Make ahead meals, the recap!

As you may have read, I was ambitious yesterday.  I had a whole list of things I wanted to make ahead for the week.

I wasn't as successful as I wanted to be, but pretty successful none the less.


I made hamburger buns, and froze half of them.
I made pizza dough and froze it.
I made chicken for quesadillas.  I had so much of this I may use half in the enchiladas soon.
I made delicious BBQ sauce, half of which I froze.
I made and froze black bean burgers.
I made ranch dressing.
I made croutons :D
I also prepped the beef in the crock pot which was DELICIOUS!
During the course of the day I was snacking on some spinach artichoke dip (which I promise to blog about when I make it again.)


I took a couple of pictures of the BBQ sauce.  Everything else was pretty typical, so the pictures wouldn't have been as exciting.  This BBQ sauce is so beautiful and tasty!

It was so pretty simmering for hours...

Doesn't it look delicious?  The recipe made a bunch, and it's nice and thick!  

I promise to show you pictures of when I use it on chicken this week.

If anyone is interested in the recipes, I'll list them below.  

Thanks for reading about my first attempt at this.  I think I will have more fun (and time) next time around.

-April

Recipes (you will see most are from here because she's my food sister, I swear!):

BBQ Sauce

Ranch Dressing

Chicken Quesadilla Meat

Black bean burgers

Hamburger Buns

Pizza crust

Crock pot beef and pepperoncinis

For the croutons I just seasoned them with some herbs de provence, garlic powder, onion powder and pepper.

Make ahead meals, take 1

I have been reading a LOT of cooking blogs lately, and I have learned a lot of wonderful tips and recipes that have pretty much all been successes.  I promise that when I make them again, I'll post about it.

One thing that I have been wanting to try is make ahead meals.  Let's face it, I work a full time job, and when I get home I don't want to make a time consuming meal (I would rather make cupcakes, honestly!)

In order to get around this, I wanted to try to make a few meals on a weekend day and freeze them or have them ready in the fridge for sometime in the next couple of days.

Today is the day, I'm feeling ambitious and ready to go.  So, at the moment this is what I am going to attempt to cook today.  I know I'm posting at 6pm, but I've been working for a while now.

Here is the list:

Make hamburger buns (half to freeze)
Make ranch dressing
Prepare black bean burgers and regular burgers (to freeze)
Prep chicken for quesadillas
Make croutons (I LOVE doing this!)
Prep beef with pepperoncini for the Crock pot tomorrow (I have SO much pepperoncini)
Prep and freeze lasagne
Make and freeze pizza dough
Prep and freeze enchiladas

Let's just hope I can get through all of this tonight...

-April