Favorite Recipes from the February Cook

After cooking 14-15 recipes that you've selected, invariably, some of them call out from the freezer, and you're sad when they are gone.  Here are our favorite recipes from our February cook:

1) Enfrijoladas (https://www.budgetbytes.com/enfrijoladas-tortillas-in-black-bean-sauce/)



These are a winner!  They were a little fussy to assemble...you need to blend a thick black bean mixture in a good blender, and you need to put these in a dish.  The step that asks you to coat both sides of the tortilla in the black bean puree is necessary!  We added extra chipotle to the black bean puree, as well as a little chicken (leftover from another recipe) into the inside of each enfrijolada.   The black bean mixture is very much comfort food, and the raw cilantro/onion mixture provides a nice brightness.  These reheat easily.  We'll definitely make them again.


2) Korean Noodle Stir Fry (https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/japchae-korean-noodle-stir-fry/)


This was one of the those recipes, that while making it, you are HOPING it will reheat well.  We were worried about the sweet potato noodles, but they reheat great!  The sweet potato noodles are VERY long, so the package advises cutting them with a pair of scissors once cooked (great advice).  This sauce is super flavorful...bright, spicy, and salty.  Great combo of beef and veggies.  I was always looking for this one in the freezer!

The Cost of Freezer Cooking: $1.77 per Serving!

I thought it would be helpful to consider the cost per serving to do freezer cooking.  In previous posts, we have talked about how to be more efficient with shopping and cooking to waste less.

We usually shop at four places when we cook.  I've listed the amount of money spent and typical items purchased here, for your reference.

Store	Amount	What to Purchase at Store
Hmart	84.89	Cheap produce and Japanese foodstuffs
Costco	178.23	Large quantities of pantry items (e.g., diced tomatoes) and meat (e.g. bags of chicken breasts)
Cash n Carry (now Smart Foodservices)	47.63	Large quantities of meat (such as eye of round, pork loin, etc.) and cheap spices
Safeway	216	Remaining items and items in smaller quantities
Total:	526.75

Now, it is worth mentioning that these costs both under- and over-represent the cost of the freezer cooking.  We already have some things on hand (in this case, 4 lbs. of ground lamb, spices, etc.), and overpurchase some things we do not use up completely (in this case, we purchased quart and freezer ziplocs as we are running low, as well as huge amounts of 3 or 4 spices).  But at the end of the day, this comes out in the wash.

Next, we cooked, and kept track of the packed servings of each recipe (rather than the recipe-predicted, which can under or over-represent the actual servings).  We do always double or triple recipes to help the cost and be more efficient with ingredients.

Recipe	Servings (Actual)
Greek Mac n Cheese	20
Turkey and Zucchini Burgers	18
Mini Meatloaves + mashed potato cakes	28
Roast beef horseradish pinwheels	26
Korean spicy noodles	19
Extra lamb wraps (unplanned)	13
Cabbage Dijon with apple sausage	13
Sliced roast beef servings	19
Chicken with tomatoes & raisins	16
Cajun chicken soup	20
Tandoori lamb pizza	30
Enfrijoladas	18
Southwest chicken wraps	21
Enchilada soup	16
Stone soup	21
Total Servings:	298

When we take the total cost of the food bill:  $526.75, and divide by the number of servings, 298, our cost per meal is $1.77.  

So, with 2 of us eating 2 meals a day from our freezer cooking, we divided by 4 to figure out how many days of meals we have.  (How about that for a middle school math problem!!!!).  We have almost 74.5 days of food in our freezer.  

A couple of important caveats:

• We do cook breakfast for the freezer as well, but only do so every few meals.
• We have two normal freezer/fridge combos, one in our garage and one in the house, but we do not have a HUGE chest freezer or anything.  You could EASILY scale this down for your space (e.g. less recipes or less doubling/tripling).
• As much as I want a more environmentally-friendly Ziploc solution (I've tried reusable bags and do pack some things in reusable glass containers), Ziplocs are by far the cheapest and easiest to cram into a freezer in high quantity.

Now....  let's not talk about how many times we ran the dishwasher or the cost of laundry detergent or hand lotion to replenish hands in the dishwater all day!