Freezer Cooking Day with my sister

Last week, my sister, Crystal, asked me to come help her with her Freezer Cooking Day in exchange for several of the meals we made. I'm not one to turn down free food, especially considering our weekly grocery budget of $22.50! Plus, I love cooking/baking and knew it would be fun to cook with company in the kitchen. (That's something I've missed having since I've gotten married.)

The day started off bright and early. I wanted to make a huge batch of Butterhorn Rolls, since that is one of Joe's favorite foods and I've been needing to make a batch for quite some time now. Since I was going to be making them for Crystal's family as well, I decided to double the recipe (64 rolls!). The only problem was that I realized the bowl was going to be waaaaay too small once the dough started rising. Ooops!

I ended up dividing the dough into two bowls while it rose.

Meanwhile I started cooking the Blueberry pancakes from a mix Crystal had already whipped up earlier.


I always have trouble cooking pancakes on Crystal's little pan skillet. (That's why I'm so glad my parents bought me a really nice large griddle for a wedding present.) They either burn or look really bad...just ask Crystal's husband! :) Here is proof:

While the pancakes were cooking, Crystal had me cut up a bunch of chicken breasts that had just come out of the oven. I wished I would have brought my kitchen scissors as I have found that is the easiest tool to use when cutting up chicken. Instead, I ended up using a knife and fork. Oh well.


When both the pancakes and chicken were finished, I began working on Taco Meat. Halfway through, we realized we had no taco seasoning...totally something Crystal and I would do. :) The spice cabinet came to the rescue and I poured stuff in until it smelled semi-taco-like. Crystal and I are experts at re-creating meals....sometimes into something no one will eat. But hey, at least we try! This time, however, my re-creation was successful.

I also made up about 24 Brown Bag Burritos - another one of Joe's favorites. By this time, the Butterhorn Roll dough had finished rising so began working on shaping the rolls. Below are some pictures of the process:




Joe was super happy to find out that I was bringing home 32 Butterhorn Rolls to put in our freezer. I'm guessing they won't last long even though there's only two of us. (You can see the recipe for these here.)

When all 64 rolls were finished, we decided to call it a day. After several hours, we had the following meals completed and ready to put in the freezer:

Lasagna x 4

Brown Bag Burritos x 2

Cheeseburger Meatloaf x 3

Chicken and Red Bean Burritos

Lemon Chicken x 3

White Bean and Chicken Chili

Taco Meat

Make Ahead Butterhorns x 2

Blueberry Pancakes

Chopped onions

2 bags of cooked brown rice

1 bag of cooked Great Northern beans

We both agreed it was a lot of fun (and less work) to cook together and decided we needed to do this more often. I was so happy to get my little freezer stocked up with food to last throughout the next couple of weeks, thanks to Crystal!