My Secret to Quick and Easy Ground Meat Meals

Growing up my mother would buy ground beef  and ground sausage in one to one and a half pound package and toss them in the freezer to use later.  This resulted  in me spending at least half an hour standing at the stove every time she decided to use ground meat in a meal.  Scrape and turn, scrape and turn.  It was excruciatingly boring and tedious.  (At least I got to sneak pieces of meat while I cooked though.  That is a chef's prerogative.)  But it was the only way I knew to store and then use ground meat.  So to avoid that, I would never store meat in the freezer.  If I bought meat I kept it in the fridge and used it within a couple of days.

At some point, I don't know when or how, because it was so long ago, I realized that I could just cook the meat first, and then store it in the freezer.  That realization has changed my life, and made making a quick, but homemade dinner so easy.  Now I can make homemade tacos in less than ten minutes and without a special shopping trip, because the meat is in the freezer and only needs to be reheated.

Now I tend to buy ground turkey in bulk.  I buy eight 20 ounce packages of Jenny-O 93% fat free ground turkey, at time.  I used to be able to buy this amount in a case at Sam's Club, so I developed a great method for getting it all prepared in one afternoon.

It takes me about two hours to prep all the meat.  60 ounces go into my meatloaves, which I'l cover with cling-wrap and bake within two or three days.  20 ounces or a little less go into my Shepherd's Pie which I'll generally bake that day, but sometimes I will wait to bake it a day or two.  20 ounces or a little less go into my Spaghetti Sauce, which I freeze in the flat, square, 3 1/8 cup Glad containers.  The remaining 60 ounces I cook 20 ounces at a time and portion into the same size Glad containers.

Tip 1:  I've already said this, but it can't be said enough, cook first, then freeze your ground meat.  It really saves time.

Tip 2:  Save time and dishes by cooking things in the right order.  Example:

1. Start browning 20 ounces of ground turkey in the spaghetti pot and in the shepherd's pie pot.  
2. In between stirring the meat, mix the ingredients for the meatloaf in the mixing bowl.  
3. When the meatloaf is complete start opening cans for spaghetti sauce and shepherd's pie.

Tip 3:  When browning the last of the meat, which will be used for the spaghetti sauce and the shepherd's pie, take whatever ever amount is needed to top off the last containers of ground meat for the freezer.  A little less meat in the sauce or pie won't be missed.

I will link posts with my recipes and tips for the recipes mentioned above as soon as I get the posts written.

Broccoli Quiche

One of my old standard recipes is Knorr's Cheddar Broccoli Quiche.  I have always loved quiche.  Well I LOVE cheese, so that makes sense.  Growing up my mom made two fabulous quiches.  A Swiss cheese and spinach quiche, and a ham and broccoli quiche.  They are fabulous, but they require measuring seasonings and when my mom gave me the recipe, over the phone I believe, she told me to use six eggs per quiche.  

Well, that didn't work.  It over filled my pie pans, even with the crusts built up high along the edges, and made a huge mess.  I didn't know why my quiches never turned out when hers were so great.  Eventually I just stopped trying to make the quiches.

Years later, I made a quiche recipe I found on the side of a seasoning packet, and the mystery was solved.  Her recipe never worked for me, because it should have said 3 eggs per quiche, not six.  (Sorry to throw you under the bus Mom, but it is the truth.)  Being the rule follower that I am, I just followed the recipe blindly and knew the error was on my part.  With time, I've learned that I am not always the problem, and to go ahead and make changes even to tried and true recipes.

The Knorr's Cheddar Broccoli Quiche is delicious, and needs no changes, but I've made some anyway.

1. I change out the cheddar, for any cheese I have on hand, which is generally the Kraft Mexican Four Cheese Blend.  It adds an extra zing that my family prefers.  
2. I normally use frozen broccoli florets instead of chopped broccoli.  I keep those on hand for other dishes anyway.  
3. My "healthy" change, has been to omit the pie crust.  Just lightly spray the pan with your oil of choice first, for easy serving.  The sides and bottom have a brown skin when cooked without a crust.  My entire family likes the flavor of the skin, but I don't expect everyone will.  

I typically make two at a time.  My family of four eats at least one entire quiche for dinner.  The second is intended for lunches and thirds in case anyone is extra hungry.  Alas, my two boys have been extra hungry for about two years now.  Warning:  The "eat everything in sight" stage starts in the PREteen years, not when boys become teenagers as I naively believed.  

Tip 1:  Get out everything you need at the beginning.  I go ahead and measure the milk, pour it in the mixing bowl, measure out the milk for the second quiche, take out the number of eggs I need and return the unneeded eggs and milk to the fridge.  This is everything but the oven and the oven mitts.

Tip 2:  Even if you are making two quiches at the same time, mix the ingredients one quiche at a time.  The ingredients will never divide themselves up evenly between the two pie pans.  NEVER!

Tip 3:  Use a large bowl to mix the ingredients.  There is no way to whisk those eggs, or get the seasoning distributed without vigorous stirring.

Tip 4:  I prefer a regular dinner fork to a whisk.  I can always find one.  It does a great job.  Stuff never gets stuck in it.  It is great at pressing seasoning clumps against the side of the bowl to break them apart.  It is easy to clean.

Tip 5: Measurements smeasurements.  Guesstimating is just fine for this recipe.  Especially since the seasonings are already perfectly proportioned for you.  Example:  I just pinch the 16oz bog of broccoli florets in half instead of measuring, or using the two 10oz packages of chopped broccoli the doubled recipe calls for.  (Yes, I just ended that sentence with a preposition.  After ditching one rule, I'll ditch them all.  I'm a daredevil!)

Okay, time for another pitch for the crust-less quiche.  Yes, yes, less calories, less carbs, less fat.  That is all wonderful, but what I really love about it.  No planning and no shopping!  If I drop the crust from my recipe I don't have to have a special, perishable ingredient on hand to make the quiche.

I can whip these up any day of the year.  I always have fresh milk, eggs, and cheese on hand because I use them all the time.  The seasoning packet and frozen broccoli are nonperishable so I keep them around whether I have immediate plans for them or not.

TIP 6: After pouring the combined ingredients into the pie pan I arrange the broccoli so they are evenly spread out and are sticking above the surface of the quiche as little as possible.

TIP 7:  Assess the the cheesiness.  I always sprinkle some more cheese across the top, especially near the edges.  The edges constantly lack cheese.  I think it has something to do with the cheese not really flowing around in the pan well.  Make sure to press the cheese down so that it gets mixed in, or is dampened and squished down.  If too much of the added cheese stays dry or sticks up the cheese will burn and detract from both the looks and taste of the quiche.  I just push it down with the back of my fork.

Once the cheese is all squished it will look like this.

Tip 8:  IBake both quiches at the same time on the same rack in the oven.  Baking them on different levels never works for me.  I have a tiny oven, but can just fit both 9" pie plates on the center rack.  (By tiny I mean, tiny.  A standard cookie sheet, is 18"x13".  The interior space of my oven is 17 3/4" wide and 17 1/2" deep.  I really can't wait to redo our kitchen.)

Tip 9:  The recipe says to bake at 375(learn how to type the degree symbol) for 40 minutes, but I tend to bake it closer to an hour.  I check it every five minutes after the forty minute mark.  This time I took them out after 50 minutes.  They are a nice golden brown on top.

The recipe also says "or until knife inserted 1 inch from edge comes out clean."  Well I used to follow that rule, and my quiches would take over an hour, and end up a bit burned.  Still yummy, but burned.  I may have too strict of standards as to what constitutes "clean", but honestly I just think the quiches are done before a knife will come out fairly clean, even by my boys' standards.  (Trust me, their standards are much lower than mine.)  So I don't ever bother with the knife test anymore, but I did it this time for you.  It came out dirty, but the quiches are great anyway.  

Tip 10:  If you go crust-less, spray the pan with the oil of your choice first.  (I know I've already said it, but I did a comparison test for your benefit, and I want to show you the results.)  The quiche on the left had the oiled pan.  The oiled pan was much easier to serve from, and didn't shred the bottom of the slice.

Tip 11:  If you use the seasoning package as a spoon rest, like me.  Do not carry it to the trash by a single corner so it sags and drips a milky, eggy mess on the floor, like me.

Sadly this fresh mess did not inspire me to mop the kitchen.  (I hadn't written this post yet, and really didn't want to wait.  Who knows how many important tidbits I'd forget if I took the time to mop the entire kitchen.)  I did, however, bother to clean up the mess with a bleach wipe, and the remaining usefulness of the wipe inspired me to clean the general area of the trash until the wipe was thoroughly used up.

Tip 12:  Check the wipes container when you throw away the wipe.  Yes, check it again even though you know you closed it, because half the time you didn't.  (And by "you," I mean "me.")  Grammar gurus I welcome your kind input.  I know my punctuation in that last parenthetical is unlikely to be correct, but I'm willing to be flawed.  Heck, that's half of the point of this blog.  Getting things done, instead of getting things perfect even when there might be an audience.

Filing the Unfileable

I struggle to keep my home organized.  In reality it isn't very organized at all, but I know where to find most things.  I tend to have piles of things everywhere.  Things I want to keep or have to keep for some reason, but don't know where to put them.

I know that I simply need to have a home for everything I own, but I just lack the knowledge of where those homes should be.  Part of what makes this especially difficult for the majority of my piles is that most of the things that need to be stored together, need to be periodically accessible, climate controlled, or contain things of various sizes.  For example:

So I can't just file them away in my filing cabinet.  I've tried that.  It really doesn't work.   My solution:  spend some money.  Happy Birthday to me!  (I'm "thrifty," to put it politely.  So this was a tough decision for me.)  I think it was worth it.  Especially since I lucked into a sale.

I bought twelve Bigso Stolkholm Letter Boxes.  Two each in red, orange, green, turquoise, navy, and plum.  I wish they had yellow too, to complete my rainbow, but they look great even without it.

Now those ugly, messy piles of paper, etc. that made me feel so bad and unproductive every time I looked at them, now make me feel so good.  Not only because I found them a home, but I love the rainbow colors and they brighten both my home and my attitude.

Eureka! moment: As I was going to take pictures to show off my pretty rainbow boxes I didn't want you to see the post-its I had used to label two of the boxes.  They looked messy, and that was not the point of the picture of my pretty home for things I'm keeping.  (Feel free to ignore the pile of books.  I do.)

I know I used the post-its because I didn't want to waste the little card labels that came with the awesome, pretty boxes.  Ridiculous!  Especially since the little cards each had two blank sides.  Enough for a redo whenever needed.

Still I hesitated to actually label those two boxes.  They are only partially full, and my brain kept telling me I might want to change the way I've labeled them.  Then, Eureka!, my brain remembered that I use Frixion pens for my planner and I could spare a little of my precious Frixion ink and label my pretty boxes with erasable ink.

Now I've gone ahead and labeled all of the boxes, and they all look so much better.  Don't you think?  (Yes, I've straightened the boxes.  This is the "pretty" picture. No, I didn't bother to take care of the books.  This picture isn't about them.)

Recipes and the Internet

A few years ago I finally joined Facebook, and quickly joined Pinterest after that. (Yes, while testing that link, I got sucked in and pinned things.)  Pinterest has been wonderful.  It is fun, and helpful while being a major time suck as well.  It has been most useful for me when I use it to find recipes, and then to store them.  It is great being able to look up a recipe wherever I am.  To minimize the amount of time wasted when I'm looking for recipes I quickly learned that I needed to make notations on my recipe pins so I'd know whether to attempt a recipe a second time or not, based on how it turned out and how my family responded to it.  (To be fair, I've done this since my boys were quite little, jotting on my paper recipes the date made, any variations to the recipe, and each family member's input.)

Then I started wishing that my friends would note how they liked recipes they've pin, assuming they've actually made them.  (HINT, HINT!)  So I made two new Pinterest boards so I could at least do that for my friends.  Once I've actually made a recipe, the pin gets moved, along with my initialed and dated notes to one of two boards, Z Recipes I've Tried & liked, or Z Recipes I've Tried & won't make again.  (They have Z's in front because I sort my boards alphabetically and put the ones I pin into most often with the earlier letters.  E.g., A Crafts, B Interesting Design/Product.)

Now to provide you with something useful.  Skillet Chili Mac pin has been my most passed on and liked internet recipe.  I hope you enjoy it too.  Please note that the pin links to a recipe organizing site, ZipList.com which I haven't tried out at all, and that site links to the full recipe at DeepSouthDish.com.  I have been working on perfecting a crock pot version of this recipe, and will post it and my tips once I've successfully repeated it.  Wish me luck.

Picking a Name

Well, I've been thinking about doing a blog for a little while, but what name will convey something of the essence of the blog.  My goal for this blog is not to be a diatribe about my life, but to be a place where I can pass on some of the knowledge I have gained.  In particular, I am very frustrated by all the excellent pins and blog posts that seem so awesome, or easy, but when I try them they just fail.  So I wanted to pass along that info to others so they don't have to try the ones that fail, and to point out the things I've found on the internet, and elsewhere, that are truly doable, or beneficial in some way.   My name is Julie, often shortened to Jules, and my interests are quite varied, or scattered.  So I'm going with Scattered Jewels.  I'm hoping that this blog will end up gathering some of the jewels that the internet and my life have to offer.  Enjoy!