Cooking is good for the soul(s)

I love to cook.  It started in high school.  French club, I think.  My school's French club hosted a "French cafe" each year but all it offered was croissants and other pastries.  When I became French club president, I reasoned "hey, it's either a cafe or it's not..." Therefore, I pulled out my mom's International cookbook, selected a savory crepe recipe, a quiche, a side dish (I can't really remember now but I think it was some preparation of green beans) and a dessert.  My club divided up into teams for cooking, loaded my parents' microwave into my '74 Volkswagen and set up a real cafe in the courtyard.  We sold lunch plates and made a killing.  

Here I am a "few" years later and I've been cooking ever since.  I enjoy it.  I like it for many reasons...it's therapeutic for me, I like to take care of others through food and I really, really like to try to  impress my husband.  And then there's our daughter, who I want to feed healthily and have her develop a sophisticated palate.  We're well on the way with that, thank God.

Unfortunately, one of our friends was recently found to have cancer.  She is young and healthy, has a beautiful one year old baby and a husband who loves her.  She's been started on chemo right away and is on medical leave.  She is in good hands... 

I wanted to prepare something that they could keep in the freezer and just pop in the oven on those days when she doesn't feel well and her husband doesn't want to fool with the kitchen. I decided to go with The Pioneer Woman's lasagna rolls. I really love her site and so many of her recipes are just awesome.  I made enough for 4 meals for our friends and one for us. I had leftover filling and a little bit of sauce, so I stuffed some shells for our dinner.

So, on to the lasagna...

Getting all the ingredients ready to rock & roll

 

I am an herb-chopping machine

This is about 2 lbs of hamburger and chopped onion

The sauce is simmering away.  Smells divine!

Since these are rolled, you must cook them first

Spread the ricotta/parmesan mixture on the noodle

Roll 'em up!

Four rolls will fit in a standard size loaf pan

Look at all these...from ONE recipe!

Everything is better with cheese on top

Using up the leftover filling & sauce for our dinner

Stuffed shells ready for the oven

Call me an old Southern girl but food is what I do when someone has a problem.  Making these dishes was fun for me and I felt really happy about the possibility that these lasagnas might make life a little easier for our friends as they go through this tough time.  Food is more than fuel for the body. That's what I think anyway. 

French Toast Sticks a-Plenty

School starts this coming week.  Kids are excited, parents are excited.  Even the teachers might be excited.  But, for moms like me, there's a little trepidation.  You know us.  We are the moms who love our kids dearly and want to send them off to school happy, clean, well fed and energetic.  One problem:  at 6:30 in the morning, I am none of those things.  Seriously, who decided little kids need to be in their seats at 7:30?

So, breakfast can be a challenge in the midst of the morning mantra(s).  Get dressed, get dressed, no put on the clothes you decided on yesterday, get dressed.  Brush your hair, brush your hair.  And my favorite, eat your breakfast, eat your breakfast, eat your...

Anytime I can find a do ahead breakfast idea, I'm a happy mom.  My little one is like her mama, however.  We are variety eaters.  We get burned out on the same thing really, really quickly.  This means I have to have lots of choices in my arsenal and ones that are doable at 6:30 in the morning when I barely have my eyes open, my hair is a tangled mop and I'm not even sure yet what day it is.  

Recently, I was looking around for an idea of what to do with those ever-ripening bananas sitting on our counter.  I came across this recipe for Banana Cinnamon French Toast Sticks and a light bulb went off immediately.  Right then and there I decided this was going to be made and packed away in our trusty little freezer.  Ever so glad I made that call because not only did it turn out delicious but we have tons available for future breakfasts.

I ended up using about 1 1/2 loaves of bread

Ready for the oven

Finished product

We tried them right out of the oven with a little maple syrup and man, oh man, were they tasty!  We now have 3 bags full available to take a quick ride in the microwave on those hurried school mornings.  A victory for early-morning-zombie-moms like me!

A plethora of potato

You know the only problem about having a Chef'Store in your town?  It's when you go with someone who convinces you that for only $17 and some change the two of you can surely figure out how to use 50 lbs of potatoes.  Seriously.  Mom and I had an open house coming up and we were doing a baked potato bar.  We might have needed 4 potatoes, maybe 12.  One never knows.  But you can't buy potatoes that way at the Chef'Store.  Nope, it's like being at Sam's.  

Fifty pounds.  At first, my mind, like any other sane person's, said "50 lbs?  Are you crazy?  Of course not!"  But then I started doing the math.  Oh, curse you trusty calculator!  Turns out $17 and some change for 50 lbs of potatoes is a damn good deal.  As we unloaded that giant box from the car later, I began having some of that We-just-over-bought-out-the-ying-yang anxiety. What in the world was I going to do with all these pommes de terre? 

Good sized potatoes too!

 Well, first off, I baked a lot of them for the open house.  Unfortunately not many people showed up, so I brought many of them home. No worry...potato soup for dinner.  But there was that huge cardboard box sitting on the table just staring at me. I thought. I contemplated. I consulted cookbooks.  Finally I had a plan.  The freezer was going to be getting lots of new temporary friends. I spent one long morning dispensing with these spectacular spuds.  

I grated, rinsed, blanched and rinsed again about 20 cups of hash browns then bagged them all up in freezer bags.  The rest I baked then created 3 types of "twice-baked" potatoes: sour cream & chive, broccoli & cheddar and cheddar & ham.  I wrapped each in plastic wrap so they could be taken out of the freezer as individual portions then bagged and labeled.  

Just like the Waffle House!

Since I put all of this in the freezer, we tried the hash browns first.  Simply put, they worked perfectly!  All of the rinsing & blanching has caused them to keep their color (or lack thereof) and they cook up nice and light and crispy.  Last night we had Alaskan snow crab legs with our sour cream & chive potatoes for dinner.  The potatoes are packed with flavor and the edges of the skins got browned and toasty.  It was a good combo with the sweet crab and butter. 

These are the broccoli and cheddar twice-baked potatoes

You probably know this about me by now, but I'll say it again.  I just sleep better at night knowing that I have good things waiting in our freezer.  It's so comforting knowing that on a busy school night, or after a hard day, or on a day when I still haven't gotten around to going to the grocery store, we have dinner available in the big cold box.  Over recent years, I've also made a goal to become as resourceful as possible.  Once upon a time, I'd have thrown out all of the potatoes I just didn't get cooked before they went bad.  Today's me would have a heart attack instead!  This is why all our stale bread becomes bread crumbs stored in the freezer, old shrimp and crab shells stay frozen until we need to make stock, and and leftover chicken tips from Zorba's get turned into chicken salad!