 Hi friends, welcome back to my kitchen, welcome back to my channel. So today I have a freezer prep slash a few other things that I was working on in the kitchen. The first thing I'm doing here is actually straining off these extracts. I will leave the video linked below last year when I made these extracts and I'm so excited as the winter season comes on and I'm going to be doing more baking to use these extracts. They're so incredibly simple to make. I have pretty well a step by step instructions in that video that I created these, but now it's been pretty much a year and I am going ahead and straining them off. So I have cinnamon extract, I have mint extract, orange extract, and lemon extract. And can I just say my kitchen smelled absolutely heavenly with all of these scents and the thing that really really shocked me was the color that these extracts turned out to be. I know that you can't see it very well, but the cinnamon is a deep deep red. The mint is a deep green. And of course we have orange and yellow with the orange and the lemon. And these started out clear. If you guys go back and watch the video, I put a alcohol in to extract them. So they were originally a clear liquid. And now look at these beautiful colors. I will be using these more in some upcoming videos. So definitely keep your eye out for that on using homemade extracts. So I needed to restock our freezer. I kind of got away from doing a lot of freezer meal prep through the summer. It was just busy. I feel like I was just kind of flying by the seat of my pants. I really had a lot going on, but now we're in more of a routine season of life. We homeschool and so we've got a school schedule that we keep. And so it's just really, really helpful to have a lot of frozen breakfasts and lunches in the freezer that we can pull out and warm up and quickly use for just quick meals. So the first thing I'm making here is a big baked omelet. I love having these on hand. If you all have been around for a while, you know I used to make these all the time. And my guess is through this winter I will be making these every single month. This one I just made really, really simple. Sometimes I make up a breakfast protein to go with the eggs or besides the eggs. But this time I just sliced up some onion very thinly, which if you like onion, I feel like that really made this omelet. It was so good. And then I pulled out some frozen bell peppers. And I love having frozen bell peppers because they're really easy to cut the opposite direction. I usually slice them to freeze them, but I could cut them into more like diced sizes to go in this omelet. And it's really simple to do when they are slightly frozen. Then I mix some milk and eggs and a little bit of one of our favorite seasonings. I use in almost every video, I feel like somewhere along the line. And I just drizzled that over. I wanted to mention I did use 20 eggs in this bake. I thought maybe I could have used a little bit more since I didn't have like a bacon or a sausage just to make a bit of a thicker baked omelet. But either way, it worked out really well for a half baker's sheet size like this. And then I had a ton of random mismatch cheeses stuff that was just kind of the end of our blocks of cheese. I buy most of my cheese in bulk. And so we end up with these random little pieces of different types of cheese. So I went ahead and shredded up the blocks. I also had some odd shredded cheese. I put it all in one bowl and mixed it together. And we made this a nice cheesy omelet, especially since I didn't have bacon anything else in it. I thought it would be great if it was really, really cheesy. So if you have a bunch of random cheese in your refrigerator, a breakfast bake of this type might be pretty convenient to use it all up. So I wanted to get this going first since it was something that had to bake. And then I could work on other things while it was baking in the oven. So I'm going to be doing another breakfast item. This is one I have done in the past, but I'm going to do it a slightly different way. And these turned out so incredibly well. I am so excited to repeat this idea. So my daughters are kind of on a baked oatmeal strike. I like making baked oatmeal, but they have just not been into it in the last couple of months, but they love cooked oatmeal. So I wanted to find a way to make cooked oatmeal super convenient. It's not that cooked oatmeal isn't already a quick thing to make in the morning, but having the extra dishes and just making the extra mess to make it sometimes is a nice little shortcut if those things can be avoided. So I just cooked up a really big pot of rolled oats. I have to say this cinnamon I'm adding in is just so amazing. It's a brand called Red Ape and it's an organic cinnamon off of Amazon. I'll leave it linked below, but we recently got it and everything we put it in. It just has the absolute best cinnamon flavor. It's so delicious. I also put in some of my homemade vanilla. That's something else I strained off recently as an extract. And then I also put in some local maple syrup and it just makes a good base for any flavor. So this is where it gets kind of fun. You get to top it off with your flavoring. And I think this is also a super attractive thing to my daughters. They love the way that these look when they're done. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put all of this in the freezer. Now in the past I have made these in a silicone mold, but they just didn't hold together as well in a freezer bag. And I thought that these parchment paper cups would work out great. This is actually a muffin size 10. And so once I had all of my berries on top of here, I'm just going to put these in the freezer overnight. And you'll see me take them out here in a little bit the next day. Once I pulled out the baked omelet, I just cut it up into serving sizes and my daughters have been really loving these. So have I. So has my husband. They actually call them egg bites, even though they're not egg bites, but I can kind of get why they call them that because they kind of have the texture of an egg bite. And they are just so delicious. I don't know if it's the mixture of cheeses or the onions, but something just made this batch extra yummy. So I like to kind of scoop them all out onto some wax paper or parchment paper to let it all cool. And then I transfer them in two gallon ziploc bags, just one layer at a time. And then they're really simple to break apart and to pull out in the morning and just heat up really quickly. Now this next project, I wasn't really planning to film, but I was working on it in the midst of these other preps. And I thought, you know what, for anybody out there that maybe has done a lot of canning and just wants an extra little idea, this might be helpful. So I had made two huge pork butts in my roaster a few days before this. And I took them out, I shredded them up when they were done. And here I'm just adding some homemade barbecue sauce, stirring it all together, and I'm putting it into jars. And I am going to actually can this, it makes the most tender, the most delicious. I just feel like the cannon process makes the flavors of the barbecue sauce go into the pulled pork. And it is one fast meal, you can pull out a jar off of your pantry shelves, you just throw it in the skillet, I usually put a little bit of oil in the skillet, heat it all up and you've got pulled pork sandwiches really, really quickly. So there is a quick idea for those of you that do canning. So the next project I had for the freezer was I wanted to make some garlic cubes. And I've been wanting to do this for a long time, a really big pet peeve of mine, I don't know if that's the right word, but something I dislike doing a whole, whole lot is peeling garlic. And I figured if I can do it all at once and just make this process so much easier, then I don't have to clean out my garlic press every time I use garlic, it just cuts this whole process down. So I found these really small ice cube trays, I'll link them below. And I am just taking the minced garlic that I minced in my food processor, I'm filling that into the trays, I did add a little bit of water to blend it all down. I put some saran wrap or press and seal on top of the trays just so that it didn't make my freezer smell like garlic. And I popped them into the freezer. Then you're going to see me popping these out the next day they are completely frozen. I just ran some hot water over the back of the trays and everything popped out perfectly. And I've actually been able to use these since I filmed this. It is the most convenient thing ever. I kind of count each little cube as one garlic clove. I think that it's probably pretty close to what a garlic clove would be. And everything is ready for me to go. And my guess is that this will probably be fine for six months or more in my freezer. So along with the garlic cube idea, I also love using fresh ginger. But sometimes I don't have it on hand or other times I just don't want to go through the process of like having to try to mince it. It's a little harder to mince than garlic is. So I decided to go ahead and take the time to peel up a bunch of fresh ginger. Throw it in the food processor again with just a little bit of water. And I'm going to mince it all up and I'm going to be putting it into those trays once again and freezing it. This is just so so convenient. And I love fresh ginger especially in a good like Asian inspired stir fry. But like I said, I don't always have it on hand or it's just a pain to have to blend up in that moment. So this is going to make it very simple. And I actually want to try making some ginger tea with these as well. I think one little cube in a cup of tea would be just delicious with a few other herbs. So I'll keep you posted on that idea. But this all worked out so well. Next I'm going to be packaging up some bacon. It's been quite a while since I've done this. I like to buy my bacon in bulk from a local store. So here I have about 25 pounds of bacon. And then I just vacuum pack it all myself. So I mentioned in my last video on my home channel when I was organizing my pantry. If you don't subscribe to that channel, you should definitely head on over there and check it out that I would give you all my taco seasoning recipe in this video. So here is the taco seasoning recipe. I did not get time to film it this week for you all. But I still wanted to include it here in case you came to this video from that video looking for my taco seasoning recipe. I also mentioned a ranch seasoning recipe, but I haven't quite got that accomplished yet. So I'll let you know once I do. So once I have all of the bacon divvied up, I just go ahead and take my vacuum packer and I package all of my bacon. And if you're on the fence about getting a vacuum packer, I've had one for years now and I do not regret investing. I've actually had a couple of them. They just keep your food for so much longer and it's just so convenient to be able to package everything at home and be able to buy things in bulk whenever you can find a great deal that way. Then I just take a sharpie and I go ahead and put the months and year that I package all of the stuff up on. And these also fall out really fast if you throw them in a little bit of warm water. I know some people do that. Some people don't. We do around here. Or you could throw them in cold water or just get them out the night before and put them in the refrigerator. So here I am pulling out those oatmeal cups I guess. And the nice thing about them is parchment paper can actually go in the microwave. This is parchment paper, not wax paper. I don't know about wax paper, but parchment paper can. So whether you're going to pop these out and heat them up on the stove top or if you're going to put them in the microwave, you'll be good if you want to keep them in the paper while you're heating them up. And the topping options for these I feel like are endless. You could add nuts, you could add chia seeds, you could add all kinds of things to these. And I'm sure I'll get a bit more creative as the winter goes on if this is a hit that sticks. So far the girls have been loving them. So we'll see. They are a little bit easier than baked oatmeal. So that's a plus as well. So next I'm actually cleaning out my freezer. You're going to see me kind of pulling stuff out. We of course have our chest freezers in the basement, but this freezer just tends to get all kinds of random stuff in it for one reason or another. And so I was just cleaning it out. I was throwing out a couple of things that were way too old to be used. But one thing I had in here was frozen bananas and a bunch of just like random frozen berries and things. I do freeze my own berries. So I knew that these had been purchased probably last winter or like during the spring before I got fresh berries that are down in my chest freezer. So I know they need to be used up. And one other thing that is really nice is if you're keeping whole bananas around for banana bread, they're not getting used up. You want to be able to cut them up and use them for smoothies. They are super easy to cut with a sharp knife even while they're frozen. So that's what I'm doing. I'm taking these very frozen bananas and I'm cutting them into a great size for smoothie bags. So essentially I'm taking all of these frozen things. I have some frozen spinach, some frozen avocados, some berries, some raspberries, and I'm just making smoothie bags. Now I'm packing these pretty big because I'm gonna add yogurt or kefir or milk or protein or collagen to these as well. And then I just divide it out between my three daughters whenever we are ready to be drinking a smoothie. So they're kind of more than one serving per bag if they look a little extra big. But again even these can be so versatile. I mean like I did just list off a bunch of things you could add to them. But you could also add nuts, you could add chia seeds. If you had fresh fruit like the one day I actually opened a pack of this up to make up. And I had a jar of home canned peaches in the refrigerator with just like two inches of peaches left in the bottom. And I just threw the juice and all in with this. I think it's just a great base and I don't know about you but I'm very much an out of sight, out of mind person. So if these are packaged up like this and I open up the freezer I'm like oh we could do a smoothie for a snack today. It just triggers my brain to think more of smoothie than just random bags of frozen fruit in my freezer if that makes sense. And I'm all about convenience. I think a lot of the things that I tend to create are more so DIY convenience foods, DIY prepackaged things. I'm packaging my own things to be able to use in individual uses a lot. So that's the point of a lot of these freezer meals. But speaking of all of that we have started the school year. That's why you all haven't seen quite as much of me posting in the last month or two because for the first time this year I have three in school. We've got kindergarten, first grade and second grade and we have been loving it. Maybe if you guys are interested I could share what curriculum we are using. We have a new curriculum this year that is totally different than what I used last year and it has just absolutely changed our way and just changed everything about how we homeschool. We love it so much and so you're gonna see a lot more meal prepping again from me because I think I finally have recovered from the adjustment of having three I'm homeschooling and that took a lot of my focus away in the last two months just really wanting to get a good schedule down and get everything kind of ironed out with our schoolwork and of course the rest of life. It's not just school but thank you guys for hanging out with me today. I know it was kind of short and sweet but this is what I got accomplished for the month and just to have some extra things around I want to work on really building up my freezer stash again with quick and simple things. I love even doing like quick little sides that go with like a grilled meat. That's a great freezer thing. Even if it's not a full meal these little things are so excellent. If you guys are new here don't forget to subscribe. Leave a comment below. I love hearing from you all and I'll see you all in my next video.