Kitchen Tip - Slow Cooker Freezer Kits

My life has gotten crazier.  I've been back to work for a month now.  

This year I work at the building that starts and ends the latest.  This means I can clock off at 3:45.  I usually don't leave the building until 4 o'clock most days.  The earliest I get home is 4:30.

Here's the dilemma:  Hubby has to be at work by 5:30 3 days and the other 2 days has to be at work by 6:00.  Even though there are 2 days, he has to be at work at 6:00, he has to drop Know-it-All at Kung Fu by 5:30.

So how do I get dinner on the table? 

There are 4 ways.

1. Tell Hubby what to cook 
2. Freezer cooking
3. Slow Cooker 
4. Food preparation during the weekend.

I'm to discuss the slow cooker method.  

My slow cooker looks nothing like this slow cooker.

Once or twice a month, I make freezer slow cooker kits.  The bags need to be labeled with the date, contents, and then cooking directions.

I then freeze them.  When I'm ready to use the slow cooker kit out of the freezer and put it in the slow cooker.  Sometimes I use a slow cooker bag.  Other times I don't use a bag.  It's easier to clean up if you use a bag.  

You can certainly thaw your freezer kit in the fridge the night before.  I don't because it takes longer for the frozen meals to cook.  During the day, I am busy teaching so I don't always have time to call or text Hubby to tell him to turn the slow cooker on keep warm or when to do that.  (If I tell him prior or leave him a note, it won't necessarily be done.  I have to call or text him.)

Here are some great blogs to find slow cooker recipes that could be frozen:

Eat at Home

Sidetracked Sarah

The Sassy Slow Cooker

A Year of Slow Cooking

Once a Month Meals

Please be careful with using potatoes.  Russet potatoes will brown easier because the amount of starch in russet potatoes.  Use red or yellow potatoes instead.  They are less starchy.

Oh, some recipes have you put some of the foods closer to end of the cooking time, I make 2 bags with the part you put in first and then the other bag.  I put both of those bags in another freezer bag.

As we eat some of the slow cooker freezer kits, I will start to post some of the recipes.  That is I'll post the recipes of the ones that were hits with my family.

Happy Cooking,

Traci

Kitchen Tip Tuesday - Dicing onions

When we were in Charleston, Hubby signed me up for 2 coming classes. In the first one I learned how to cook shrimp and grits. During the second one, I cooked up a potato salad with arugula. Other people in the class cooked other parts of the meal.

One of the things they taught was how to dice up am onion with little tears.

The most important piece of knowledge to know about an onion is knowing why people get teary eyed when they cut up am onion. There is an enzyme in the root that causes your eyes to become irritated.

So when I cut up an onion now, I first cut the top off and then cut it in half so you have two flat sides. 

With the top of the onion off

Cut in half (Messed up a little when I took the top off.) Flat side laying down on cutting board.

After cutting the onion in half, remove the skin.  It's easier to do it then.

An onion has natural grooves. Cut along those from where the top had been towards the root but do not cut the root. 

Cutting along the grooves.  I cut until it starts to slope down.  That way I won't get cut into the root.  I also have to turn the onion around after I've cut it half way.

Then I cut across the onion so that I have small diced onion.

1.  Cutting across the onion.  I stopped when I got to the part of the onion that was started to slope down.

2.  Scooping up the onions.

3.  Diced up onions on the cutting board.

4.  Diced up onions on a plate.  They were ready to be portioned out into 1/2 c. portions.

1.  I used a garbage bowl to put the onion scraps in.

2.  Diced up onions in 1/2 c. portions.

3.  Ready to go into the freezer.

4.  I cut some of the onions into slices.