solving my freezer overwhelm crisis, pt. 2 — when mom is away…the freezer provides
and like magic, everyone is still being fed by pre-vacation me 🪄
Ok, so my last issue about dealing with the freezer overflow situation sparked some real engagement! It got restacked and shared on Substack more than any of my issues thus far and brought some new faces to this space — thank you to those who commented, shared, and helped spread the word! In this spirit, I thought I would make this issue a continuation of that.
Originally, I had planned for this issue to be a summary of the first Cooking Club that I had hosted this past weekend — but I was too busy hosting to take a single picture. I’m just not that person, I did not get that gene from my documentarian grandmother (I’m sorry, Oma, but no one can live up to your paparazzi skills.) I do plan on writing issues about future Cooking Clubs, but a quick synopsis: Cooking Club started among my musician friends as a very fun opportunity for friends who happen to be passionate home cooks to gather on a monthly-ish basis and share dishes they’ve made under a shared theme. Dormant since 2017 or 2018 (I can’t remember which year because anything that happened before 2020 exists in an amorphous time bubble), I had really been missing it and now it’s back! This month’s theme was : Cozy Winter Favorites. On one of the warmest days of winter…whoops. But that did not stop us from enjoying a wide variety of winter dishes: from Chinese pork ribs to kimchi fried rice to lasagna to potato gratin to roast chicken (I cheated, I make this year-round) to collard + kale salad and desserts like French lemon cream tart and key lime pie (I see you, Florida Man 😂), with my husband making cocktails to-order, it was an incredibly entertaining evening. I am so excited for the next one! I will work on remembering to take pictures so I can write in more detail about how important a recurring social event on your calendar can be, especially when it revolves around food and cooking.
Welcome to Solving My Freezer Overwhelm Crisis, Part 2!
I’m writing this from the airport, on my way to another very important social tradition that I’m trying to keep on my calendar: A Mom’s Get Outta Dodge trip. I started doing this as a half solo trip / half friend trip when my son was a little over a year old. I was full-time momming — no daycare, no family in town to help, not working in a traditional job but starting to freelance again, just being the primary caregiver pretty much 24/7. I needed some time and space for myself, to find myself outside of being Mom. My husband, as he usually does in all things that I do, supported me in doing this. So I got on a plane to New York, had a couple weird solo days to myself (it is truly bizarre to be on your own for the first time in 14 months), got a tattoo from a fabulous artist in Brooklyn, then welcomed one of my best friends from college to tromp around the city with me, doing as we pleased for 48 hours. My husband had his own Dad trip to go out to Utah and go rock climbing with friends. We didn’t fit our solo trips in for 2024 because we bought that car through that program that flew us out to Sweden to pick it up, so that was kind of a big splurge. But I’m back at it this year, and I’m off to Charleston! So I’ll have a nice little travel issue for your inboxes next week 🤗🦪🍹
The real message here is this : mental health is important, y’all, and I cannot recommend doing this for yourselves if you are a parent of babies / toddlers / young children. Go get out of the house on your own, with a friend, with all of your friends. Be your own person for a little bit.
From the outside, it looks like the gender roles are strong in our household. I do literally all of the cooking, meal prepping and planning, grocery shopping — all of the tasks that have anything to do with food, they are mine. Not really by design, because I’m no tradwife, but obviously because I have this passion for home cooking and for sharing the love and knowledge I have for it.
So this situation begs the question: With the food planner away for 5 full days, does that mean there’s a fully fleshed out meal plan for the family? Does the pope shit in the woods?
As I wrote about freezer planning in last week’s issue, I figured this could be a convenient chance to start implementing the plan that I had laid out. The freezer purge begins.
turns into….
BREAKFAST
Thank God I froze some cooked millet because we just ran out of waffles. It was just an experiment to see how the millet would freeze and thaw — tried it out the other day and it’s not as good as freshly cooked, but it will do for our purposes this week. All my husband will have to do is heat it up in the microwave: add some dried fruit, peanut butter, and maple syrup and call it a morning. If he feels like it, he can go savory and put cottage cheese, green onion, and chili crisp in it for himself.
Since breakfast in our house needs to be super fast and super simple anyway, the other options I layed out lean into that. Spreading peanut butter on some toast, laying banana slices on top, sprinkling hemp hearts: this takes no more than 5 minutes. Maybe 7 if my son is *relentlessly* asking for something else (any tips for dealing with this newfound “is it ready now?” phase??) The smoothies take a little forethought to thaw, but the point is that when serving them in the morning, all it takes is stirring, putting a straw in, and putting it in front of the bottomless pit.
LUNCH
Lunchbox planning is now a thing in our lives, and I love it. I love seeing how excited our son gets about taking it to school, and I love how he loves putting his favorite foods in his lunchbox. But it can’t be overly complicated. We have 2 sandwich options and some snack-like materials because I’m not even sure what will and what will not appeal to him at the lunch hour.
SNACKS
We are currently going through a growth spurt, so we are in survival mode when it comes to snacks. We need food, we need variety, and we needed it 5 minutes ago. This little list is just here to supply ideas and help my husband diversify snack time.
DINNER
I did pull out a pork shoulder from the freezer before writing last week’s issue, so that was made into my favorite shredded pork for dinner two nights before I left town and put on top of some leftover rice mixed with my smoky + tart braised green sauce. This stuff makes the best leftovers — done.
I also had some leftover roast chicken from Cooking Club, so that got turned into chicken salad for an easy sandwich to make for our son’s lunchbox or for a snack (or preschooler snack-dinner) with crackers.
Now for the super easy stuff.
Pesto pasta. It doesn’t get easier than that. For bonus points, you could blend up a ½ pound of tofu with an 8oz jar of pesto. It would bulk up the pesto sauce and make it on the creamier side — without the cream, and a little more protein.
Pizza night. Cheat nights are valid!
Again, thank you for the motivation to actually act and do what I say. I really appreciated hearing from you all last week, and it helped me understand what resonates. If you like what you see here, and would like full access to every issue — every recipe, every kitchen strategy, every knowledge bomb I have to offer — you can upgrade your subscription below.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here.
❤️ Sarah
What kind of tofu do you put in the pesto sauce? Silken?
I love reading these because there's always something, like this braised green sauce...wtf is that...I need to try this out.