Entertaining from the Freezer

Last night we got a call from some really wonderful friends. They were going to be in town and would we be around? These friends live about 90 minutes away and we've only seen them twice in the last year. Would we be around? ABSOLUTELY! So excited to see them, but by the time we'd firmed things up I needed to have dinner on the table in less than two hours and Mike wasn't home to help. Oh, and maybe I should vacuum and put dishes away and clean off the table and stuff? Uh, yeah, I should.

So what to make? Thank goodness for my habit of shopping when things are on sale and preserving and having things in the freezer. We had some frozen hamburger patties from when the meat was 1/2 off and needed to be frozen right away. I took it home, made it into 1/4 lb patties and flash froze them. Pulled 6 out and started defrosting them. I had a bag of homemade hamburger buns that I could pull from as well. (I promise I'm going to do a whole post devoted to making and storing these...they are wonderful!)





Okay, now we need some sides. I pulled a bag of corn out of the freezer for an easy veggie side dish. That day spent doing corn paying off again! I had some potatoes and decided to give this dish a whirl. I've read about it from two different mommy bloggers in less than a week. Can't be bad, right? It was great! And if the oven would be on to make the potatoes than I might as well make some corn bread. I grabbed a bag of the homemade mix that I keep around.

And again, can't have the oven on and not make dessert! So I pulled a big bag of apples out of the freezer from my little apple party a while back. Dumped those in the pan to start thawing and then topped it to make an easy apple crisp.

Everything getting prepped. Crisp ready, potatoes boiling, corn thawing! Sorry for the not great shots, but I was in a hurry! No after pictures as they were here and we were talking. : )

Dinner came together so easily and didn't take too much time. Everything was ready to roll and cooking by the time our friends got to our house. Not a lot of stress for me and very yummy food for all of us! This is the way I like to entertain...no muss, no fuss and no extra expense to the grocery budget. We didn't do any run to the store to get anything fancy and our friends commented multiple times that dinner was so good. In fact, the husband is an awesome cook and as they were leaving he commented again.

The best part of the night was jut getting to sit and catch up with some friends we hadn't seen in far to long. They got to play with the little guy and we got to hear about their lives. It was so wonderful that it worked out and I'm so glad I didn't get worked up about trying to make a perfect meal or stress about what I could have done with more time. When I got the call I just took the time to think through what could work based on what I had. In the end that was more than enough!

Entertaining from the freezer is fast, frugal and works for me!

Heather