People have a really REALLY hard time when they hear that the first step to recovering their child is the diet. They get completely turned around themselves when they hear No Gluten, no Dairy and No Soy is the starting point. And so one of the wonderful ladies on a facebook group i spend a LOT of time with suggested that it might help if we could all write out what they CAN feed their children. This week I’m running a series of posts as is my contribution to that effort. It is an example week in my kitchen. Now, keep in mind I work all week and so much of my prep work happens on the weekends. So that’s why this series is STARTING with the stash of things I keep in the freezer for quick go to meals.
These are the things that I keep made and on hand in my freezer for easy meal prep
- Cooked shredded poultry. Either chicken or turkey. I will roast / smoke /grill / poach a whole bird, cool it and shred it, then store in gallon ziplock freezer bags. I use this for Chicken/Turkey Salad, soups, tacos, just by itself, etc.
- Browned ground beef with onions. Just like it sounds – brown a Costco sized package of hamburger meat with a few onions, salt, chipotle pepper and cumin. Drain it, cool it, and store in gallon ziplock freezer bags. Dominic actually will eat this mixture with a spoon, but I use it as a base for lasagna, shepherds pie, tacos, kheema, etc.
- GFCF Meatballs: To 1lb of raw ground meat (and I try to have a couple of types together, in like turkey + Italian sausage + beef the best) add ½ Tsp baking soda. Mix it well and walk away for half an hour. It does something to the meat and makes it stick together with no gluten required. Its cool. I add salt, pepper, garlic, ginger and frozen, drained chopped spinach and then roll them out and bake at 350 until they’re done.
- Broth: Every time I cook a turkey or chicken, I save the carcass in my garage freezer. When I have enough carcasses, I boil them with veggies and make broth. I freeze it in quart sized jars.
- Pasta sauce – I make a ton of it during the summer when my tomato plants are producing and freeze it.
Here’s my favorite way to do homemade sauce but its definitely a weekend project:
Into a bowl, put:
Tomatoes – probably a dozen. Wash, quarter
2 onions = peeled and quartered
1 head garlic – separated but left in the skins
Toss it with olive oil
Add salt, pepper and oregano to coat nicely
Put it all on a baking sheet at 250 for 6 hours. Low and slow. Stir occasionally. At the end, pull the garlic cloves out and take the paper off (they’re now roasted. Yum). Put EVERYTHING that was on the sheet into a food processor or blender (might take a couple of fills) and blend to your desired consistency. You can peel the tomatoes or not. Up to you.
To that mixture add browned Italian sausage, and any veggies you want (we love fresh mushrooms) and simmer.
Jar it and freeze it.
1 comment:
Great ideas! I am going to try these.
We cook up chicken parts (legs, thighs, breast), spare ribs (in honey and onion sauce), meat loaf that has squash as a binder in it, plus grated carrot, sometimes mashed or blneded peas' finely diced onion, sometimes chopped spinach. We used to add tomatoe and peppers and spices/herbs, but our son has problems with salicylates. We slice and freeze that when it is cooled. It is a meal in itself and easy to warm up. Wen theynare packaged indvidually they are easy to take out and warm up.
Post a Comment