Here’s a quick dinner for those Family Fun Nights. These handheld sandwiches are layered with fresh flavors straight from your own kitchen. You can mix and match the ingredients and no matter what, they always come out yummy!

Ingredients:

Frenchettes(french bread loaves;sour or french)
Favorite Sandwich Meat:Roast Beef, Turkey, Salami, Ham, Cotti Salami
Favorite Cheese: Swiss, Cheddar, Hot Pepper Jack
Tomatoes, sliced
Pickles,Hot Peppers,Relish
Lettuce
Mayonaise, Mustard, or your favorite sandwich spread

Directions:

After I do a cooking session, I serve my family what I’ve cooked. The leftovers get divided into meal sizes and frozen. An ideal meal size for a single portion: fill one dinner plate  as you normally would for one person. Place that single portion in a freezable container or zip-loc bag and freeze. If there are five or six of you in the family, place all portions in the same container or zip-loc bag. When re-heating the meal, you can separate the portions when you re-heat. when freezing soups, I simply count how many ladelfuls it takes to fill one bowl then count as I am filling the soup container. After doing this for a while, you will be able to tell automatically how many ladelfuls you’ll need without counting.

How many meals will you freeze this week?

Do you ever feel like you’re in Hell’s Kitchen? Don’t know where to begin when it comes to meal planning? or even how to make time to do it all? To have a successful cooking session, follow these basic steps:

Procedure for a Cooking Session

1. Choose meals that you and your family like and that can be prepared in quantity. I’ve already given one sample of a cooking session HERE. (Let other family members sit down with you to help create your meals, giving suggestions. Jot down ideas to help create the meals.)
2. Make your shopping list.
3. Grocery shop. Make sure you have your coupons in hand from local newspapers, online advertisers, grocery stores online always have extra coupon savings. Use them now. Don’t forget your reuseable shopping bags.
4. When your schedule permits, do the cooking. Kids can help with this too.
5. Package the prepared food; label and freeze it.

Don’t try to accomplish all of these steps in one day if it’s not feasible to your schedule. If you’ve got way too much going on in one day, break the steps down. You will tire yourself out. I even sometimes split my shopping and cooking sessions to two days. As a busy mom, I’m lucky if I can get a full day to do this.  If I know I have a full day to do this, I’ll wake up early, head to the grocery store and come back to start on my cooking session.

Next time, we’ll talk about a little bit about portions and how you can stock that freezer for a month with weeknight meals. Are you ready?

A good tip to having a successful cooking session is to make sure you have your zip-loc freezer bags, storage bags, freezable containers, labels and a pen set up so you’re not wasting time looking for them during your cooking session.

If you were to cook in quantity and freeze your meals as you go, you will be stocking your freezer with dinners that are either completely prepared or need only finishing touches. I try and choose entrees that my family will like and that can be prepared in quantity. Tonight’s dinner is made from the whole chicken I’ve had cooking in the slow cooker while I was at work.

Chicken and Noodles

Ingredients:

1 Tablespoon butter
1/4 cup onion, chopped
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
2 Tablespoons flour
1 1/2 to 2 cups chicken stock, plus 2 cups to cook noodles
1/4 cup sour cream
1 cup water
2 cups shredded chicken
2 cups noodles, cooked
1/4 teaspoon Italian seasoning
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Remove the chicken from slow cooker and place on cutting board or plate to cool a little. While the chicken is cooling down, in a medium stock pot, use 2 cups stock plus 1 cup water. Bring the broth to a boil and add noodles. Cook, stirring occasionally, until barely tender.

While the noodles cook, in another pan, melt butter and add onion and mushrooms. Cook until onions are translucent. Add flour and stir until incorporated. Add sour cream, Italian seasoning along with chicken broth 1/2 cup at a time, stirring occasionally. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer.

Remove the chicken from the bones, leaving it in large chuncks. When the noodles are just tender, drain and add noodles along with the chicken to sauce. Stir together. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

4-6 servings

Cook’s Note: Cream of Mushroom soup can be substituted in this dish. A vegetable such as frozen peas or carrots could also be added to this dish.

Freezer Cooking

Freeze any leftovers for another night in the month or as leftovers for lunch. I never have to worry about having half a package, half a cup, or a few pieces of anything leftover. If it is perishable, I just simply figure out a different way to use it within the next day or so, or I freeze it in a zip-loc freezer bag. Sometimes the extra portion left over from dinner makes an excellent lunch later on in the week.

The magic that solves the major dinner problem and puts that smile on your face at four in the afternoon is the accomplishment of a cooking session. Definition of a cooking session: anytime spent in the kitchen preparing food for more than one meal. This means cooking larger quantities of food than you need for a particular meal, and freezing the extra amounts for the future.  Here is an example of how simple a cooking session can be and what types of meals you can create. The meals are not intended to be eaten all in one week, but to be stockpiled in your freezer to be used as needed:

• Chicken and Noodles(tonight’s dinner)
• Chuncky Chicken Salad or another baked chicken casserole
• Quick Sloppy Joes
• Spaghetti
• Spaghetti Sauce
• Taco Meat Base
• Chicken Caccitore (2 dinners)
• Baked Chicken in Chicken Sauce
• Chicken Pot Pie

I’ve listed more than the usually amount of meals that have chicken as a result of my local Raley’s store having whole chickens on sale for $0.77lb.

My result: Using my slow cooker, I cleaned and put a whole chicken seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and herb seasoning and 1 1/2 cups water in and turned it on low setting. Now, that’s out of the way for the time being, I can continue finishing this post, do any leftover dishes and get ready for work. This chicken will be used for tonight’s dinner, Chicken and Noodles and another Chicken Pot Pie for the freezer. Any extra chicken will be used for chicken salad or other chicken recipes.

Next, we’ll discuss more steps in the cooking session, portions and more samples of cooking sessions with menus.

 In the meantime, what other fabulous chicken dishes did you come up with?