Archive for category: Awesome Findings

Ashley and I made freezer meals back in the Winter and loved it so much. It took a lot of time, but I thought it was completely worth it because it helped us save money and was perfect for Winter days when I didn’t want to cook dinner, but could still have a hot meal in the crockpot ready in no time. In the summer though, I’m pretty good at cooking dinners since there are so many delicious fresh vegetables and fruits available. But breakfast and lunch sometimes are hard for me to think of ideas. If it was just me, I’d grab a breakfast drink in the morning and have a lean cuisine for lunch… but I can’t do that to my child. And I get sick of making PB&J everyday… plus, my kid won’t even eat all the time. So, enter the toddler freezer meal craze that happened this week.

It all started when Ashley made some zucchini muffins. They were a hit with her son and she was able to freeze a bunch for the future. So, I decided to make a batch, too, because I tend to copy everything Ashley does. When I pulled out the zucchini to make the muffins, I realized I had some carrots I needed to use up. Then I thought, well I might as well make some carrot muffins while I’m at it. (Does this remind you of the “If You Give a Moose a Muffin” book?) Once those were in the oven, I thought… Since there’s already a mess, let’s make some pancake muffins! And as those were cooking, I decided I needed some muffins with chocolate in them… so I made oatmeal chocolate chip muffins too. By the end of the night, I had made 96 mini muffins and 36 regular muffins (I doubled some of the recipes). I divided the mini muffins up in baggies of 6, and regular in baggies of 2, then stuck them in the freezer-even color coded the top of baggies for easy grabbing in the future. They’ve already been a huge hit in the house! Perfect to take in the lunchbox to the pool or for a snack/part of a meal.

Here are the recipes for the muffins that I used (PS-I substituted applesauce for oil, whole wheat flour for white flour, and would use a squeeze of honey instead of sugar/brown sugar… still tasted great!):

Zucchini Muffins
Carrot Muffins
Whole Wheat Pancake Muffins
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Pancakes

We didn’t stop there. Two days later, Ashley and I planned on making some more things for our toddlers (that taste great for adults too) that we could stick in the freezer. After some pinteresting, we decided to make the following recipes on a rainy Tuesday:

Green Vegan Pancakes
Mini Barbeque Apple Chicken Muffins
Zucchini Cups
Chicken Apple Sausage & Sweet Potato Egg Muffins
Mini Frittatas

It took about four hours, and made us wash the muffin pans about a hundred times, but between both of us, we made 36 spinach whole wheat pancakes, 50+ mini BBQ chicken apple cups, 24 zucchini quiches, 60 mini sweet potato chicken egg muffins, and 60 mini egg and pepper frittatas! I don’t know if you can comprehend how much food that is, but let me tell you… it’s a LOT! AND IT WAS AWESOME! My child has eaten SPINACH PANCAKES for breakfast now two days in a row, and she doesn’t even know. She thinks they’re just special green colored pancakes. They even taste like regular pancakes, much better than those banana and egg pancakes. 

So, there you have it. Eight great recipes for little muffins/meals/snacks you can grab from the freezer whenever you want! I just microwave them in a paper towel for about 15-30 seconds depending on the item. Here are a couple more tips for the process:

• Use LOTS of spray on your cupcake pans because it gets very old scraping them out and washing them over and over again.
• You could probably make the BBQ muffins on a cookie sheet, like meat balls.
• For the zucchini cups, do it as mini muffins because they’re very heavy and kind of fall a part if you don’t cook them long enough in the large muffin pan.
• The chicken apple/sweet potato muffins don’t need NEARLY as many eggs as the recipe says… we had TONS left over, which is why we ended up making the frittatas. It was very strange.
• The sweet potato ones are my favorite from the second list… they’d be perfect for a brunch if you’re throwing a baby shower or something. So delicious.

Okay… ready, set, go! Go make your freezer meals and feel like a champion of a mom for a day!