Hurricane in the Kitchen

I hope everyone is staying safe during this "Frankenstorm" that's looming. I am currently waiting it out after work was canceled (what? When is work canceled???). I spent the weekend preparing though, picking up canned food and batteries like everyone else. However, it occurred to me that I have a whole lot of meat in my freezer (all those buy 1 get 1 or weekly sales coming back to haunt me). Not wanting it to go bad, it seemed that the best decision was to cook a bunch of stuff and then freeze it again so then if the power goes out and it thaws, it thaws into normalcy and not spoilage. That's not to say that I don't still have meat that will go bad because that giant bag of shrimp that was on sale will make me very sad if it goes bad.

Step 1: Decide which meat to cook- two packages of Italian sausage.
Step 2: Search for appropriate recipes.
Step 3: Cook a lot.

I opted to make something new, an Italian Sausage Soup. It's one of those crockpot creations that requires little effort once the meat is made which fits well with my ambitious save the food campaign. But it kind of didn't come out as soup, it's pretty squishy pasta and not so much soupy broth. I think I did this wrong but desperate times call for desperate measures so it stays and will be eaten (none frozen from this batch).

Secondly, I made bolognese sauce. This sauce deserves a post all by itself so I don't want to give too much away but it's pretty simple and was immediately poured (well, cooled first) into a freezer bag. Hopefully for later. We have a theme here, lots of pasta items. I discovered last year that when the power goes out I can still cook on my lovely gas stove so boiling water is a go!

Laaaastly, I completed my preplanned list of things to cook before Frankenstorm: broccoli pesto pasta (see, more pasta). Somehow I ended up with two halves of an onion. Obviously I know how I ended up with halves but not sure how I overlooked already possessing half of an onion and chopping up another one, ya know? Oh well, now a half was used for this. The hardest part, besides chopping the onion, was the food processor part. I have an itty bitty food processor gadget so it took a lot of trips to chop up all the broccoli. It turned out a little bland but I only took a taste--before putting half of it in the freezer. We shall see but overall, lots of pasta going on.

There was a lot of cooking going on, not too many photos though :(

In addition to my frozen companions, I have the typical soup collection and bread. Now, bread can be used for the usual peanut butter and jelly (duh) oooor a grilled cream cheese and nutella sandwich. Again, another recipe worthy of a post in itself.

Stay safe during the storm! Hopefully Frankenstorm will pass in time for Halloween!!