“No one has been given more than 24 hours for each day.
The secret is not to get more time. It is to manage our time.
It takes only a little time to plan the savings of much time.
Use your freezer to save time. Prepare freezer main dishes.
Set aside a period of time when you are most relaxed and free of other chores to prepare several dishes for the freezer at a time. You do not need to set aside an entire day for this, nor do you need to prepare an entire month of meals all at once.
In just two to four hours, you can easily prepare four to five main dishes for the freezer.
If you do not own a freezer, freezer meals are worth buying one for!
You will be amazed at how quickly your freezer will fill up with tasty made-in-advance dishes once you embark on an easy plan that suits your own busy schedule.”
-Emilie Barnes & Sue Gregg, The 15 Minute Meal Planner
The opera music was playing over the record player in the dining room … ground beef was simmering away on the cookstove and the parcel of healthy, energetic children were just about to romp around outside in the freshly fallen snow. If you were to peek into my warm kitchen, you would find a huge, super sized mixing bowl of just-mashed-potatoes with melted butter mixed in and many, many casserole dishes, lined up like a little army on my counter. Rolling up my sleeves and donning a fresh apron, it was time to get some meals prepped.
Ahhh, home life. A wonderful place to be. School was finished for the day and I was no able to peer menacingly at my to-do list.
{Our Basset Hound, Rip, knows where to stay out of trouble and comfortable …
in front of the fire in his master’s arm chair…}
[homemade pumpkin loaf]
With the impending arrival of baby #9, I’ve been wanting to scratch off items on my to-do list with a flourish. Yes, there is and will always a list to do– of course- but that is okay. I’m happy with getting things done around my home. So while this little baby is still growing safely inside of my womb, it’s time to start fluffing up the nest a little and getting the home ready for another tiny resident.
To get ready for another little member of our family, I probably choose the strangest ways to ‘nest’. Such as spring cleaning, freezer meals and painting trim and banged up, well-used doors. My little boys love to help mommy …
But on to the food portion of this post ….and the list, held firmly in my hand.
This week’s tasks, I had decided, was preparing some freezer meals for post baby weeks…. this will make life so much more simple after the baby is born, I thought, as I spooned in large ladle fulls of browned ground beef into casserole dishes.
Although I was prepped for a long session in the kitchen, surprisingly, this one task did not take me very long (a few hours one morning). It sure put my mind at ease to know there is a section in my freezer with some lovely, healthy meals ready for the crockpot. I decided it would be easiest to split up the meats and do them on separate days. The first day, I prepared all the chicken meals.
[tray of main chicken meals]
For chicken dishes in the freezer, we have:
* BBQ chicken ( made from homemade BBQ sauce)
* Breaded Parmesan chicken – so easy and so good – I used crushed up crackers for the breading
* Lemon and Herb chicken
* Greek chicken with feta cheese and black olives
* Chinese chicken (soya sauce and homemade ketchup mixed together to make the sauce)
* Chicken with homemade Alfredo sauce
*Mexican chicken (this is such an easy dish – mix together cooked chicken with black beans, cream cheese, sour cream, jar of salsa, shredded cheese for topping and I put the extra olives in it too) – serve with tortillas and rice
{homemade bagels}
Later this week, I prepared the ground beef for the beef meals and assembled them into meals today.
The main beef meals are:
Beef stroganoff with egg noodles
Tray of cabbage rolls
Two lasagnas
Spaghetti sauce with hamburger meat
Beef stew
Two Shepherd’s Pie
Spicy Hamburger meat — to be served with rice
Now I have cooked up one of our large, home-grown turkeys and have it cooking away in my big roaster. Turkey meals will come next.
Which brings me to the main recipe of this post …
~Turkey A La King~
What a treat to serve up this tasty meal! We all just adore this simple and easy to prepare dish. You can serve with various sides, but our favorite is Yorkshire Pudding. Of course, biscuits hot from the oven will do just fine in a pinch, as well. I’ll be making up some extra batches for the freezer, but also for another family in our church that is due to have a baby any day.
Turkey A La King
- 1/4 cup butter, cubed
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 can (14-1/2 ounces) chicken broth
- 1 cup milk
- 2 cups cubed cooked turkey
- 1 cup sliced cooked carrots
- 1 cup cut fresh green beans
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- Warm biscuits or Yorkshire Pudding
- 1.In a large saucepan, melt butter. Stir in flour until smooth; gradually add broth and milk. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 1-2 minutes or until thickened.
- 2. Stir in the turkey, carrots, green beans, salt and pepper; heat through.
- 3. Serve immediately with biscuits or cool and freeze in a freezer container for up to 3 months.It is one of the best dishes and absolute perfection served with Yorkshire Puddings and melted butter.
What a blessing these meals will be in the weeks following the baby’s birth. We also have many canned soups still ready from our canning season, which will be eaten mainly as the lunch menu.
by Gigi
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