Not So Wordless Wednesday Ice Hand and Orbs Projects

Ice Hand in the grass.

So my cousin Ross did this neat experiment with ice that I thought was fun. He made ice globe orbs and made them light up with little flashlights. Here is his cool YouTube video of it...



We however were out of balloons and so we made an ice hand because it was below freezing temperatures here in Oregon. All we did was cut the bottom of the plastic cup and attach the glove to it with a rubber band. Then we filled the glove with water and set it outside in the cold. We didn't know how well it would work, but it set up really well.

This picture gives you an idea of how the Ice Hand was made.

What other interesting things can you do with freezing water into ice?

MyFreezEasy MyFreezEasy.com Freezer Meal Plan Membership Review

My family had the privilege of trying the MyFreezEasy.com Freezer Meal Plan Membership from MyFreezEasy for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum and family/farm life. This is a Homeschool Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family. Affiliate links are in this post. Thanks for supporting this blog.

Erin Chase, $5 Dinner Mom, is the brains behind $5 Dinners, $5 Meal Plan, Grocery Budget Makeover, FreezEasy, and now MyFreezEasy. She puts out a free weekly email newsletter that I subscribe to where she shares recipes, tips and tricks for getting the grocery budget under control. I have loved these valuable emails and delicious recipes throughout the months. I also follow her blog where she posts recipes, coupon matchups and deals, printable coupons, and more to help save you and I money. Her Grocery Budget Makeover I cannot really vouch for myself as I have not taken this 10-week course, but from reviews I have read it sounds like it really works in cutting your grocery spending in half. FreezEasy is her freezer cooking meal plans that will help you prepare 10 delicious meals to load into your freezer in under an hour. MyFreezEasy is new. It is similar to Basic FreezEasy, but gives you even more control to personalize the plan.

The MyFreezEasy Premium Annual Membership gives you access to the online program and website for a whole year. Each month members have access to all eight meal plans to download: Traditional, Gluten-Free, Slow Cooker, Clean Eats, 20 Meals, All Chicken, All Ground Beef, All Pork Chops. The majority of the months meal plans have 5 recipes that have been hand-picked by Erin for that month. With these plans you make two of of each meal to freeze so that you get a total of 10 meals. These premade meal plans are all set for only 4 servings...so if you need more or less it is wonderful that MyFreezEasy Premium plan has the opportunity to Build Your Own Meal Plans unlike the Basic FreezEasy that only lets you purchase premade ones.



Along with the freezer cooking plan downloads you get a number of bonuses. First, you can also get a overview of the program by going to the How MyFreezEasy Works Resources and Instructions page which includes a how-to PDF, a Favorite Side Dish Recipes E-Cookbook to download, and a link to the Freezer Cooking Workshop videos to get you started. You can also download printable labels for each meal plan (that she recommends be printed on Avery #6874 sticker paper). Each month, they release highlights & tips videos for all 8 new meal plans, along with 1 assembly instruction video for the Traditional Plan in the Video Library. These assist with the production of making the freezer meals.

From the Build Your Own Meal Plans area you could select the recipe by three different aspects on this page: Type of Protein, Cooking Method, and Dietary Preferences. In each of these search categories they have the recipes further narrowed down. In Type of Protein you could pick from Chicken Recipes, Ground Beef Recipes, Other Beef Recipes, Pork Chop Recipes, Other Pork Recipes, Seafood Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes. In Cooking Method you could pick from Slow Cooker Recipes, Dutch Oven or Saucepan Recipes, Baked Recipes, Skillet Recipes, Grill Recipes, and One Dish Meals. In Dietary Preferences you could pick from My Favorites, Gluten-Free Recipes, Dairy Free Recipes, Gluten Dairy Soy-Free Recipes, Paleo/Whole30 Recipes, and Top 8 Allergy Free Recipes.

MyFreezEasy: 1. Search Categories, 2. Select Your Recipes, 3. Print/Download Your Meal Plan

Once you select one of these categories you can pick from the recipes listed in that certain one. You can click on each recipe title to see a popup of the actual recipe and also choose the serving size (2, 4, 6,or 8) in the drop down menu. You can then either drag and drop 5 recipes you want to prepare in the drop box or add them to it with the + sign from the popup of the recipe. You can go back to the main menu and select a different category as well for more recipes. You can also clear the whole drop box list or drag the recipes you don't want out of the box one by one. After you have selected 5 recipes total for the My FreezEasy Recipes drop box with the correct serving size you can hit the Review and Print button. This will take you to another page to see the 5 that you picked for one final look over before you press Print My Meal Plan and Print Labels (which actually downloads 2 separate printable PDF files onto your computer). You can also select Email which emails you the Complete Shopping List by Recipe with handy check boxes beside each item to take with you to the grocery store.

Each meal plan PDF for 5 recipes is laid out for easy instruction. Each one has the Recipes, Shopping Lists (Complete Shopping List by Recipe, Complete Shopping List by Store Section/Category, Freezer Meal Prep Day Shopping List by Recipe, and Freezer Meal Prep Day Shopping List by Store Section/Category), and Assembly of Meals (Assembly Prep Instructions and Meal Assembly Instructions).

Each recipe is laid out well. At the top of each recipe you have the title, yield, active time, cook time, and a small summary. Then it goes into Ingredients for Single Meal, Cooking Directions for Single Meal, Assembly Prep Directions for 2 Meals. Under that there is Freeze & Thaw Instructions, Special Notes, Dairy-Free Modifications, and Gluten-Free Modifications for each recipe.

How We Used This and Our Thoughts:

We received the MyFreezEasy Premium Annual Membership which gives us access to the online program and website for a whole year! We started the membership back in September and also got access to October's meals this month so far. I made two of each of the 5 meals that I chose for September for the freezer so far. We have access to each month's meal plans as they become available every month. These were easily customized and I really loved that fact.

Freezer Meals -1 that we made for dinner that same night.

Having a family of 6 I couldn't really just go with the premade meal plans because they were all set for only 4 servings. So, I opted to make my own freezer cooking meal plan from the available recipes in the Build Your Own Meal Plans area. For September I made a list of 5 recipes that sounded good to me at the time: Baked Honey Mustard Pork Chops, Ranch Chicken & Baby Potato Bake, Roasted Cod with Pesto, Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Tacos with Mango Avocado Salsa, and Slow Cooker Taco Soup.

I had a few problems with MyFreezEasy...

1. When I went to change the serving size to 6 I think things got a little jumbled. The canned ingredients didn't really convert well and so when the ingredients lists were read, we had things like: 3/4 x 1 15 oz. can(s) black beans...of which I thought was quite awkward and to me really didn't make sense. Also some of the ingredients in the different sections had different amounts, for example, Slow Cooker Taco Soup for 6 says 1/2 cup(s) beef broth in the Ingredients for Single Meal, but for the Freeze & Thaw Instructions it says 2 cups beef broth. This is inconsistent and quite confusing.
2. The My Favorites online didn't seem to work for me. I couldn't add any recipes to it by dragging and dropping them into that section and when I hearted them from the popup recipe they didn't seem to go to that section either.
3. After I baked the Ranch Chicken & Baby Potato Bake I noticed that the potatoes in the dish didn't taste right. From what I am told certain ingredients including raw potatoes need to be blanched before freezing so they maintain their integrity and correct texture. The recipe never mentions blanching and so instead, the potatoes turned out gritty and watery...inedible in my family's opinion. The Ranch Chicken & Baby Potato Bake also took me the longest to prepare for the freezer because of all the chopping of chicken and potatoes (because I couldn't find "baby potatoes"). It also said to get bacon crumbles and I couldn't find these so I made actual bacon and crumbled it myself. This recipe took the longest and was a big disappointment, so I will not be making it again.

Roasted Cod with Pesto (top) and Slow Cooker Taco Soup (bottom)

All in all most the recipes that I prepared and tried were really good. I especially loved the Roasted Cod with Pesto (we made this recipe the same night we put the ingredients for all the recipes together) and the Slow Cooker Taco Soup. These didn't take me long to prepare for the freezer and they were delicious and easy to cook. I am excited to still try the Baked Honey Mustard Pork Chops and the Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Tacos with Mango Avocado Salsa of which were both also very easy to put together for the freezer. I am also excited to try even more meals in the months to come.

The MyFreezEasy MyFreezEasy.com Freezer Meal Plan Membership is well worth the investment in my opinion. Even with its quirks it definitely takes the edge off of finding something delicious for dinner and getting a meal thrown into the oven/crock pot/skillet/grill etc. quickly. The freezer meal prep doesn't take too long either and you can get 10 meals prepared in an hour although I do admit that it took me longer. I highly recommend this to busy parents everywhere.

BUY IT
Basic Monthly is $7 a month. Basic Annual is $77 per year with 1 month free. Premium Monthly is $10 a month. Premium Annual is $95 per Year with 2+ Months Free!! Get Started!

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Read other TOS Crew reviews for MyFreezEasy MyFreezEasy.com Freezer Meal Plan Membership...

Preserving Everything by Leda Meredith

We received this product free to facilitate this review. Affiliate links may be in this post. Thank you for supporting this blog.

Since we now have a farm and a homestead we are in the process of up-scaling our food production. We have already planted a small orchard and garden. Next we want to build a greenhouse and put in aquaponics. We would love to grow our own plate-sized fish with herbs, vegetables, and fruit to make a whole healthy meal for our family. Combine that with chickens and quail for egg/meat production and bunnies for meat, we will soon have a sustainable and healthy way of producing food. With the Preserving Everything book by Leda Meredeth we can preserve the foods we produce as well.

Leda Meredith is an acquaintance of mine that I met through some of my herbal, foraging and foodie groups on Facebook. She is a delightful person that also owns a blog called Leda's Urban Homestead and posts regularly about foraging and preserving foods. She also teaches food preservation classes and hosts foraging tours for the NY area. Not only that, she is also a highly accomplished dancer and dance instructor.

Preserving Everything: Can, Culture, Pickle, Freeze, Ferment, Dehydrate, Salt, Smoke, and Store Fruits, Vegetables, Meat, Milk, and More (Countryman Know How) is Leda Meredith's 4th book. This book is a gem to add to your library. It covers so many food preserving methods! If you want to know how to keep your harvest throughout the year this is definitely the book for you.

Here is the online description of the book:

"The ultimate guide to putting up food. - How many ways can you preserve a strawberry? You can freeze it, dry it, pickle it, or can it. Milk gets cultured, or fermented, and is preserved as cheese or yogurt. Fish can be smoked, salted, dehydrated, and preserved in oil. Pork becomes jerky. Cucumbers become pickles. There is no end to the magic of food preservation, and in Preserving Everything, Leda Meredith leads readers—both newbies and old hands—in every sort of preservation technique imaginable."

I have canned, froze, dehydrated and stored foods so far. I really want to get more into fermenting, smoking, culturing, and pickling foods. I have a Big Chief Smoker and I am ashamed that I haven't put it to use yet. When we are set up better I am sure we are going to put it to good use smoking the fish we grow with the aquaponics. I have made milk kefir, but that is the extent of my fermentation that I have done so far. I would love to try Kombucha (although this isn't in this particular book) and my own sauerkraut and then expand upon this from there. I love Feta cheese and would also love to make it as well as my own yogurt too. There are so many more things that I would love to try from this book!

Preserving Everything is well organized and easy to follow. The book starts with a great introduction and the gear you need to gather up for the preservation processes. Then it has chapters that are specific for each method of preservation with wonderful recipes in each. Lastly it has troubleshooting, appendix: approximate pH values of various foods, useful resources, index, acknowledgments, and a page about the author. I love that on some of the pages there are boxes of white text on a dark background. These are tips, tricks, and notes that need highlighted. There are also green pages with important information to know as well. This makes it incredibly easy to find the important information that you probably shouldn't skip or skim over. The recipes also seem like they fit well into the category they are under and aren't something that are too difficult or too gourmet. I felt like I wouldn't have any problems doing any of the recipes or methods in the book and I am not a professional cook by any means. Everything is very clear, simple and understandable.

I am so glad I have this concise guide and recipe book. It will certainly help my family and I with our food preservation. The recipes all sound so yummy. I certainly want to try my hand at the methods I am least familiar with so that I might become more of an expert in the field of food preservation. I believe that we would all do better with learning these methods and getting back to our roots a bit.


DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: I received this product for free to facilitate my review. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any other compensation for doing this review. This post contains affiliate links which means I may receive a commission if you click a link and make a purchase.