Spicy Chop Beef Sandwiches (and homemade bbq sauce!)

I made these yummy spicy chop beef sandwiches for Mike and I along with the homemade bbq sauce. I really like this girl's blog... how could I not? Its all about Texas!

The brisket can be expensive but the actual work could not be simpler. I don't have a "real" roasting pan so I just used a 9x13 pyrex and everything turned out just fine. The meat is really tasty even before you put the bbq sauce on it. I had mine with just bbq sauce while Mike wanted his a lot fancier... jalapenos, onions, jalapeno jack cheese and sauce.

(I also was able to freeze enough for two sandwiches for a rainy day!)

Freezer Burritos

As part of stocking our freezer, I made Mike freezer burritos. There are lots of nights where he gets back too late to dirty the kitchen but needs to eat something pretty substantial. Most of the time that means frozen food of some kind so hopefully these homemade ones will be better than the ones we buy at the store.

No real recipe - just browned a pound of ground beef and seasoned it with spicy taco seasoning and half a can of Rotel tomatoes (in place of the water the seasoning packet called for). I also browned some thinly sliced onion and bell pepper to go into the burritos. The last ingredient of the burritos was refried pinto beans. I then portioned it all into 8 large burritos in individual foil sheets.

In place of a photo of 8 burritos rolled in foil... here's a picture of our Halloween pumpkin!

The Freezer Meal Project

I'm sure lots of people have this problem... I cook on Sundays, more often than not, but we run out of this home-cooked food by Thursday. We end up eating out or hunting for things in our pantry until Sunday rolls around again.

We don't spend a ton of money on restaurants relative to most people but I do feel like its an expense we could control a little better. So, for the next few weekends I'm planning on making some ready-to-go freezer meals in order to have small, home-cooked meals ready for Thursday and Friday nights when we're out of food in the fridge but don't want to totally wreck the kitchen.

(I guess the key will then be not to forget what is in the freezer!)

Here are some sources/ideas I've been saving:

From Annie's Eats - Stocking the Freezer (Meals) and Stocking the Freezer (Individual Items)
From Simple Organized Living - Freezable Foods
From Shutterbean - Freezer burritos
From 100 Days of Real Food - Essentials

(Is it just me or is "freezer" starting to look like an odd word?)

First up - turkey meatballs and homemade marinara sauce. Yes, it took a while but its certainly easier to cook a lot of one thing one afternoon than multiple things during a week. I got our food for this week cooked (as of this post that has made it through 3 meals with more to go) plus I froze a serving of meatballs + marinara for one pizza and 6 other individual servings of meatballs + marinara that we can add to spaghetti on nights we are busy.