Freezing rice

I really should start a series on making and storing your own convenience foods, but it would be an incredibly long series. More than likely, it will be what this blog will eventually become, but for now - let's talk about rice!

Rice is one of those things that cooks up easily, will take on the flavors of pretty much anything you mix into it, and stores incredibly well in the freezer. It can be boiled, steamed, fried, baked - you name it, you can do it with rice.

For the sake of simplicity, let's just talk about preparing and storing white and brown rice for use later in recipes or as a simple side dish in and of itself.

Step 1) Cook the rice. If you have a rice cooker, this will be much easier!
Step 2) Let the rice cool
Step 3) Place the rice in freezer bags in meal-sized or whatever sized portions you use in recipes, remove the air, label and freeze.

Too many chemicals, too expensive!

Thaw and prepare in whatever way you use and serve cooked rice! You've saved yourself a very time-consuming step here in meal preparation by having cooked rice on hand in the freezer ready to go.

Can you prepare a rice dish, fully seasoned, and freeze it for even more time savings? Absolutely! Fried rice, rice & cheese casseroles, rice prepared in broth and spices - you almost can't miss. Prepare your own rice dishes from fresh ingredients and freeze them for convenience. You'll never go back to those silly, expensive rice packets again!

What I froze today

It wasn't much, but I managed to score some bars of Cracker Barrel cheese on sale, so in addition to making my famous "big mac & cheese" casserole for dinner last night, I bought extra and froze a meal-sized portion of pre-sliced cheddar so I could thaw it to make another one later.

I also made a pot of spaghetti and meatballs, but I baked and flash froze the extra meatballs I made, I'd say @ a dozen. The next time I make spaghetti, I can drop the frozen meatballs into the simmering sauce and just heat them up. Prep work already done!

I also blanched and froze a plastic grocery bag stuffed full of rainbow chard I had picked up from the CSA - thank goodness I have a food saver!

Soon I'll be freezing quarts of applesauce - I love fall!

My freezer is empty

Well, ok, not completely empty. There are some bags of miscellaneous gravy, some acorn and butternut squash, a few quarts of chicken broth, and other various little bits of this and that. There are also a couple of packages of stew beef, a chuck roast, a rack of ribs and some raw chicken that didn't get prepped into anything. No more meals I can pull out at will, heat and serve - except for a whole sticky chicken that needs to be pulled out a day ahead of time to thaw before I can cook it. I'm rediscovering what a chore meal planning and prep can be on a daily and weekly basis. Can I say, for the record, that I do not like cooking from scratch every single day? How do you ladies do it?

Oh - I don't need to learn freezer cooking, I have my crock pot!  That's what I hear from people I talk to who don't freezer cook. That's fine. My crock pot is wonderful, I love it, too! But you know what? I still have to have all the ingredients on hand, and I still have to invest some prep time to get it up and running in the morning so that dinner is ready on time.

I first realized how much I had come to depend on my freezer meals the other day I was getting ready for a wedding. I had to be at the church at 4:30 for a 5:30 ceremony. My kids weren't going, and my husband was coming with me. This would have been the 3rd time that week I told my kids to fend for themselves for dinner - I just couldn't do it again! So I was multi-tasking trying to do my hair and brown ground beef to make sloppy joes at the same time. That's right - I didn't even have any of my usual packages of precooked ground beef!!

Ugh - never again. I'm beginning to work on cleaning out, organizing, and refilling my freezer starting today. The weather's turning colder - who's with me? Now's a great time to start!