I am a little obsessed with making soup at home. But really hadn’t ventured far beyond the two recipes I’ve tried to so far. Thanks to Pinterest finding more recipes has been easy to do! I even created an “i heart soup” board. Go check it out!
It was on Pinterest that I stumbled upon this recipe from The Pioneer Woman. I was instantly intrigued and also a little freaked out…I was going to have to pull apart a chicken to get as much meat off the bones as possible!
The first time I made this soup was the weekend of the White Rock Marathon that my sister was running, so the house was a little busy. Plus I decided to put up my Christmas Tree that weekend with the help of my five year old nephew.
There are quite a few steps to this soup because there is quite a bit of chopping: a couple peppers, an onion and a jalapeno…chop chop chop! Once the soup was finished I couldn’t wait to taste it and it was amazing!
A few days later I learned that our Christmas Eve dinner was going to be sandwiches and soups for dinner so I immediately volunteered to cook this soup. What I learned from making it the first time was it makes A LOT of soup! But then I also learned that is freezes good, so that’s a definite plus. Remember I like that whole “pre-cooked” meal that all I have to do is defrost!
Needless to say, Christmas Eve this soup was a hit! So to my cousins, sis-in-law and anyone else…here is the recipe!
I figured there was no need for me to take too many photos because the Pioneer Woman did such a good job of that on her blog! Also I’m not writing out the recipe because it’s on her website (click recipe in the paragraph above to see it). The only alteration I made the second go-round was I added another 4 cups of broth, the pasta just seems to absorb it and I wanted to make sure it went far enough because there were a lot of us!
If you are a soup maker I definitely recommend this one; give it a try. Oh and if you can’t find a cut up fryer at your grocery store, get the butcher to up a whole chicken (or fryer) for you! I refused to cut it up myself at home; plus I don’t really have the greatest knives.
I’ve been on it for awhile…but only recently started playing with it; and now I can’t stop! The more I look at it the more I want to cook. So that’s just what I did this past weekend. Let me just tell you…it was SO fun and now I won’t have to cook dinner for over 3 weeks!
After a long day at work, the last thing I want to do is come home and cook dinner let alone even spend time thinking about what to have.
I decided if I was going to take the time to cook, then I was going to make things I could freeze and have later. So, I set out on a mission to pick a few recipes that used chicken and some of the same spices to get the most bang for my buck! Then I headed to the grocery store and spent a whopping $95 to get all of this:
The strangest item I bought, because it was new to me and not something I ever thought I’d buy was ground chicken…so I was totally nervous about that recipe. Also, I should note, these were all new recipes and not things I’d tried. But based on everything I saw these recipes would freeze really well and that’s what I was going for! If you are looking for a guide about how long foods can stay in the freezer, I think this is a great index!
First recipe was chicken noodle soup. I picked this recipe because I thought her suggestion of freezing servings in large muffin tins was BRILLIANT! However I totally botched the chicken and made this way too bland…no fault of the poster; it was my own mistake. Which means this soup may just be the last thing to leave my freezer. I know this because I made sure the soup was ready in time for dinner on Saturday night. Even though I had some for dinner I was still able to freeze 6 servings.
When I cooked the chicken for the the soup I went a head and cooked the chicken that I needed to make this enchilada recipe. I went with this one over the many other recipes that I saw on Pintrest because it seemed the lowest in calories. My best estimation, a serving (2 enchiladas) of this recipe is right around 500 calories. Not awesome, but not bad. The chicken had to be shredded so I worked on that for a bit Saturday but ended up building the enchiladas on Sunday. When I had these for lunch I was impressed. Though I think next time I want to make my own enchilada sauce the one I bought was just so-so. Also, I decided to use whole wheat tortillas. After lunch I still had enough enchiladas left over to freeze 9.5 servings. Though since I had opened the enchilada sauce I froze the remainder in mini muffin tins and bagged it up in serving increments.
Next up was Chicken Parmesan Meatloaf. To be honest, I thought this recipe sounded both gross and intriguing…you know the whole ground chicken thing. But needless to say, I made it any ways. And it was awesome. I used giant muffin tins (thanks mom!) to portion it out and then freeze. While cooking my serving for dinner that night, I froze the remaining 5 servings.
At this point I had 22 meals in the freezer and had eaten 3 meals…remember, I only spent $95.
Next up, I made a Baked Penne & Creamy ricotta dish for bunco on Tuesday night. Naturally I froze it since bunco wasn’t the next day. For this particular recipe I used Jennie-O Italian flavored turkey, whole wheat penne pasta and low fat cheeses. This recipe was HUGE or maybe I didn’t pile it on enough…but it was 2 9×13 baking dishes. We ate one at bunco, then my sister and I had enough for 2 meals each…not counting the part eaten at bunco, I was now up to 29 meals.
Lastly, the recipes I made didn’t use up all the chicken that I bought, so I cute the 2 left over breasts into normal portion sizes; in this case it was 4 and dropped them in a baggie with the left over BBQ sauce I had in my fridge.
I’m not going to lie; I was pretty darn impressed with myself for creating 33 meals for $95…and they will all be home cooked and delicious….well maybe minus the chicken noodle soup (again, my fault).
There are several more recipes on pinterest I’m dying to try…but I’m going to be good and wait until I start to get low on frozen meals.
At this point I still have 22 meals ready to eat…maybe when the stash runs low I’ll finally stopping being so proud of myself
Follow me on Pinterest if you want to keep up with the rest of my finds; happy pinning! Got any freezer friendly recipes? I wanna see them; post them below!
