Taking a cue from Money Saving Mom, and following the discovery of 8 cans of sweetened condensed milk, 4 Dove bars and combined with my son constantly begging for pumpkin muffins, Monday will be a day of baking, complete with live-blogging the event (please try to contain your excitement)!
Why have a day of baking? In order to have a ready supply of snacks, breakfasts and meal components. I love brown rice, but hate the 25 minutes it takes to cook it. My family adores my turkey meatballs, but I always think of making them later in the day. As for the beans? Buying dried beans is so much less expensive than buying canned and the reduction in sodium is huge!
On the schedule for Monday:
Pumpkin Muffins (double batch)
Double Chocolate Brownies
Pancakes (triple batch)
Sugar Cookies
Cook & freeze brown rice in 1 ½ cup servings
Cook & freeze beans in 1 cup servings
Turkey meatballs
The beans are soaking and I'll kick off Baking Day in the morning. I hope you'll come back during the day and see how it is going!
Anonymous
I like using dried beans and can see the advantages of cooking them in advance, but I'm scared that freezing them after rehydrating them will ruin their texture. How well do they hold up while freezing?
Mindi
I don't know, because honestly, I've never tried this! I usually will put up a half-pound of beans at a time and keep them in the fridge until I need to use them.
However, I have read a bunch of bloggers (whose cooking abilities I trust) talk about doing this all the time.....so we shall see!
Julie
Those brownies look delicious. I know I wouldn't be able to trust myself around them.
Mindi
I'm not THAT big of a chocolate person...
which is why I am not making butterscotch brownies 😉
Stacey
How long do you end up cooking the pumpkin muffins? I've only tried it twice and they seemed to need extra cooking. And if mine are sticky are they undercooked?
Mindi
About 20 minutes. When a toothpick inserted in to the middle muffins in the pan comes out clean - they are ready!
However, I make mine in a Stoneware muffin pan (which is really good at conducting heat), so the time for a "regular muffin pan" may be a few minutes longer!
Donna S
I've got my beans soaking, I've been wanting to do this for weeks and just never set aside the time. I'll be doing the beans and rice today. Maybe tomorrow I'll tackle some baking, I'm out of flour and sugar (crazy right??) I'm looking forward to hearing how it's going for you today!
Bet
I make pumpkin, plus cake mix, plus water recipes all the time! How fun to see someone else that does too. My family loves chocolate cake made this way. I make in muffin tins for portion control. This is an old Weight Watchers recipe. I've also frozen the batter in muffin tins in paper cups. Once frozen, you can pop them out and store in a zip bag. Then pull out how many you want. Place in muffin tins and bake (usually I let them defrost in my oven for a bit before baking). Works so great!
I'm a cook ahead freak. Will love to hear how the beans turn out.
Great post!