The 2012 Freezer Fill-Up - Part 1

I love cooking, however I hate cooking in the Arizona hot summers that we are known for!

I've always had the philosophy that once the outside temp hits 100* for a few days in a row, the ovens are on hiatus until the temps are back under 100*. That means for roughly 5 months my ovens are a means of storing kitchen items that I'm too lazy to put away in their proper place!

This year I'm hoping to change that by stocking my chest freezer with actual meals rather than just ingredients. I have in some way have been doing this on and off for years, whenever I make a lasagna I usually make one to freeze as well since it take the same amount of time and creates the same mess to do two as it does one. This year though I'm going bigger and hoping to have a better summer for it!

Today I'm cooking up and freezing potato skins and twice-baked potatoes.

I'm a sucker for potato skins and whenever I'm in the "mood" for having them I'm usually don't have the "desire" to create them; which leads us to either the frozen variety or take out. Big bucks spent on a low dollar item as well as big calories on my tush from unknown ingredients!

Last night before bed I scrubbed up a bag of potatoes and put them on a cookie sheet. This morning I just popped them into a 350* oven before fixing breakfast. While the potatoes were baking (and after my boys were fed) I cooked up two packages of bacon (1.5-pounds total) and set them aside to cool.

Once the potatoes were baked and cool enough to handle I started following my favorite recipe; Crispy Chipotle Potato Skins from Weight Watchers. Since the potatoes I was using are on the small side I kept most of them halved rather than quartered as indicated in the recipe. I also chopped up five slices of bacon for to use on the entire tray of potato skins rather than the Canadian bacon since that was what I had on hand.

Regardless if you are using this recipe or your favorite one, put together the potato skins as indicated, but do not bake. Place cookie sheet of potato skins in the freezer to freeze.

Once the potato skins are frozen I placed some in a freezer bag for this Sunday's Super Bowl game and the rest got Food Savered with instructions written on the bags.

When I'm ready to cook them I'll just take them out of their bag, place them on a foil covered cookie sheet and bake per instructions, then top with green onion and tomato. Yummy!

Now onto those fabulous twice-baked potatoes!

After I pulled out the little potatoes from the oven I put ten large baking potatoes in the oven to bake while I was putting together the potato skins.

I also steamed up a cut up head of cauliflower and two large chunked up carrots and roughly mashed them.

Once the potatoes were baked and cool enough to handle I set to work on auditioning each spud. Since potatoes aren't known for their uniformity I tend to make it easy on myself and either halve a potato to get two side dish size potatoes...

or cut off the top of a potato to get one large meal size potato with a potato skin.

Today I ended up with ten side dish size potatoes...

...and four dinner size potatoes with two side dish potatoes for dinner tonight and four skins for my lunch!

After auditioning, cutting, and scooping out the potato innards we are set to make whatever kind of filling you'd like.

I added the potato innards to my pot of mashed up cauliflower and carrot. I like to get as much veggies into my family as possible and this is a sneaky way I do it. You can't taste the cauliflower and the carrot could be disguised as cheese to a picky eater. I also tossed in some shredded cheese and some chicken broth and mixed really well with a hand mixer.

I then set out on filling the side dish potatoes first. My family likes the traditional baked potato so after I filled each shell I topped with cheese, bacon, and green onion.  I popped these into the freezer until frozen and  Food Savered them two per package.

I then whizzed up some chicken that I had left over from earlier this week in a food processor and added half of it to the rest of the potato mixture.  I filled the dinner potatoes, topped with the rest of the chicken, and finished with cheese and onion.  I also popped these into the freezer until frozen and Food Saver one per bag.

I did not write down any cooking instructions on the twice backed potatoes because like baking a potato itself there are many temperatures and times to do it in.  This flexibility in cooking time means that if I'm already cooking a roast at 325* I know it'll take approximately 45 minutes to bake up a couple of frozen side dish size potatoes.  If I just want to bake the side dish size potatoes alone I can do so in a 375* oven for approximately half the time.  I love flexibility when it comes to cooking!

Remember those potato skin tops that came off of the dinner size twice baked potatoes?  Well I doctored them up and had some potato skins for lunch as my reward for doing such a great job cooking and cleaning up the kitchen afterwards!

So for a morning's work in the kitchen I end up having four dinner size potatoes, ten side dish size potatoes, two side dish size potatoes for dinner tonight, four packages of potato skins, and four delicious potato skins for lunch.  I also have the innards from the potato skins which I'll use later on this week as mashed potatoes and about two cups of the twice baked potato filling, which I haven't yet decided on using right away or freezing it for later.