Cooking 101: This Week's Food Preparation

I have gotten lots of response from readers on my meal planning posts, wanting simple tips to making your food go further and your kitchen time easier. So, I thought I would start to document here for you, some of the things I do with my meal plan to stretch my bucks and make my cooking experiences easier.

Below are a few things I did this week with my meal plan items here, to make my future meals easier. I prepared things for freezer meals for later.

1. Black Bean Enchiladas: We had them for dinner one night, and I had enough to freeze another tray for later.
2. Pre-cooked ground turkey: I cooked ground turkey (I got on sale at Kroger this week, 4 lbs of it!) to use in the enchiladas, so while I already had the pan out, I cooked it all. Then, I let it drain and cool, and put each pound in a freezer bag to use in recipes for later.
3. Lentil Soup: I froze the leftovers after we had 2 meals off of it, which gave me 2 more meals for later.
4. Homemade Croutons: I had 2 meals this week that I made homemade bread for. I used the leftover bread to make homemade croutons (cut in cubes, toss w/ olive oil, salt & pepper and toast) for our Lentil soup. Then I had enough to freeze to put up with the frozen lentil soup. (not pictured)
5. Leftover Rice: I made rice on Monday and saved the leftovers to make my Spinach, Rice and Cheese Casserole, which will have leftovers that I can freeze.
6. Spinach Juice: I know you think I am weird, but in the Deceptively Delicious or Sneaky Chef *(can’t remember), they put this in kids food. I put it into my kids smoothies and my sons pureed food.

What are some things you did this week to make your life easier? Feel free to leave your comments and tips below for us all to learn from.

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