Getting Ready for Grilling

Greetings! I have been so busy with baby but promise to post more frequently. In anticipation for warmer weather (its coming, right??), I have been making double or triple batches of my favorite marinade. I portion out the marinade in zippered freezer storage bags. Then I add the meat of our choice to the bags in serving sizes we like. So in a bag I may have two chicken breasts and 1/2 cup of marinade. The bag then goes into the freezer. When we are ready to grill, we remove a bag. The meat will marinate as it defrosts (remember to use safe defrost techniques).

Right now in the freezer, we have jerk chicken breasts, jerk pork tenderloin and lime chicken with black bean sauce in the freezer. Next will be doing Thai marinated chicken.

This is one of my favorite time savings tips. Especially when I'm already making a marinade. It only takes a few extra minutes to make a larger batch and portion if out.

Post-Holiday Quick Meals

Sorry I just realized I have been absent and have not posted since Halloween. Where did the time go?!

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend, enjoyed themselves and ate a lot of good food. As the weekend closes, the holiday season officially begins. I know it is a busy time of the year and thought I would post some ideas on how to make it through, eating healthy and avoiding take-out as much as possible.

Making an extra large pot of soup is an excellent idea for getting through these cold winter nights. On the weekend, make a large pot, doubling or tripling the servings to either give you a few meals into the week or freeze one-serving portions to eat in the upcoming weeks. You could grab these single serving portions to take for lunches or a couple for a quick dinner. Keep in mind that potatoes do not freeze well, so if you are going to freeze soups omit the potatoes.

This concept of freezing entrées works well with other things besides soups. You could make extra servings of a casserole or your Sunday dinner and freeze portions for later. If you were going to roast a chicken, why not roast two instead. It is minimal extra work and then you could either freeze the roasted chicken or shred the meat for meals later in the week. With the meat, you could make chicken salad sandwiches for lunches; a chicken soup with some vegetables, stock and pasta added; add enchilada sauce and wrap in flour or corn tortillas, cover with cheese for wet burritos; the possibilities are endless. Instead of chicken, prepare an extra pork or beef roast.

Weight watchers has several ideas for cooking ahead:
http://www.weightwatchers.com/util/art/index_art.aspx?tabnum=1&art_id=14381


Using 5 ingredients or less has become a popular item on several cooking websites, surf these sites for some quick ideas:
http://www.bhg.com/bhg/story.jsp?storyid=/templatedata/bhg/story/data/5IngredientMeals_03252002.xml

http://busycooks.about.com/library/recipes/blfiveingredentree.htm

http://food.ivillage.com/bestrecipes/0,,_9v38sk44,00.html


The slow cooker is also a way to make dinner easy. I suggest prepping all the ingredients the night before, then in the morning the slow cooker can be loaded and dinner will be waiting at the end of the day. Most manufacturers do not recommend taking the crock straight from the refrigerator to the heating element. If you would like to reduce the number of dishes, you could let the crock sit at room temperature for an hour or so before turning it on. Or simply transfer the contents from another dish.

Oh the possibilities are endless. I hope I have sparked some ideas.
Bon appétit!