Batch Cooking! healthy, make ahead summer meals! (from the farmers market)

Hey you guys, it's Elizabeth. Welcome back to my channel. And today I'm gonna be sharing with you guys some batch cooking for the family. These are some make-ahead summer meal ideas that are perfect to use with all of those vegetables coming straight from your garden and farmer's market. In the summer, things tend to get really busy for I think just about everyone. So I like to take one afternoon and just kind of batch prep a whole bunch of food and make sure that we have stuff in the fridge that we can eat off of for a few days. So that's what I did today. So while we were there, I love to pick up some fresh flowers because there's a vendor there that sells the most beautiful flowers. And even though I have some growing in my backyard, I like to leave those to look at while they're back there in the garden growing. And so I like to pick some up as well to bring inside the house. And then I started by getting some cabbage rolls going. So I like to do this without any rice and I just keep it meat and vegetable based. And I even made my own sauce this time to go with it. So I started out by filling a pot of water and then adding my cabbage to the water. And I let that come to a boil so that we can soften those cabbage leaves. And while that was happening, I went ahead and I started preparing a spaghetti squash to bake in the oven. And all I do for that is I just cut it open lengthwise and I scrape out all the seeds. I give it just a little bit of a drizzle of olive oil and some salt. You could even do garlic powder too. And then I flip it over, cut side down and I roast that in the oven at about 400 degrees for I would say about 30 to 40 minutes. I like to actually let it get a little bit brown because I feel like it adds just a little more flavor to it. So I put that in the oven while I was boiling the cabbage. I like to have multiple things going on at once because it makes it go a whole lot faster. So if you can get good at that, it's gonna change the game when you're cooking stuff in the kitchen and doing these big batch meal prep days or even just afternoons. I wouldn't say I spend a whole day doing this but even just in the afternoon, it will change everything. So while that was happening, I went ahead and I started pre-heating my other little air fryer oven that I absolutely love. I'll link it down below. It comes in so handy if you only have one oven and you don't have like a double oven. So I like to use my countertop one to get something else going. So what I did was I took my heirloom tomatoes and I just kind of quartered them up and put them on a sheet pan on some parchment paper and drizzled them with olive oil and salt and pepper. That's usually my standard recipe for anything. I just put salt and pepper and olive oil, maybe a little garlic. That makes everything taste the way it's supposed to taste. I feel like it brings out its natural flavor and makes it taste the best. And then I put some fresh thyme sprigs over the top of that. And this is actually going to be our own tomato sauce, heirloom tomato sauce, even better, that I'm going to put over the cabbage rolls and over my spaghetti squash. So it's kind of a dual purpose recipe here, which I love to do. I love to make one ingredient and make it go into multiple meals. So that's what we're doing here. So I'm going to go ahead and pop that into my little oven and let those roast. And while that's happening, I'm going to go ahead and start on our meat filling for the cabbage rolls. So for that, I just used two pounds of grass-fed ground beef and I did some salt and pepper, garlic, a little paprika. And I also did sage, some rubbed, dried sage. And I also added a couple eggs and I mixed that up. And that is our meat filling that will go inside of our cabbage leaves. So once my cabbage was done boiling, I went ahead and just dumped that off and strained the water out. And you want to make sure that you let the cabbage cool down before you start handling it and making the cabbage rolls, because it will be really hard to do it if it's hot, obviously. So I let that cool on the counter and I got something else going in the meantime. Using the things that were growing in my garden, I used green beans, I used heirloom bell pepper, carrots, celery, onion, garlic. Once all my veggies were chopped up, I put that on the stove to kind of saute and I added olive oil, salt and pepper, and just got that going. And after my veggies were nice and softened, I added some water from my Berkey. I always like to cook with filtered water. So I added that to the soup and then I just put that on to simmer for a while while I work on the other things that we're cooking. So what I did was I actually just took some chicken wings that I had frozen in the freezer and I put them in the soup with the water to kind of make its own chicken broth while it was cooking. So while that was happening, I pulled out those roasted tomatoes that had been cooking, let those tomatoes cool for a little while. And while that was happening, I went back to my cabbage. You wanna start by cutting the end off and then you just wanna start pulling the leaves off of the cabbage. And then you'll just fill them with that meat mixture that we made earlier and roll them up. And I like to bake them in a baking dish that is lined with parchment paper for easier cleanup and nothing sticks. So all I'm doing now is filling those cabbage leaves and just rolling them up the best you can. There's not a perfect way to do this. They're all different shapes and sizes. So I just kind of do what I can, but I just roll those up and put them in baking dish. So after I had all of my cabbage rolls rolled up, I went ahead and went back to my cooling tomatoes and I pulled the sprigs of thyme off after they had roasted. And now I'm just adding in those roasted tomatoes into my little mini food processor. And I just like to pulse it until it makes its own kind of like marinara sauce. So you can go and make it really smooth like a puree, or you can even leave it chunky. It's really just up to you. And then for the cabbage rolls, I added a little splash of vinegar to give it kind of that signature cabbage roll tang. I don't love using foil, so I just put a lid over it and put that in the oven to roast for like at least 80 minutes. You wanna make sure those cabbage leaves get really, really soft and tender. So while that was going, I could work on other things. So I took the rest of those tomatoes that we roasted and I put them in the food processor and I pulsed those up. And that is just my regular marinara sauce that I can use on our roasted spaghetti squash. So once my spaghetti squash was done roasting in the oven, I just take a fork and I run it down and start pulling away the little strands of squash. And this is just a really nice light meal. It's a light lunch and you can pair it with meat or whatever you want. After I had everything else in the oven, I had my soup boiling, I had my cabbage rolls in the oven, then I started working on this zucchini pie. And this was so delicious. This is a wonderful recipe. So if you're used to like squash casserole or something like that, this is similar, but it's healthier and it's gluten-free. And so I just thinly sliced all of these and I sliced some onion up as well. And I sauteed this in a skillet until they were soft. And I saute it in some butter, some salt and pepper, you know the drill. And then in a separate dish, I just cracked in four eggs and I added a bunch of shredded cheese to it. And you just stir that up. And then once your zucchini is done sauteing, you're gonna let it cool for a couple of minutes so you don't scramble the eggs ahead of time, but you're gonna let that cool. And then I put that into a little pie dish or a quiche dish with some parchment paper for easy cleanup again, because that's key, of course. And then I put in the zucchini first and then I just poured that egg and cheese mixture over the top. And when you bake it, it's almost like a quiche. It's very similar to a quiche, but it's a little bit heartier and reminds me more of like a brunch or a lunch option. And I love that you can get in so many vegetables at breakfast. I'm a huge fan of that. While that was happening, I went ahead and I took the little chicken wings out of my soup because the soup was pretty much done at this point. So I just went ahead and removed those, gave it one last stir and checked it for seasoning. Put some water in a pot to boil from the Berkey. And I got that boiling so that I could make some fresh herbal tea. And I like to serve this tea ice since it is summer, but you can do it warm too. I do that all the time and it's really good. So what I did was take two tablespoons of dried peppermint and one tablespoon of dried lemon balm and one tablespoon of dried basil. And this is enough to make half a gallon of tea. So all I do is once the water's boiling, I just pour that over and I let this sit for about 20 minutes and make kind of a concentrate. And then I will dilute it later with just water. And I love it because it's cooling and relaxing. It kind of helps everyone settle in for a relaxing summer evening, which if you have little kids, you know that it's hard to get them to wind down, especially in the summer when it's light until like nine o'clock at night. So this kind of helps. Everyone can sit outside, drink a little bit of iced tea that's decaf and it helps us all to cool off from the heat. So it has the cooling effect from the peppermint and then the lemon balm. So the lemon balm actually helps to reduce stress and anxiety and helps promote sleep. Wholly basil actually counters metabolic stress. It helps to stabilize your blood sugar and blood pressure and actually helps with mental health because it has antidepressant properties. So this is really great if you want to elevate your mood, this is an excellent way to do that. So this is great. We all loved it. As you can see, even doing one afternoon of batch cooking in the summer really helps to keep those healthy meals on the table for your family. So I hope this inspired you to cook something healthy this week and to not be overwhelmed in the kitchen. And if you did, I hope that you'll hit subscribe because I'm making new videos every week now and I really enjoy making these for you guys. So I hope that you enjoy them as well. If you do like these kinds of videos, give it a thumbs up so that I know to make more of them and I will see you guys in the next one. Bye.