Cooking and Freezing for later

My sister, Leah June and I cooked this past Saturday: Venison Quinoa Veggie Soup, Zuppa Toscana, Meatloaf and Layered Cabbage Roll Casserole.  We made the soups in a roaster and big soup pot, mixed the meat loafs and baked them in mini sized, and made the casserole in small containers and then had 1 for supper Saturday evening - YUM YUM!

This is the Zuppa Toscana soup minus the Kale, we figured we would add the fresh Kale when we reheated the soup.  We doubled the recipe and used 1 pound mild Italian sausage and 1 pound hot Italian sausage, 8 potatoes cubed and 8 strips of bacon - fried and then crumbled into the soup.  You can get the recipe off of AllRecipes.com.  After cooling we skimmed the grease off the top.

This is the Venison Quinoa (Barley) Vegetable soup with Progresso Beef Onion Soup with low salt beef broth, a bag of mixed vegetables about 1/2 cup Quinoa instead of Barley.  The soups we let cool down and then bagged in quart size Ziploc freezer bags and ones frozen we are going to vacuum seal them individually.

This is for the Cabbage Roll casserole.  I have to tell you, I love cabbage rolls but really do not like the intensive labor involved - not for me.  This recipe is amazing.  My sister found it at Barefeetinthekitchen blog.  AMAZING and a recipe I will be making more often. This is the 1 pound of beef, 1 pound of ground turkey and 1 med. onion cooked together then drained. Then spices added and the rice.

1 medium head of cabbage, cored and cut in half and then thinly sliced.

Can of diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, brown sugar, & vinegar - mix together. We then added the wet ingredients to the meat mixer - although the recipe says to layer the cabbage then the meat then the tomato mixer - my sister and I thought why do it that way?  See below:

So now you layer, cabbage first (we divided it into 5 separate pans) recipe said to use 1-9x13 pan or 2 smaller pans.  Since is only us that we are cooking for we went for smaller portions.

We did not bake these before freezing thinking the cabbage would get soggy, but we did cook 1 pan and I have to say it had a very, very good flavor.

We vacuum sealed the meat loafs, cabbage casseroles:

 while everything was cooking or baking we would go outside to enjoy the beautiful day - blue skies with clouds and sunshine

Even our dogs were feeling the beautiful day!

This is Peaches trying to get Megan to play, but Megan just tries to ignore Peaches when she get rambunctious.  I hope you have enjoyed my blogging today about our cooking marathon and I count my many blessings and Praise the Lord for them.