It’s Recipe Redux time again!
This theme couldn’t be more timely!
Fantastic Freezer Meals:
Share your tips and tricks for making one – or more freezer meals. It’s the end of the gardening season for some of us; let’s store away that produce in heat-and-eat-from-the-freezer-
With the craziness of the start of school and sports, I am finding it hard to juggle all of the evening activities and make a healthy meal and get everyone in bed at a reasonable time. I mean, it’s all good, I know it will take a little time and practice before we get all the wrinkles ironed out. But one thing I have been doing to make the evenings run a little more smoothly is by making some freezer meals and some extra pre-preping on sunday.
And so here is an easy and simple veggie packed freezer meal you can freeze the labor and time intensive parts of the meal, thaw them the morning of and cook in about 15minutes for a fresh tasteing freezer meal #freshfreezermeal.
The most time and labor intensive parts of this meal are the chopping of the veggies and the cooking of the brown rice. So just chop up your fresh veggies and cook rice ahead of time, put them in freezer safe bags and toss into the freezer until you are ready to use.
Then in the morning, you can just pull them out to thaw; thawing in the fridge is best, but you can also thaw in the microwave if you are pressed for time. Then in the evening, just toss the thawed veggies into a skillet with ground beef or turkey and some spices, and cook until meat is fully brown. Then add the cooked rice, canned black beans and stir well to combine. I topped with a little cheese, because we love cheese and Voila!
A healthy 15 min meal you can prepare when you get home at 6:30 or 7 from soccer practice and the kids are in total hungry-whiny melt-down mode.
(P.S. I know I said I would start taking more artistic pictures, but I was in the middle of hungry-whiny-melt-down mode when taking these pictures, aaaand I find it really hard to be artistic when there is a child-sized puddle on the floor by my feet 😉 )
Enjoy!
- 1 large Zucchini, diced
- 1 Large Yellow Squash, diced
- 2 Bell peppers, diced
- ½-1cup onion, depends on how much you love onions!
- 1 (7oz) can Diced green chilies
- 2 cloves garlic diced
- 1 cup brown rice
- 1 tsp Cumin
- 1tsp Coriander
- ½ tsp sea salt
- Fresh ground pepper to taste
- 1 can black bean
- 1 lb ground beef or turkey
- 1 cup grated cheese for topping
- Place diced zucchini, squash, green chilis, onion and garlic in a gallon sized freezer bag. Place in freezer until ready to use.
- Cook Rice according to package. Put in Quart size freezer bag to freeze, until ready to use.
- When you are ready to use, remove the rice and veggies from the freezer and thaw in the fridge (or useing another safe thawing method) 🙂
- Then place the thawed veggies in a large skillet with ground beef or turkey, along with cumin and coriander. Cook until meat is fully cooked.
- Add in black beans and cooked (thawed) rice and heat through.
- Top with some grated cheese
- Enjoy!
