to the crickets.  We laughed.  We sipped.  We didn’t really talk about the kids for once.

He had the “real margarita” (Barefoot Contessa Parties!):

He said it tasted like a real margarita.  I remember wanting to buy margarita glasses when we first got married.  Now I’m glad we didn’t, because in almost 8 years of marriage, this was our first homemade margarita.  I’m glad I know how to make them at home now, though, because one of our favorite Mexican restaurants has gone downhill in recent months.  They always had cheap margaritas, but the food has become so bad there that we won’t go back for the drinks.

I had the whiskey sour (Barefoot Contessa at Home):

It’s pink because I added a little maraschino cherry juice.  Sadly, the maraschino cherries were my favorite part of the drink.  I remember trying (and liking) these in law school, so maybe my taste for whiskey has just disappeared.  I don’t know.  My husband tasted it and liked it, because I went light on the whiskey.  Blech.

I’m just going to have to try harder if I’m going to become a lush.  On the other hand, I highly recommend the stay at home date night.  Within an hour of these photos being taken, the baby woke up and we tended to him.  A few hours later, the 3-year-old woke up.  I’m glad we enjoyed our fleeting quiet time while it lasted, drink or no drink.

The crudite platter, which doesn’t exactly resemble the one in The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, but isn’t it gorgeous?

Those are purple carrots from our CSA.  They are a deep red/purple on the outside, and light orange on the inside.  My 3-year-old thinks this is hilarious.

We also made the tarragon potato salad from Barefoot Contessa:  How Easy is That?

The best part about this cookout is that we got to spend some time with wonderful friends, whose family includes a few hungry teenage boys.  I love feeding hungry kids!

Besides, the farmers’ market was on our summer list.

I brought home enough zucchini to eat some for lunch, freeze four cups of it, and bake this zucchini bread and these zucchini brownies.  (Trust me.  Zucchini brownies = good.)

While we were there, I couldn’t resist some ears of corn and these herbs.

Even though I have three healthy basil plants on the porch, I couldn’t resist that beautiful bunch of basil for $1.  This is what we had for dinner that night.  I had enough pesto to freeze, and enough leftover basil for salad dressing.

The recipe is for Spaghettoni Al Pesto (Barefoot Contessa Parties!), and you’ll probably notice that the picture doesn’t show spaghettoni.  That’s rigatoni, which rhymes with spaghettoni, and that’s good enough for me.

I had less of an idea of what I would do with the dill, but seeing those big, flowery bunches reminded me of my grandmother.  She grew acres of vegetables and herbs every summer, and I remember the dill on the edge of the garden.  The smell of dill always brings me back to her, and that garden.  Unlike a lot of people, I don’t have a lot of good food memories of my grandmother – she was pretty much insane, and not in a charming way – but the garden and the dill made me smile.
I brought it home and made a small batch of creamy cucumber salad, from Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics.

From Barefoot Contessa:  How Easy is That?

I made this (from Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics) on a weekday morning when I should have been folding laundry instead.  It was, true to its name, easy to make.  I only made 1/3 of a batch because I’m petrified of canning (botulism, anyone?), and I didn’t want to make any more than we can eat in a few weeks.

I’ve stopped measuring ingredients for the topping – I just throw together flour, sugar, brown sugar, oatmeal and butter until it looks right.  It always tastes right.  The raspberries for this came from our CSA, and the plums are ubiquitous in grocery stores this week.

The recipe is from Barefoot Contessa: How Easy is That?, but if you can read the title of the recipe, you can probably figure it out on your own.  I shopped around a little for the figs.  One grocery store had them for $25/pound, but Costco had them for less than $3/pound.  Guess which one I chose?  I’ll give you a hint:  my husband is still on speaking terms with me.