Preparing for the Fall

I mentioned in an earlier post that I have been doing a lot of cooking the past few weeks while enjoying my "summer break". Now that I am going back to work I know I'll have less time to plan and cook dinner. My solution was to make some great hearty meals that I can freeze and then thaw out to heat up on a busy night. I highly recommend each of the following recipes. I've provided links and a quick review of each recipe. If you too are also interested in freezing some meals for a cold fall/winter night, make sure to invest in some Kerr jars. You can buy them at your local grocery store. Here's a rundown of what's currently filling up my freezer.

Black-Eyed Pea Soup with Ham Hocks and Creme Fraiche
Bam! This is a great recipe from Emeril. After cooking the soup you will discard the fat and skin from the ham hocks leaving behind only a little bit of meat. If you enjoy your ham like I do either add in additional ham hocks from the beginning or just buy some ham to add in. I especially love the use of the Creme Fraiche in this recipe which is basically a sweeter sour cream. I like to mix a couple dollops of Creme Fraiche with homemade strawberry or raspberry jam to add to fruit salad making the fruit sweet and creamy.


The Lady's Chicken Noodle Soup
This is a Paula Dean recipe. Making a real chicken stock like this recipe suggests takes some time so make sure to plan ahead. Also when heating up this soup as leftovers some of the broth will be soaked up by the noodles and vegetables, so just have an extra can of chicken broth handy to add to the soup with additional salt and pepper and other seasonings before you heat it up or it when heated up it will turn out more like a stew.

I also have some chili and beef curry in the freezer, but will have to post recipes for those another time.

Hope you give these two recipes a try!

-Kyle