Tag Archives: freezer friendly

Super Porktastic Meatloaf

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This is another recipe from the NomNomPaleo ipad app ! Awesome.  Like usual, I kind of improvised the recipe, but you can see my trusty ipad in the photos to prove that I actually kind of read the recipe this time. You can see the full recipe on nomnompaleo.com too!

Bacon topped meatloaf. Pork on pork action with a side of spinach. Yum. Yes, I burnt the bacon because I got distracted. Whoopsie.

Super Porktastic Meatloaf from Nomnompaleo.com – Serves 4-6

  • 1 pound frozen chopped spinach
  • 1 tablespoon unsalted butter (or coconut oil)
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped yellow onion (from 1/2 medium onion)
  • 1/2 pound Cremini mushrooms, finely chopped
  • 1/4 cup coconut cream or coconut milk
  • 1/2 cup small-dice celery (from about 2 medium stalks)
  • 1/2 cup loosely packed fresh Italian parsley leaves
  • 1 pound ground pork (the original recipe calls for 1 ¼ pounds of pork, veal, or beef but I only had 1 pound of ground pork defrosted)
  • ¼ cup coconut flour
  • 1 medium garlic clove, minced
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper, plus more as needed
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
  • 3-5 bacon slices
  • Tomato sauce, warmed, for serving (optional)

 

Chop your celery, shrooms and onion. Don’t get your iPad dirty.

Frozen spinach is your friend. One of the store-brands (Compliments) packages it in these nuggets rather than a brick. It is very handy to just use half a package instead of the whole thing.

Frying the chopped shrooms and onions

Coconut flour, nutmeg, spinach, pork

Added in the eggs and the blend of coconut milk, celery, that you mixed with your immersion blender

I baked it in mini loaf pans. With bacon on top. Mmm bacon.

And when I broiled the bacon I got distracted by a phone call. ARGH. So it burnt a bit.

I would venture a guess that this would freeze well uncooked and you could just pop it in the oven once thawed.

Eggplant Boats

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Sometimes I buy random things at the grocery store without a plan. When I picked up these cute little mini eggplants I wasn’t quite sure what I felt like making. I didn’t feel like making more spicy babaganoush, so I made up this recipe using things I had on hand. I think this was the first dish I made with my beef delivery. Yeah, it’s been in the hopper for a while…

Eggplant Boats – serves 4-6

  • 4 small eggplants, cut in half
  • 3 tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
  • one small onion, chopped
  • 1/4 cup of basil, chopped
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper
  • one pound of ground beef

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix together chopped tomatoes, basil, garlic, onion. Drizzle on some olive oil. Let it sit while you finish prepping.

Slice your eggplants in half and scoop out the flesh. I scored them with a knife to make this easier.

All scooped out.

You could bake them to soften them up, but I put mine in a pan for a while, brushed with some oil. Cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes.

Mix the eggplant innards with the tomato mixture

Toss it all in a pan and reduce, as the tomatoes will let off some liquid.

Add ground beef and continue to cook until it is browned. It’s okay if it’s still a bit pink in spots because it will continue to cook in the oven.

Place your hollowed out eggplants in a pan

Fill with the mixture and top with cheese (optional). Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes, or until the eggplant is soft all the way through.

Serve hot. With a cold drink.

 

Kale, mushroom, pancetta and white cheddar frittata

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The incredible, edible egg. I love eggs! They are a fast, cheap and easy way to get protein and good fats into you. I could eat them at every meal and I love them prepared almost any way. One of my favourite quick meals is an omelette or a frittata. I threw together this frittata with the random ingredients I found in my fridge and freezer. It was absolutely delicious! I often make them in individual silicone muffin liners and pack them in my breakfast/lunch to take to work.

Pancetta, kale, mushroom and white cheddar frittata

Makes one pretty big pan. You could half this recipe and be good. Or make it all because it is tasty.

  • 2 cups of chopped kale – fresh or frozen. (I used frozen because it’s what I had on hand, and to be honest I probably only used about one cup. I just dumped the rest of the bag in)
  • 200g (1/2 a pound-ish) pancetta (You could use bacon, but my Costco sells this lovely pancetta that is pre-chopped. I am a big fan of the easy)
  • 16 eggs (Yep. this is a big recipe!)
  • 1 pound of chopped mushrooms (I used pre-sliced baby portobellos, but any type would work)
  • 1 cup (or more!) of a robust cheddar cheese cut into large chunks
  • Fresh ground pepper

Preheat oven to 350.

Put pancetta in a pan to brown over low heat. (Yes, you’ll notice remnants of kale in there because I started to cook the veg before I had the brilliant idea to add BACON. You can’t go wrong with BACON.

Once the bacon is almost cooked, add kale and mushrooms. Cook until mushrooms are reduced. Add fresh ground pepper. No salt – the salt from the pancetta and cheese makes this a very salty dish already.

Spread your cooked mixture into a non-stick or well-greased pan. You’ll notice that I used one larger pan and one smaller pan. The reason for this is that I want to test out how this recipe freezes. Grad school classes begin again for me in a week so I’m busy stocking my freezer.

Chop your cheese and lay on top. Use a very robust flavoured cheese. I used Cabot white cheddar that I picked up on my recent Vermont foodcation. Parmesan would work lovely here. So would goat cheese! If you’re not into dairy, you could omit the cheese.

Mix your eggs (add some cream if you’d like – I didn’t) and pour on top of the pan(s). This recipe would likely fill two 8×8 pans. Normally I would use a silicone 9×9 pan for my fritattas but I couldn’t find it. 

Place pans on middle oven rack and bake for 30-45 minutes. The time will depend on the size of your pans. My small pan was done in about 30 minutes and the bigger one was closer to 45. Let rest for 5 minutes or so, and cut in! This was equally delicious fresh from the oven as it was cold the next day for breakfast

Italian Sausage Stew

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I love sausage. A lot. Italian, bratwurst, Polish, chorizo, garlic, fresh, cured, pepperoni, pepperettes… links, patties blablabla. I loooove sausage. Now, get your minds out of the gutter. I’m talking about the delicious, flavorful meat! My professed and unabashed love for sausage has been the butt of many jokes and many awkward moments.

Looking in my fridge the other day I had half a pound of ground beef, and half a pound of ground pork. I needed a recipe to use it up. Because I’m obsessed with Well Fed, I flipped through it in hopes of inspiration. Bingo. Italian Sausage Seasoning. Well Fed has this uncanny knack for making the simplest ingredients (lonely abandoned ground meat) into a flavour party. Seriously, what are you waiting for? Go buy it or at least read the 30 page free sampler.

Using these delicious sausage flavours, I created a thick stew, almost like a chili. Now, given that we got a dump of snow last night (ugh), it feels like this is an appropriate dish for today! Warm, spicy and stick to your ribs goodness.

Italian Sausage Seasoning from Well Fed

4 teaspoons dried parsley
1 tablespoon dried Italian herbs
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
2 teaspoons coarse (granulated) garlic powder
2 teaspoons paprika
4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seed (listed as optional, but in my humble opinion this ingredient is crucial in an Italian sausage! )

Mix these ingredients together and add a few spoons to your meat. I doubled the recipe and it filled a mason jar so I could use it again. Delish. You’ll want to mix it up well, of course.

Italian Sausage Stew

  • 1/2 lb of ground beef
  • 1/2lb of ground pork (you could use all beef or all pork if you wanted)
  • 1/2 a medium onion, chopped
  • 1 c of frozen chopped spinach or kale
  • one can of diced tomatoes (the large-ish ones)
  • one small can of tomato paste
  • vegetable broth, as needed

Add a few big spoons of the seasoning to your pan with the meat. Cook over medium heat until browned.

Add the tomatoes, paste, your frozen spinach (I used kale) and a bit of vegetable broth as needed to get your desired consistency. Simmer until reduced slightly and thickened.  Serve with freshly grated parmesan cheese. [I assume] this freezes really well. I ate this with a spoon, but you could also add some plain tomato sauce and use it as a sauce to top some zucchini noodles, butternut squash, or any other type of pasta.

 

Gluten Free Jamaican… tarts?

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I saw this recipe for gluten-free jamaican patties on pinterest, and after reading through decided that all the ingredients sounded good enough to me.  I became obsessed with making them. I thought about them constantly for two days until I went and picked up a scotch bonnet pepper and cream cheese so that I could make them.

I won’t write out all the ingredients and recipe, because you can find them on I Breathe… I’m hungry… and I actually did follow the recipe, but with one pretty significant change. That dough was a b@#h! I could not roll it out without it crumbling apart! It was pretty disastrous, actually. I was about to throw it out and just eat the yummy filling when I thought about cramming them into muffin tins to make Jamaican-patty inspired muffin tart things. Ahhh, success.

They aren’t incredibly pretty, but they sure did taste good. Here’s how the process looked.

Spices!

Scotch Bonnet Pepper. Yes, I am wearing rubber gloves, and you should too. If you don’t have them, go out and buy them before you dare cut into that pepper. A Scotch Bonnet is HOT. To quote my good friend Wikipedia, “Most Scotch Bonnets have a heat rating of 100,000–350,000 Scoville Units. For comparison, most jalapeño peppers have a heat rating of 2,500 to 8,000 on the Scoville scale.” If you get that heat in your hands or eyes it will hurt. Ask my mom about the time I cut a habanero pepper without gloves and then touched my face. She walked into me smearing sour cream all over my face to try to neutralize the burn. True story.

Pureeing the onion, pepper and garlic with some water

Adding the mixture to the meat

Spices added!

Making that “dough”. Ugh.

My improvisation

Ready for the oven. You aren’t cooking anything here, so really it’s just to heat it up and make the dough crispy.

I don’t think I will ever make these again, but if anyone does and gets them to look like an actual Jamaican patty, do let me know. The filling was delicious, however. It might be really delicious inside a curry flavoured Pure wrap .

Update: These froze pretty well. They were a bit crumbly, and I ate them with a fork, but no softer/crumbly than they were the first time around. I froze them in packages of two, took it out of the freezer the night before and thawed in my lunch bag overnight, microwaved one minute.

Carrot Ginger Soup

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Have you ever made a blended soup? No? Why not? So easy. One of my favourite ways to get vegetables into me, freezer friendly, portable and delicious! I tend to just make up the recipe as I go, just as I did today.

Carrot Ginger Soup. Makes one large-ish pot. How many bowls? Depends on how big your bowls are. Ha!

  • 3lb bag of carrots
  • a large onion
  • a large chunk of ginger
  • a big spoon of ground coriander
  • 8c (or so) of broth – chicken or vegetable; homemade or from a box – doesn’t really matter.
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • olive oil

Peel your carrots, ginger and onion.

Toss onion and ginger into the food processor to chop.

Put onion and ginger mixture in a pan with olive oil over medium heat to soften.

Grate your carrot with the food processor

Add the carrots and your broth to the pot. Simmer for 30-40 minutes or until it’s all soft

Puree with an immersion blender. (or you could dump it all into the food processor or a real blender, but why?). Add a bit of water or broth to thin the consistency, if required.

And eat. You can top with chopped cilantro, a drizzle of sour cream, some salt and pepper. This soup has a real zing to it because of the enormous amount of ginger. It’s simple and delicious flavours at their best. Good food does not need to be complicated and difficult. I froze most of this soup for busy weeknight dinners once my next semester begins (I work full time and go to grad school full time….)

I also packaged a few servings of soup into mason jars for lunches to take to work. Mason jars make awesome packed lunch containers. Take off the lid, drape a paper towel or napkin over it to prevent splatter, and microwave. Glass won’t leach crap into your food, nor will it break down from the heat.