Joy is a stay-at-home wife & mother to two wonderful children.  She is a fourth generation freezer cook.  Growing up with freezer cooking as a way of life made it hard for her to understand how folks could NOT use their freezers.  After being asked again and again for help, she started her Facebook page to give her tips & insight so that others will be Fearless Freezer cooks, too!

(photo by Natalie.)

Hello Oven Lovers!  I’m Joy, guest posting today for my sweet friend, Natalie!  I enjoy freezer cooking, how about you?  I’m here to give you some super simple summer ideas for freezer cooking.

One of the easiest ways to start freezer cooking it to use a marinade.  When you freeze fresh meat with a marinade, it starts marinating as it freezes.  Then, when you are ready to use it, toss in the fridge the day before and it marinates as it thaws.  So simple!

I love that marinated meats are usually cooked on the grill or in the slow cooker.  My house doesn’t get heated up this way. When preparing a meat and marinade recipe, I like to follow this plan:

One of the benefits of this type of freezer cooking is that you can make up several meals in a short amount of time.  Another benefit is that you can control the serving size.  For instance, many marinade recipes call for four to six chicken breasts.  While our kids are still young, we only need two or three chicken breasts per meal.  So, for ONE marinade recipe, I divide it between TWO bags for two meals.  That’s also saving me money!

A few of my favorite freezer marinades:

I hope these ideas inspire you!  You’ll find the recipe for the Greek-inspired chicken below. I’d love to hear some of your favorite marinade recipes!

(Recipe by Mommie Cooks, via Joy and Once A Month Mom.)

I have Hilton to thank for this soup.

Hilton is a local farmer who has recently set up shop in our town, selling his organic vegetables to people like me who are dying to have a real farmers’ market. For $20, you bring your own bag and he fills it to the brim with produce. This week, I came home with green beans, tomatoes (red and green), a variety of sweet and hot peppers, turnips with greens, cucumbers, broccoli, oranges, spinach, butternut squash, carrots and onions.

I love this method (similar to a CSA, really) because I end up getting vegetables I wouldn’t normally think to pick up (this week, that was turnips). New veggies usually lead me to new recipes- and on cool days, that means new soups. I like to use the vegetables as the center of the dish- not just the side show. The method for this soup is typical- saute some onion and herbs, add your firmer veggies with liquid and simmer for a while, then add your greens and beans and heat through. The result is a nice balance of savory flavors with a light sweetness from the squash and turnips.

Of course, like most of my recipes, you can certainly customize this recipe to fit what’s in your refrigerator or CSA box. I’m sure I’ll be recreating this soup again in the coming weeks- and I can’t wait to find out what shows up in my bowl.

It’s been quite a month over here.  Lots of vegan and vegetarian recipes, some personal, vegan-related drama and some probably not veganize-able (what?) Nutella cookies.  I’m closing out all of this nonsense today with a recipe that can work for all diets; carnivores, vegetarians and vegans alike.

I’ve made this recipe twice in the recent past.  If you asked, my husband would tell you that’s pretty rare around here.  I like to experiment.. almost too much, sometimes.  These dumplings were so good and such an excellent use of our garden chard that I had to do a repeat.  They’re also very popular with the little guy.

The directions look horrendous and long, but I think it’s worth the effort.  This would be a good weekend meal, or something to make when you have extra hands to help in the kitchen.  When you bite into the dumplings, what you taste most is the bacon/pancetta.  You’ll never know you’re getting all of those vitamins and minerals from the chard.  I haven’t tried making them vegetarian or vegan, but I believe they’d still taste excellent that way.  Please let me know if you try it and how it works out.

This dish has a garden/fresh feel to it that I think you’ll enjoy during the warmer temperatures.

And if you don’t remember, May is all about pies in the Great Food Adventure!  I can’t wait to dig in, find the perfect crust, and share all of those luscious summer pie recipes with you.  If you have any favorites from around the web, feel free to link to them in the comment section!