The fast paced world we live in means that home cooking can unfortunately, become a chore. There are always obstacles waiting to ambush your greatest efforts in making a homemade dinner for your family whether it’s late nights at work, ball games for Junior or dance classes for your little ballerina, it seems as if activities in one form or another, are all set out to sabotage your healthy intentions.
Let me offer a little empowerment from one Dinner Diva to a Dinner Diva in the making–take charge and up the ante on your meal planning skills by cooking once and getting two meals from your efforts. This is great trick for casseroles! Create a large batch of whatever it is you are cooking and cook one for the night’s dinner while placing the other in a disposable aluminum pan, wrapped/sealed tight and placed in the freezer for another night. Label, date and you’re good to go. If you need some ideas you can check out our Cook Once Eat Twice menus here: http://savingdinnershop.com/morphing-menus/cook-once-eat-twice/
Lasagna is the quintessential meal for cooking one now and freezing another for later. The key is to not cook the noodles ahead of time. Mix the other ingredients together like you would normally–the meat sauce and cheese mixtures made just the way you would normally, you’re just not going to cook the noodles. (Lasagna is also a great way to sneak in some extra nutrients like spinach as seen in the picture.)
I use a spatula to take ricotta right out of the container and onto my dry noodles, much like a dry wall guy would use his tools to smooth a wall! It’s the same thing, only we’re dealing with lasagna here (and if all goes well, it will taste like lasagna and not dry wall, LOL!)
Now the weather might not make you want to turn on your oven right now, but if you can make TWO lasagnas for the time it takes to make one, it’d certainly be worth it! And obviously, we are the QUEENS of getting assembled freezer meals together, we’ve got a skip loader full of ideas, check out http://savingdinnershop.com/freezer-menus/
And if you want to know how to do that lasagna I’m talking about, watch me make it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esbp39KbVEA