At 7:40 yesterday morning, Wyatt was microwaving a burrito, Eli was waiting on two pancakes in the toaster, and Rosie was in her high chair working through half a banana muffin and a pile of frozen blueberries. I was at the kitchen table with my laptop and a cup of Matt's coffee that had been on the warmer since five. Nobody needed me. That was the whole point.
School let out May 22. Summer means three kids home while I still work my preschool bookkeeping hours, two days in the office and the rest at that kitchen table. Breakfast is the meal that falls apart first, because everyone wakes up at a different time and wants a different thing. So on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend I spent about two and a half hours filling the freezer.
What went in the freezer
- 16 breakfast burritos: 18 eggs, a pound of breakfast sausage, two pounds of potatoes diced small and browned, two cups of shredded cheddar and flour tortillas. $12.80, about 80 cents each.
- 24 banana oat muffins: four very brown bananas from the fruit basket, oats, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, two eggs and a little oil. $4.80, about 20 cents each.
- 36 pancakes: a double batch of buttermilk pancakes on the electric griddle. $3.60, about 10 cents each.
That's $21.20 for 76 breakfasts' worth of food. Eggs are still pricier than they were last year, and the burritos are most of the cost, but they're also the thing that keeps a ten-year-old full until lunch.
The order mattered more than the recipes. Muffins went in the oven first, because they take the longest and could cool while everything else happened. The potatoes browned in the cast iron while the griddle heated, and the pancakes went on in rounds of eight while the sausage cooked in a second pan. The eggs went last, so they were barely set when I rolled the burritos. With the oven, the griddle and two burners all going, it felt a little like a Sunday brunch shift, minus the tickets.
How I freeze them so they reheat well
Most of what I know about freezing food I learned in catering, where we'd prep a wedding's worth of food days ahead. Three rules:
- Cool everything all the way first. Burritos, muffins and pancakes sit on wire racks until they're at room temperature. Warm food in a bag makes steam, steam makes ice crystals, and ice crystals make soggy tortillas.
- Freeze flat, then bag. Pancakes and muffins go on half-sheet pans in a single layer for an hour, then into gallon bags, so they don't freeze into one brick. Burritos get rolled in a square of parchment first, eight to a bag.
- Label it. Blue painter's tape and a marker: what it is, the date and how to reheat it. Wyatt reads the tape. Nobody reads my mind.
The burritos go in the chest freezer in the garage, and I restock the kitchen freezer from it every few days. Pancakes and muffins stay inside where the kids can reach them. I try to use everything within a couple of months and check the USDA's freezer storage guidance when I'm not sure about something.
Reheating, kid by kid
Wyatt unwraps a burrito, rolls it in a paper towel and microwaves it for a minute, flips it, then gives it 45 seconds more. Then it sits for a minute, because otherwise the middle is still cold, and he's learned that the hard way. On weekends we do them in the air fryer at 350°F for about 10 minutes, and they come out crisp.
Eli puts two pancakes in the toaster and eats them with butter and a little cup of syrup on the side for dipping. Syrup poured on the pancake counts as touching.
Rosie gets half a muffin warmed for 15 seconds and a handful of frozen blueberries, which she prefers frozen and refuses once they thaw. She's almost ready to move from the high chair to a booster seat, and I suspect breakfast is where that happens first.
What I'd change
I put salsa inside the first eight burritos, and they reheated soggy. The second eight got none, and they were much better, so salsa goes on the side now. I also scrambled the eggs a little underdone, since they cook again in the microwave, and that kept them from going rubbery.
The real miss was the count. Sixteen burritos lasted nine days, partly because Matt discovered them and started taking one at five in the morning on his way out the door. The next batch, which is also going in the cooler for our beach trip in a couple of weeks, will be thirty-two.
