So I figured if the hub’s could go to the store and buy the last of the ingredients for this freezer cooking session, the least I could do was muster myself into the kitchen. With his help, which I loved having, we completed three of the recipes.

Two are ones I’ve not made before from my Fix, Freeze, Feast cookbook, so I was anxious for him to try them out and let me know if they are keepers. Of course, I added our spin on all of them which means no peppers and mild spices.  I halved each of the recipes from the book because I wanted variety, not quantity.  The Spanish Rice filled 10 6-inch pans, the Chilada Bake 6 6-in pans and the same for the Broccoli Bake.  Not bad for a few hours of work.

Assembling the Chilada Cheese Bake

Next the Spanish Rice

The first finished was the Chilada Cheese Bake. A layered enchilada casserole, its filling is a combination of Picante sauce, tomato sauce, tomato paste, spice, ground beef, pinto beans mixed together and layered between two corn tortillas – one as the base, then meat/bean filling, lots of cheese, repeat, and finish with cheese.  The original recipe calls for family sized casseroles, but our family is now a family of two and I don’t eat meat, so I use 6″ aluminum pans I purchased on eBay.  Makes packing them a breeze and then the hubby just pulls one from the freezer to take to the station.  He usually ignores my baking instructions and turns it out onto a plate and microwaves it. No matter how many times I beg him to cook it correctly, he just won’t.  Mostly because if the bells go off the oven automatically shuts off and his food sits there until they return from the call.  Many times it’s hours later and the food is ruined.  So I understand, but I hate that he microwaves it.  This was one of the new recipes and so I had the hubs heat up the filling and try it out on a tortilla – he said it’s a keeper.  Next time we’ll likely add black olives, he LOVES black olives.

The second to be completed was the Spanish Rice. The best part of cooking all the meat on day 2, besides making it easier, it also means that the meat is nice and cold before you mix in the other ingredients.  This one has lots of black olives and calls for green peppers (which we left out) and is finished with more cheese.  Yes, there’s a lot of cheese in these three recipes. The hub’s is super skinny, he can handle it and I like to pick recipes that have lots of common ingredients so that I can use up a Costco size bag of cheese, etc.  While they have lots of common ingredients, I try to be sure the end results are quite different since we end up with 6-10 servings of each  (hub’s size – would normally feed 2).

Broccoli Cheese Bake Assembly

Half a recipe made 6 individual dinners of the Broccoli Cheddar Bake

The final dish to be completed tonight was the Broccoli Chicken Cheese Bake. Unlike most, this doesn’t have rice and never uses condensed soup.  Every time I’ve made a recipe with one of Campbell’s soups I’ve been disappointed with it.  Don’t get me wrong, Campbell’s makes a good product, it’s just that a beshamel sauce is so easy and so much tastier (and less salty) than Campbell’s.

This is the second time I’ve made this recipe. The first time I followed the instructions to put the chicken/broccoli mix in one bag and the cheese/breadcrumbs in another.  The breadcrumb/cheese mixture when mixed together and then put on the casserole before baking made a very weird and hard topping.  I didn’t like it.  This time I placed the broccoli/chicken mixture in 6″ aluminum pans and topped it with cheese and then Panko breadcrumbs.  I think this time the cheese will melt into the broccoli/chicken and the bread crumbs will be crispy.  we’ll see!

So, three down and one to go. Tomorrow is the Salisbury Meatballs and this cooking session will be complete. Did you catch the “poison” graphic on the labels?  My little joke as I made these while I was coming down with the flu. Don’t worry, I’m uber careful in the kitchen as I’m a bit of a germ phobe, but I thought the guys at the station might think it was funny.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION – I have not received any compensation for writing this content and I have no material connection to the brands, topics and/or products that are mentioned herein.

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