When I was in college, it became the “thing” to throw tortillas onto the field during the football games. A pretty ridiculous tradition, but one guy made my day on Halloween that year when he dressed up like a fan and had tortillas somehow stiffened and stuck to his body, complete with drops of fake blood.

Fast forward a few years later, when my younger brother (21) and sister (18) are grocery shopping at the beginning of the school year. He sees a large package of tortillas at an amazing price, and although my sister tried valiantly to warn him, he bought a bunch of corn tortillas only to discover that they’d make a better discus than a dinner. Maybe that explains why it everyone had so many spare tortillas they were ready to donate to the football team.

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BBQ Chicken Pizza is one of the great inventions of our time, as far as I’m concerned. I tried the BBQ Chicken Pizza of most restaurants I know of that serve it and I’m convinced that the most important ingredient is the perfect BBQ sauce. Over the past few years I have experimented with various sauces and methods to cook the chicken to develop this recipe that our family loves. One thing I love about this pizza is that I can have chicken and cheese on hand in the freezer and make it any time–a perfect recipe for a 3 month supply of food.

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This has become a staple at our house–we have pizza nearly every Friday night. I use the bread machine’s manufacturer recommended pizza dough recipe, substituting whole wheat flour for two of the three cups of flour it calls for. I also use instant yeast.
My recipe is:
1 cup warm water
1 cup all purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour (made from white wheat)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/2 TBSP butter (no substitutions)
1 1/2 TBSP dry milk
1 1/2 tsp dry instant yeast

Another delicious whole wheat pizza crust is this one at allrecipes.com: Amazing Whole Wheat Pizza Crust. I might make it more often if I had a mixer and didn’t have to knead it.

Something I’ve done to make this incredibly quick and easy is to make little dry mixes out of all of the ingredients but the flour and water. I line up a bunch of baggies and dump the required salt, sugar, butter, yeast, and dry milk in each one. I use a twist-tie to close them, and then store all of them in a heavy duty Ziploc freezer bag. When Friday rolls around, I just pull one out and leave it on the counter for an hour or so to reach room temperature. Then all I have to do is add water, flour and the contents of the baggie to the bread machine and select the pizza dough option.

My only wish is that every day’s meals were this easy!

Diana – this one’s for you!

I’ve really enjoyed this particular Fajita Marinade from allrecipes.com (fajita marinade III). It’s quick, easy and delicious!

I really like the rosemary & lemon combination–it has a strong lemon flavor. If you don’t like it, you could reduce the lemon juice or substitute some lime juice. I think I’ll try some lime in it next time.

Serves 12
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon chopped green onion
1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 clove garlic, minced
12 chicken breasts, cut into strips

Mix everything together and divide among Ziploc bags to suit your family. For us, 1 chicken breast per serving is a generous helping.

Also, while bell peppers are fresh and a relatively good price right now, I like to chop them up and store them in the freezer. Stash some homemade whole wheat tortillas in the freezer as well, and you’ve got a full meal ready to go in no time.

To prepare: Ideally, take the chicken out of the freezer the night before you want this delicious meal so that it can thaw slowly and marinate while it does that. But last time I made these I just thawed two frozen marinated chicken breasts in some warm water for an hour or so and they had plenty of flavor.

Cook the chicken strips and marinade in a frying pan over medium high heat until chicken is cooked and marinade boils. Remove chicken and saute vegetables in marinade. Add chicken back to marinade mixture and serve on warmed tortillas. Of course, lettuce, tomato, sour cream, guacamole, salsa, and cheese can all make great additions. But it’s also really good all by itself.

These are the lightest and fluffiest waffles I have ever had. This is a recipe from my sister-in-law’s sister. We really enjoy making a triple or quadruple batch and freezing them or snacking on them throughout the week.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 Tablespoon Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
3 egg yolks
1 cup milk
3 Tablespoons Butter, melted (I also use oil some times)
3 egg whites stiffly beaten

1. Start by beating the egg whites with an electric hand mixer

2. In a separate bowl, mix egg yolks, milk and melted butter or oil

3. In a third bowl, mix dry ingredients.

4. Add egg yolk mixture to dry ingredients and mix gently by hand.

5. Gently fold in egg yolks.

6. Cook on greased waffle iron (my heavy-duty Krups takes about 1/3 cup batter and 1 min 45 seconds).

Those that were reading my personal blog at this time last year will remember my adventures in trying to cook and store all 40 lbs of raw chicken. I just reread what I wrote about that experience, and although I was excited to see the chicken on sale again, I must admit I’m having second thoughts about all of the work. 40 lbs of chicken is a ton of chicken! But one bag of chicken at Costco is about $15 or 6.5 lbs, or $2.30 a lb, so this is really quite a savings.

Having learned a lot last year, here is what I’m going to do to hopefully make it a smooth experience:

1. Package the chicken in pint size bags. Being a small family that doesn’t eat a lot of meat, I regretted packing quart size bags to the brim last year. I had to thaw enough chicken for 4 or 5 meals at once, and it wasn’t easy being that it was such a big hunk of meat. Just be sure to package the meat in portions that are good for one or two meals.

2. Cut some chicken into bite-size chunks and freeze it raw. I most frequently use bite-size chunks of chicken in stir-frys, soups, casseroles etc. This way the chicken will be ready to use as soon as it’s partially defrosted (I really like defrosting a small bag of chicken in a bowl of hot water–it takes about 15-30 minutes, but it doesn’t get cooked or dried out like it does in the microwave).

3. Freeze some chicken strips in a marinade. I’ve found a Fajita Marinade that I’ll be sharing soon–it works well, because the recipe is for about 6 servings, so I can make the marinade once, package up the chicken and marinade in freezer bags and then it’s all ready to go.

We’ll see how far I get with these tactics–I’ll have an update in a week or so.

Tips on Freezer Storage