Well, better late than never, right? Life has been pretty hectic around here, but what’s new right? 

I’ll fill you all in on our very crazy {and somewhat heartbreaking} week in a day or so, but in the meantime, I wanted to tell you about something very exciting…

Perhaps many of you have tried my very first ever Food Friday which featured one of my family’s favorite dinners….something we lovingly call “Amy’s Pasta”. If you haven’t tried it yet, you have find the recipe HERE. 

Anyway, we make this A LOT, and usually there is plenty of it, with enough to last us for a day 

or two. But last week, after making a brainlessly making a giant bowl of the pasta, I remembered that we were leaving the next day to Santa Rosa to work on the house and on top of it, the kids ate a late lunch and weren’t the least bit hungry. ugh. What to do?

So I decided to try freezing it. I put the leftovers in a large freezer safe bag, squeezed all the air out of it and popped it into the freezer.  Notice the bag of chicken soup I also tried to freeze underneath it {more on that in a second}.

 I then posted on facebook that I tried to freeze pasta and I had several helpful suggestions. Someone pointed out that you need to make sure the pasta is cooked al dente {or a TAD undercooked} or else when you defrost, the pasta will get all mushy. Well, shoot. I know for sure I didn’t cook al dente as Brandon doesn’t like his pasta “chewy”.  So, a couple days later when I decided I wanted a quick dinner, I pulled the pasta out a couple hours before dinner and then popped it into this oven safe bowl.

And then I put it in the oven at the below temp for about 30 mins. I sprinkled a bunch of parmesan on top too, just for a little extra touch. If I had some olive oil, I would have drizzled just a little on top as well.

My theory was that when you cook in the oven, usually pasta gets a bit dried out, so if, when I defrosted the pasta, it was going to be mushy, I figured if I baked it, the moisture would be drawn out, if that makes sense….

And it worked!! WOW…it was sooo yummy, just as good as the day cooked. YAY! I will definitely do this again!

Oh and what was the deal with the chicken soup you ask? ugh. Well, I usually make a big bowl of that as well and reheat it for a day or so. We reheated that one twice {lunch and dinner the next day} so everything was cooked nice and throuogh. So when I unfroze it, everything was extra mushy. So I would recommend freezing it right after you cook the first time, and stick to the undercooked rule with that one. ha.

Do you freeze food? I’d love to know some of your tips!!
xoxo

Good morning everyone! Thank you so much for all your kind comments regarding our move. You all have been so sweet and supportive and I can’t tell you how great that makes us feel. We are blessed to have friends like you. Even Brandon went through and read all the comments left on this blog or on FB…he had a big smile on his face afterwards!

Evy and I are getting ready to run out the door to Santa Rosa to help with house clean up duty this weekend. Brandon, my dad, my father in law and Jake will be working extra hard this weekend on getting the yard whipped in shape. It’s been a bit neglected over the last year, so this should be fun! I hope that next weekend we can transfer our roses…so excited about that! {But then that means we’ll have to plant something else in their place for our renters… oh boy. ha.}

ANYWAY, last weekend we vegged around the house and it was so nice. I cooked all weekend and got several weeks worth of food fridays, lucky you! ha 

I know I have mentioned my Nannie before in this blog, but in case you have forgotten, my Nannie is my dad’s mom and was 100% German. I loved her so much. They lived in Burlingame, right outside of San Francisco and when we moved to Santa Rosa, we would go to their house at least two weekends out of the month. Every Saturday morning she would make these pancakes for us. She used to call them “Dollar Pancakes” because she would make them small, like a silver dollar. Whenever we have a slow morning around here I try to make these…everyone LOVES them! I have been known to send Brandon out hunting for buttermilk in the wee hours of the morning. ha. 

 {Disclaimer: I swear I have blogged about them before but looked and looked and can’t find them, so here it is again! sheesh…}

2 eggs

3/4 C. flour

1 Tea baking powder

3/4 teas baking soda

buttermilk {I use about a 3/4 c or a little less}

pinch of salt

Separate your eggs and put the egg whites in a metallic bowl preferably to help the whites froth better. If you don’t have a metallic bowl {I couldn’t find mine either, ha} then any bowl will do. 

In the bowl of an electric mixture {or single bowl if using a hand mixer} beat the egg yokes using the whisk attachment then add the dry ingredients. The mixture will look a bit funny. 

With the mixer going, slowly add the buttermilk. I just pour straight from the carton. You want the consistency to be like a thick soup.

Using a hand mixer, beat the egg white to medium stiff peaks, like so…

Here is an example of what the buttermilk mixture will look like {on left} and the egg white mixture {on right}

Gently drop your egg whites into the buttermilk and then fold in. Folding does not mean mixing. It means FOLD…take your spatula and twist the egg whites into the mixture. The key is to keep the egg whites as fuffy as you can while getting them completely mixed in.

Here is the end result:

Using a large spoon, drop the batter into a greased pan over medium/med high heat. I don’t crowd mine, I only do three pancakes at a time in this pan.

And apparently we eat these sans fork…the cup is a better place for the fork it looks like and hands are a better tool. I guess it gets in faster. ha

Happy, happy camper!

Do you have a good pancake recipe? I’d love to know yours!

xoxo