Author Archives: Kristi

I like to cook homemade food, but sometimes I just want quick and easy, you know? Especially on what is known as ‘Mama-TV night” which is Thursday, because I like to watch Vampire Diaries and catch up on recorded stuff I’ve missed. Wednesday nights we often have company. Kids are in and out all weekend – sometimes time is really worth a lot.

Beans and rice are something that I’ve learned can be made in a BIG pot and then frozen. Rice is especially great for doing this – it’s often easy to cook a huge pot, then freeze batches for other meals. Fried rice is MUCH better if you have cold rice to start with. Freezing rice ahead of time makes it easy use other left overs – for instance, to make some soup, fried rice, or when I have some leftover meat to use in a recipe with rice.

I make my rice just like it says on the package and it always comes out great. I put the rice and the water in the pan, heat it to boiling, then turn it to low, cover it and forget it for 20 minutes. I don’t understand the NEED for Minute Rice or appliances like rice steamers to cook rice. The only tricks to good rice are to measure your water and rice out carefully, and to leave it alone once you cover it up, until the 20 minutes is up.

Small packs of Mahatma rice are often free or very close to it with coupons. Once it is cooked, let it cool down, and then just place it in a baggy. Remove any air you can before sealing the bag, and freeze! To use it, I just dip the bag of rice in some warm water to loosen it up, and then I put it in a pan. Personally, I don’t like to microwave anything in plastic. I did write Ziplock ® once though, and they told me they do not use the BPA in their plastics.

Homemade beans are great and dried beans are always a good deal, but I always make too much. You can freeze them in baggies for recipes like chili later on. 1 can is 15 ounces, so just put in 1 cup, then ALMOST 1 cup (7/8 of a cup), and you’ve got it, because 2 cups is 16 ounces. To me, one HUGE advantage of this is less clean up. I only have to wash ONE big pot one time.

Note – The lady in the video is NOT me, but I am trying to ‘place’ this accent. It seems close to ours, but not quite NW GA. She’ll show you how to freeze the beans.
FREEZING BEANS: