Recipes, frugal eating on the go, large family shopping ideas, and freezer cooking kits all in one!
We’re learning to make the most of our Sam’s trips slowly. Last week Matt hit on the best thing ever. First of all, let me say if you have a membership to Sam’s you can not only get your diapers for much less you can drop into their cafe and get amazing deals on lunch or dinner. You can get a huge Nathan’s hot dog and drink for about $1.75 or a large slice of pizza and a drink for under $3. Y’all, for a family of 7 that is da bomb. Last week while ordering our after-church hot dogs Matt ordered a case of fully-cooked 16 inch pizza crusts. 20 of them. For, get this, $16. Wow. And we all know the hardest part of getting a homemade pizza right is the crust. No more. You ask for them at the food counter where you get your hot dogs, not in the frozen foods section in the back. They come in a big box. We set our box straight into the freezer and pull out however many we want to cook up at a time. While we were at Sam’s we bought a mega pack of mozzarella, pepperoni, and sauce (those are found in the regular food section of the store). When we got home (or in reality 4 days after they sat in the fridge waiting for me) I divided the huge packs of pepperoni and cheese into little freezer bags according to the amount we would need for each pizza. And because we like to experiment with all kinds of pizzas we also bought some pre-cooked grilled chicken chunks (you could save money by doing these yourself, we just didn’t this time), barbeque sauce, alfredo sauce, bacon, garlic, black olives, green olives, and fruit. We also want to try a chocolate chip cookie dough soon.
So far we’ve tried cheese sticks: frozen crust, melted butter spread all over, garlic (we love the huge pre-chopped garlic – we use it for everything) spread all over, and then cheese sprinkled on top. When you divide your cheese if you put it straight into the freezer it will stay loose and not melt down into a huge clump. Then when you want to make a pizza you can reach into the bag and put the frozen cheese you want onto the frozen crust – no thawing. We bake all of the pizzas at 400 degrees for about 10 or 15 minutes – just check for a melty golden cheese on top. Serve the cheese sticks with the pasta sauce you would normally use on the pizza.
Here are a couple we had yesterday.
The cheese pizza is the kids’ fall back favorite. I should’ve used more cheese. Oh well, they didn’t seem to mind this time. The other is a chicken, garlic, tomato, alfredo. Oh my, y’all. The only thing that would’ve made this one better is crumbled bacon. But we forgot to make it ahead of time. I think the pizza made it into our bellies just fine without it though. Chicken Alfredo Pizza: frozen crust, spread some chopped garlic on top, half a jar of alfredo sauce, a little salt, mozzarella, grilled chicken chunks, sliced fresh tomatoes, and a little more cheese just to hold the chicken and tomatoes on. 400 degrees for almost 15 minutes. Oh my.
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