Mealprep: 40 recipes to stock your freezer and free your mind!

One of the best ways to eat healthy is to eat at home more. But for any busy person, this becomes a real challenge when it's 4:30 and you have no idea what to make for dinner. Prepping some ingredients and/or dishes ahead of time to stash in the freezer can save the day. Not only does it save you cooking time, it also saves you brain effort at the very time of day your brain is most overtaxed!

Sure, these mean a little more work on the weekend -- but you can do it at a leisurely pace, when you're rested and not rushed. Which I've found makes cooking so much more enjoyable! 

A week of dinners in the freezer, from The Kitchn. Recipes for: Baked Manicotti - Freezer Taco Kits - Twice-Baked Potatoes - Chile & Sausage Oven Frittata - Cranberry Pork Chops - Chicken and Wild Rice Bake. (Also includes side dishes, not listed here.) You can also find this same list of recipes with additional notes on how to turn prep day into a Freezer Meals Party.

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Here are tips for stocking your freezer with precooked and seasoned meats, which gives you more versatility than already-assembled dishes. Includes instructions (but not exact recipes) for twice-baked potatoes, two different ground beef mixes, a teriyaki marinade that you can use on any meat, poultry or seafood (lots of sugar in it, though), and shredded chicken plus broth. Also has a few nifty tricks for neater packaging.

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Here's Pioneer Woman's freezer cooking post. Not a lot of healthy stuff on the list, but I do love her tip for grilling whole chicken breasts and freezing them to have on hand for dozens of uses. I count about 11 main-dish recipes on her list, skipping the carb-laden ones.

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I also like this method for an easy way to cook boneless, skinless chicken breasts, from Small Home Big Start. 

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Eight healthy freezer crockpot meals in 75 minutes, from New Leaf Wellness. Well, really four different meals, double batch of each. Beef Roast and Carrots - Chicken Fajitas - Mexican Chicken Soup - Garden Veggie Soup with Ground Beef.

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10 meals in 1 hour - super organized and detailed; even includes shopping list! Really just five recipes; double batch of each. Honey Lemon Garlic Chicken -  London Broil - Quick Taco Soup - Orange Glazed Pork Chops - Creamy Italian Chicken

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10 meals in 1 hour, take 2; the no-bake version; includes five warm weather recipes that are cooked either on the grill or in the crockpot—no oven required!

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A planned/non-planned approach. No recipes here, but some pointers for stocking your freezer with ready-to-go meat and cheese portions, then how to plan meals the weekend or night before, taking into account your schedule, the weather, and what's in your fridge that needs to be used up.

And here are a few ingredients to have pre-cooked and ready in the freezer:

• Carmelized onions
• Roasted garlic
• Perfect brown rice, in the oven

And a few things to know about food safety and quality:

• Learn about safe food storage
• How to avoid freezer burn
• Tips on organizing your freezer

Grilled pork tenderloin with easy al pastor glaze and mango salsa

This sounds fancy-pants, but it was an easy weeknight dinner that I kinda threw together.

It started with an extra mango and some cilantro in the fridge, left over from fish tacos a couple days ago. What to do with that? A spicy and/or salty pork dish would be a nice counterpoint, so I picked up a couple pork tenderloins.

Mid-afternoon, I trimmed the pork and put both pieces in a baking dish, and slathered one of them with this impromptu glaze:

- a good bit (maybe 1/2 cup?) of some bottled "Tacos Al Pastor" sauce I had on hand (Target's "Archer Farms" brand)

- a sprinkle or two of cayenne (if you're not a spice wimp like me, you might want more)

- a scant 1/2 teaspoon of ancho chili

- a drizzle of honey (a teaspoon or more, maybe. want it sweet? use more!) 

(I seasoned the second tenderloin with cumin and a couple other things, to be made into Cuban sandwiches tomorrow night.)

So the tenderloins sat in the fridge for a few hours, covered and marinating in their glaze/rub. Forty minutes before dinner time, I took them out and let them sit at room temp for 20 minutes, before grilling till the interior temp was just over 140 F; then a few-minute rest. You could also cook them in the oven; find directions for that here.

While the pork was cooking, I chopped up the mango and a small handful of cilantro. Tossed that together with the juice of one lime wedge. 

Sliced the pork and topped with the mango mixture. (Roasted cauliflower for the side dish.) Verdict? The hubby said, "If I ordered this at a restaurant, I'd be very happy with it." Wow! 

Monte Cristo Sandwich - a twist on the usual turkey-and-cranberry-sauce sandwich

Looking for something to do with leftover turkey, ham, or cranberry sauce? Here's one of my favorite sandwiches, known as a Monte Cristo: turkey, ham, and Swiss (provolone or mozzarella would work, too), fixed grilled-cheese-style, but with a twist. You briefly dip the outside of the sandwich in an egg and milk mixture, like you would for French toast. Or if you happen to have leftover French toast, you could just assemble everything and heat it up in the over or microwave. Add a little bacon? Not traditional, but that would be good, too. (Duh! Everything's better with bacon!)

Traditionally served with a side of blackberry or raspberry jam, but I like it with cranberry sauce or orange marmalade!
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Several Monte Cristo recipes:

• A simple version on AllRecipes (The image above is from this site.)
• A more high-maintenance version on Food Network
• This version from Tasty Kitchen has you make the French toast first, then grill everything together
• A high-falutin' version from Family Fresh Cooking, involving gluten-free bread, rosemary and roasted sweet potatoes!

10 things to do with a bacon-weave

My husband once wove some bacon together and draped it over a pork loin (yes, redundant, I know), but I had no idea that the bacon weave was a "thing." 

But it is. A little googling prooves that it most certainly is!

First, the most obvious {forehead smack} use: ensuring that every single bite of your BLT is bacony!

Food blogger SavoryNotes makes a mean bacon weave and takes a mighty-fine pic, above. (But a BLT on white bread -- untoasted?! That ain't right!) Her method involves whiskey and brown sugar. Hmm.

Lifehacker commenter JaySinn divulges his secret for a simple, single-serving bacon weave:

I find 2 slices and a microwave do the job nicely - cut the slices in half, then do a similar weave, but just three parallel and one perpendicular slice woven in the middle. Paper towel underneath and on top, into the microwave for 3-4 minutes and you get a nice crispy square of bacon, that is all stuck together in one easy to apply slice. The microwave method is much faster and you don't have to drain the fat off while cooking as the paper towel absorbs the excess.

The Republic of Bacon claims the best BLT ever, featuring a bacon weave and chipotle mayo. They certainly have a brilliant idea on how to efficiently cut your bacon in half:

Here are just a few of the other, dare I say, stunning things people have done with their carefully woven bacon...

A grilled bacon-weave turkey from BarbequeMaster:

Here is it topping an Easter ham, studded with cloves and glazed with a pineapple-juice/brown-sugar/7UP concoction, from the appropriately named LifeCandy:

The "baco" - a bacon taco - via This is Why You're Fat (also appropriately named):

Bacon weave as a stand-in for pizza crust, via FoodBeast:

In the same vein, bacon-weave as a stand-in for bread, via the DailyBacon:

Have you heard of a fatty? AKA, "bacon explosion." It involves bacon wrapped around sausage and, depending on the recipe, possibly other things. (Ah, America!) Most of the ones I've seen are really too grotesque for me to share here, gentle reader, but if you are made of strong enough stuff, you can find detailed instructions at Grilling24x7:

Things get curioser and curioser...

Bacon-weave-topped apple pie - via Is This Thing On?:

A bacon-weave salad bowl, also via FoodBeast:

And last but not least: Turtle burgers:

No, those aren't actually turtles: the center is hamburger and the legs, heads and tail are hot dogs.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take some Maalox and lie down...