08 July 2015

Freezer Challenge Day 1



Well I'm off to a great start with my freezer challenge.

Today I've taken out a packet of mince to make pasta sauce, a packet of meatballs, a packet of chicken kiev balls, a packet of diced onion and a packet of grated zucchini (both added to the pasta sauce).  This means I've also rearranged the meal plan. Its a good thing it is meant to be flexible.

I've also put some frozen bread crusts on trays to dry over the fire to make breadcrumbs. The way the fire is going tonight, they'll be ready to grate in the morning.

I haven't added a single thing - woo hoo! One day down, 30 to go.

Sensational, Simple Homemade Pasta Sauce

Ingredients:
800g tin diced tomatoes (or whole tomatoes you have sliced through with a knife)
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp crushed garlic
2 tsp crushed basil
2 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt

Method:
Heat the oil in the bottom of the crock pot and saute the garlic until it is golden.  Add the tomatoes, basil and oregano and stir. Put the lid on and cook on HIGH for 4 hours. Stir. If the sauce is thick and rich, it is done. If not cook for another 30 minutes and stir again.  Let the sauce cool and then portion it into saved jars, freezer containers or zip lock bags and freeze.

This makes the equivalent of 1 jar of commercial pasta sauce. If your slow cooker is large enough, you can triple or quadruple the recipe, extending the cooking time by up to two hours. The cooking time will depend solely on your slow cooker. Newer slow cookers are actually very fast compared to the original models, so watch your sauce and when it reaches the consistency you like it's ready.


How are you going? Did you manage to use anything from your freezer or did you add to your stash of frozen food?




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2 comments:

  1. Firstly I have started to use a crock pot (slow cooker) to make meals. If I do 3 days cooking I can do up a fortnights worth of food. I do 2 casseroles with about 5-7 vegies and 1 meat either stir fry beef or sausages boiled and their skins taken off and cut up. I also do a spaghetti bolognase sauce. As a single person I find it hard to cook up a meal every night so this works well for me. Also with your pasta recipe what size crock pot are you using? I have been saving jars for pasta sauce and lemon butter (this will be made when I have an abundance of lemons and eggs.) Thanks for any assistance Cath that you can give me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Narelle, I have two crockpots/slow cookers; one four litre and one six litre. The six litre is the one I use most often, simply because if I'm going to cook something for hours I want to get value out of it so I usually do a double recipe or a large roast/piece of corned beef.

      Keep saving your jars - I've just come in from visiting my favourite St. Vinnies op shop and I laughed when I checked the jars, they had plenty of them but they were $1 each - for recycled pasta sauce jars, some still had the labels on them. You can buy a jar with sauce on sale for around $1.80 so paying $1 for a recycled, common jar was a bit of a shock. Good thing I have people saving them for me.

      Have you tried the Six Minute Lemon Butter? It's a small batch so you can make it when you have two or three lemons and it is really quick, about 10 minutes from start to finish. The recipe is on my blog and in the Recipe File in the Member's Centre.

      Delete

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