This page is filled with time saving tips for the kitchen, as well as some delicious recipes you can really sink your teeth into.

Pre-Season your frozen meat

• When you buy your meat (in bulk of course) and are getting ready to separate it into freezer bags for freezing, add some marinade to the bag first.
• Then stick the meat into the bag, make it open fully so it’ll be filled with extra air, and seal it completely.
• Shake the bag up slightly to coat all the meat, and then open one end of the freezer bag slightly to get rid of the excess air.
• Reseal the bag, and stick it into the freezer.
• When you get ready to take it out for your next meal, the marinade sauce will continue tenderizing the meat, and you end up with delicious, succulent meals.
• Get creative, and use different homemade marinades. Label the outside of the bag with which marinade you used, so if it’s something you really enjoyed, you can make even more of it the next time.

Free Cooking Broth

What do most people do when they are peeling carrots, celery, potatoes, mushrooms, onions?

Answer: Throw the peels away.

WHY? These are the perfect ingredients needed for a vegetable broth.

• Before you peel your vegetables, wash them thoroughly. Then peel the vegetable, and stick the peels in a freezer container, or freezer bag.
• Store in your freezer until the bag or container is full.
• Once it is full, take it out, pour all of it into a boiling pan with enough water to barely cover the top peels.
• Bring to a boil, and then let simmer for one and a half hours.
• Once it’s simmered for an hour and a half, strain the peels out, add regular veggies, (don’t throw those peels away. You can start your next freezer bag of peels with this) and some meat.
• This makes a wonderful flavored meal and it’s healthy too. No MSG here!

Make Yeast Stay Fresher Longer

• Store unused yeast in the freezer for up to one year to keep it’s freshness.

Cooking Time Saver

This comes in handy if you are always running short of time to make meals. Each time you make a meal from scratch, double or triple your ingredients, and then freeze before cooking.

If you’re making a meatloaf for supper, it’s not much more effort to go ahead and make 3 meatloafs.

By doing this, you have made three meals in just a little bit more time than it took to make one meal.

This works especially good when you are making soups, chili, stews, etc.

Unthaw meat quicker

Ever forget to take the hamburger out of the freezer in time, and end up not having supper done in time? I did this constantly! Well, here’s a tip for any ground up meat to thaw quicker!

• Before you put it in the freezer, roll it out with a rolling pin on wax paper.
• Roll ground meat out until it’s about 1 inch thick.
• Then carefully either wrap the wax paper and meat with freezer wrap, or gently stick it in a freezer bag.
• It will thaw in about one hour, and you’ll never have late meals again.
• Another thing you can do, if you know you’re going to make hamburgers out of the ground meat, is to patty the meat up ahead of time, and separate each hamburger by wax paper (cut in smaller pieces).
• Then when you take them out of the freezer, they will easily separate and thaw quickly.

Make Your Own Hamburger Helper

• Here's a budget tip. To make your own style of Hamburger Helper, cook up plain hamburger, 1/2 onion, and salt and garlic powder.
• Once completely done, strain hamburger and let set.
• Boil up a 16 ounce bag of egg noodles.
• Once noodles are done, strain water out.
• Add noodles, hamburger mixture, beef buillon cubes (to taste) and 3 cups water.
• Let simmer until water is almost completely gone.
• Walaa! Hamburger helper without the cost!

Keeping fruit from browning

To keep your fruit from browning once you've peeled them or cut them up, sprinkle the fruit with lemon juice. It will keep them looking fresh a lot longer.