Chicken ready for flash freezing
Recently, Frances (from The Lefthanded Housewife) talked about ways she was tweaking her daily routines and how that might be the trick to getting on top of things like her infamous attic. Although I will miss the odd post here and there about her attic woes (they make me feel better about little spots in my house, like the dining room), it made me wonder if there were things I do that could be changed to help me be more efficient?
One possibility came to me as I was preparing dinner tonight. It's such a long time since we've had oven-baked orange chicken**, because anything with "stations" to get meat prepared is low on our list of weeknight dinners. However! This week marks the beginning of my four-day work week, with Wednesday's being my day off. I decided I would go to the effort of making this chicken recipe because it's really yummy, but also because I can prepare the chicken and then flash freeze it, and then bag the prepared, frozen drumsticks in single-meal quantities.
And this is my routine game-changer. I hope! My Wednesday's can be my prepare-ahead night. If I choose meals that take just a few extra minutes to get a little extra prepared (freezing meat in marinade, making two lasagnas etc) and into the freezer for another night I may just find we manage better with conquering Idon'twannacookdinneritis.
This has certainly been my most productive half hour in the day. The first 8 hours involved filling out forms for Miss Mischief's Youth Allowance application, getting documents from the accountant, and sitting at Centrelink for over an hour to submit said forms before the deadline for her application. I had hoped to get some rhubarb relish made. Well, the day's not over so it's still a possibility I guess.
** Recipe adjustments:
- Used chicken drumsticks instead of breasts
- Juiced two oranges for about 3kg of chicken
- Skipped brushing chicken with butter - dipping in the orange/honey liquid is plenty
- Preheated an oven tray with a little olive oil before putting chicken in the oven
Enjoy
2 comments:
I am truly trying to organise my freezer. I found some excellent labels which stay stuck and do not disintegrate, so now everything is named and dated . Except for one box..it was lurking in the bottom drawer and I honestly had no idea of what it contained- 4 round yellow patties. Were they fishcakes? potato cakes? apple fritters? sweet or savoury?...no label, and no clue. So reluctantly I threw them away. They have been there for at least 6 months since my summer vacation.I hate to waste food and this has been a lesson to me...
I thought your previous post on fear was wonderfully encouraging., Thank you !!
First, never fear: the attic project will never truly be done. I'm sure you'll be hearing about it for years to come.
I'm trying to get better about food prep at the beginning of the week. It's very important now because I'm doing the Whole30 diet, in which you shun almost everything but meat, eggs, fruit and veg for a month, so if you don't have veggies cut up for roasting, or hardboiled eggs already boiled, you're out of luck. As for freezing, too often I forget what I have in there, but I imagine if I were working outside of my home, I'd take more advantage of my deep freeze.
xofrances
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