One of the main reasons we bought our new freezer is because I thought it would be nice if I made a bunch of food ahead of time, to eat after the baby is born. One of my main problems post-partum is food: I despair if there isn’t anything good, and I get homesick for the maternity ward, which, inexplicably, has AWESOME food: big warm chocolate chip cookies, and chicken caesar wraps with tons of fresh dark lettuce and almost too much perfect white-meat chicken, and cinnamon french toast with butter and syrup, and bowls of cut-up fresh fruit. Coming home to choices like bowl of cold cereal or PB&J sandwich can make me crash into tears and despair.
The problem is this: I still don’t like to cook, even if I know it’s for my own future benefit. I do like to bake, so our freezer is filling up with cookies and brownies. And while that’s nice, and cookies and brownies are good for morale, I need to be focusing more on easy, nutritious food or else I’m going to be sitting there weeping, eating an entire bag of frozen brownies and getting the sugar shakes.
I do have one recipe I make pretty regularly, and I’ve frozen two half-batches of it so far. It makes a nice big amount and so it feels worth it, and it freezes well, and it’s quick and easy to heat up, and it’s heartening when you’re feeling sad and like nobody loves you and like you should move in to the maternity ward where they do love you. I like it with a couple of slices of a nice chewy bread, toasted and then buttered and sprinkled with garlic salt.
Swistle’s Soup
- 1 pound or so of ground beef or ground turkey (I use ground turkey, which at our store comes in 1.3 pound packages, and I use the whole package)
- 28 oz can crushed tomatoes (I like Contadina)
- 15 oz can tomato sauce (I like Contadina)
- 4 c. water
- 1 tsp. sugar
- 16 oz package frozen mixed vegetables (I like Birdseye classic blend: carrots, beans, peas, corn)
- 8 oz frozen broccoli (I like to thaw it a little and then snip it with kitchen scissors into smaller pieces)
- 1 envelope Lipton Onion Soup mix
- 2 t. salt (or to taste–I love love love salt so maybe start with less than I use)
- 1 t. crushed red pepper (optional, for spicier soup)
Fry up the ground meat and drain off as much grease as you can. Put the meat into a big pan–at least 6 quart or you’ll be a sorry, sorry cook later on. Add everything else and stir it. Heat to boiling, then reduce it to a simmer and cover it. Let it simmer for half an hour, stirring it occasionally if you feel like it. It’s okay to eat right away, but I think it’s better reheated the next day.
One thing I like about this recipe is that it’s flexible. You don’t have to use broccoli and classic-blend vegetables, you can instead use up the little half packages of vegetables nobody liked as side dishes, or fresh vegetables that are in danger of going bad in the fridge, or a bag of Italian blend vegetables if you’re feeling really wild and crazy. Last summer William grew some green bean vines but didn’t want to eat the green beans, so I snipped some up into my soup every time I made it. Oooh, and lima beans are good.
Not exactly a great recipe for a breastfeeding mother, though, is it? Dried onion. Broccoli. Spicy red pepper. Oh, well.
Incidentally, if you do Weight Watchers Core Plan, this soup is a freebie. Well, unless you get all tight about how many grains of that 1 tsp. of sugar are in each portion.
Man, you are after my own heart the last few days! Babies and recipes: I am positively giddy over here!
Ground turkey in 1.3 lb packages though? What the mother is that about? That whole situation just smacks of some clever marketing tactic. Need 1.5 lbs of ground turkey? Sorry, guess you’ll need two packages. Need 3 lbs? DENIED AGAIN. THREE PACKAGES FOR YOU.
I totally relate to being homesick for the maternity ward. I felt like a princess there. A very fat, happy princess.
I make something similiar – ground beef, canned tomatoes, chicken broth, kidney beans, whatever frozen veggies I have on hand, plus frozen chopped mustard or collard greens – to up the veggie ante. When I am feeling especially shallow, I add tortellini. Followed by ice cream. Always ice cream.
I hate cooking too. I have to cook all at once, on Sundays, to get through the busy work week, and it’s a pain in the butt. And I don’t have a big freezer yet either, so I can’t cookcookcook and storestorestore.
One thing that worked for me last maternity leave was to make portions of a sonoma chicken salad (can find a recipe easily online) and freeze it. Perfect to eat for snacks and lunches. You can’t make the entire thing and freeze it, because it has mayo, but you can bake and cut up the chicken and freeze that in serving sizes, and halve the red grapes and cut up the celery and freeze them (when you thaw the grapes, be sure to drain or salad spin them a bit).
All that’s left is the mayo dressing, which takes about 2 minutes to make. Mix and eat.
Tessie: I KNOW. It is crazy. For awhile I was trying to carefully carve off .3 pounds from each package to save for later, but now I adjust all my recipes. That sounds wrong, now that I write it. Shouldn’t I be campaigning or petitioning or something to get the situation changed, rather than submitting to The Turkey?
How funny I would just submit to the turkey..I cant deny turkey even on a bad day and especially not my husbands deep fried turkey,hold on Im getting hungry!!!
I try and plan but with four kids who never eat what I make anyway and a husband who swears he’s going on a diet????? YEAH RIGHT!! Today I threw 3 boneless chicken breasts in my crock pot with a can of broth some kidney beans,barley,broccoli,diced tomatoes,and I will top it over cooked rice or noodles for the kids and the best part of it all is hardly any clean up and no slaving over the stove all day, oh and Ill see if my husband eats it? I’ve got many recipes Ill have to post and maybe Ill send ya some I have a good enchilada one and its freezeable….if you like Mexican food….
I really should be cooking right now and not reading blogs about cooking and freezing food for later.
I ended up not being able to eat much of the stuff I made last time due to Peanut’s dairy and tomato issues.
Yeah, I’d just toss in some pasta for a heartier soup. I have a recipe somewhere for chicken tortilla soup that is easy and probably would freeze well. And since you load it up with cheese and tortillas (um, dairy? vegetables? right?) it totally feels like a meal. I can find it if you want. And do you know what else you might be able to do easily? Keep some black beans and cooked rice and tortillas in the fridge, along with cheese and meat and salso if you want. Because you can throw together a burrito that’s healthy and satisfying SO FAST. At least, I can.
When I come home and realize we only have PB and J for lunch, I get weepy too. And that’s just on a normal Wednesday, not after I produce a child.
You know you have a lot of kids when you can provide an authoritative review of maternity ward food :=)
What is your favorite container for freezing soups? Do you do single servings? I’m always trying to decide on the best way: freezer bags, plastic bowls, glass bowls with lids…would love to hear your fave solution.
Melinda: I like to use those Ziploc plastic containers, the clear ones with blue lids sold in multi-packs. I usually get the 4-cup square ones for soups, because I can eat soup several days in a row without getting tired of it. For cookies I like 1-quart freezer bags, and for muffins I like 1-gallon freezer bags. This has been…Containers With Swistle. Thank you for joining us.
Heehee! I love it! Thank you for expounding on your favorite containers.
GREAT timing!! Thanks for posting this. Printing it out now. :-)
I love freezer meals!! Ok, you have inspired me to post my own freezer meal post.
I prefer hard containers over bags, too..which brand I could care less. I make a lot of spaghetti sauce and freeze it and the bags always get stuck together or stuck in the plastic grates or whatever. Plus, it is easier to pour into hard containers than into soft containers.
I’m 38 weeks pregnant…and so anal retentive that I have a 21 day food plan after the baby is born that I have posted on the refrigerator for my family. I have frozen and spaghetti sauce, meatloaf, chicken enchilada casserole, sloppy joe mix, chicken with gravy, etc…to make sure i do not stress out about food while the baby is newborn. We don’t have much family around so there’s not going to be anybody bringing me anything…
Anyway, i thought I’d share an easy one. I bought some of those frozen cooked meatballs from the store and have planned two meals out of them. For one, they will add spaghetti sauce and put them on french loaves with mozzarella cheese for meatball sandwiches. For the next meal, they add a can of cream of mushroom and pour over some egg noodles.
Of course, I’ve gone to the extreme and labeled everything according by the day (egg noodles, day 5… cream of mushroom can, day 5, etc).
BUT, I just want to give myself one LESS thing to worry about…trying to prevent some of the baby blues that I got so bad with the last one when I was trying to do everything for everybody…. Good luck.
Thanks for the recipe, Swistle! And for spending so much time yesterday being concerned about my Katherine. (I responded on my blog, too.)