Muffins and breads freeze well, as does cookie dough or baked cookies and cupcakes without frosting. Pizza freezes nicely, as do calzones, cabbage rolls, savory pies like chicken or beef pot pie, meatballs and pot roast! Anyway, soup. One of my favorites is beef vegetable, but I have no recipe. I take every vegetable that I can get my hands on and chop them up. Chop up some beef into bite sized pieces, brown in the pan with some onion and celery. Add a couple of quarts of water and all the vegetables and cook until everything is done. Add salt, pepper, herbs. I like tarragon. If I have a jar of tomatoes open I'll add that, or leftover spaghetti sauce or whatever is in there. Leftover gravy? In it goes. Part of a jar of home canned beef stock? Double bonus, into the pot. I've used hamburger in this, venison, leftover steak, Italian sausage, kielbasa or a mixture of things, it's all good. I keep adding to the pot, adjusting seasonings, until it tastes good and the refrigerator is cleaned. (grin) It's never failed, but sometimes it grows quite large, which is how I know it freezes well! Good luck to your friend, I hope she comes through with flying colors. Annie

Nancy, I'm so glad the recipes worked well for you! The girls are all so cute, and they look like they were having a great time! I'll bet you had a great time too! I used to love doing stuff with my son and his friends when he was young. Now I'm going to have to make some calzones, just looking at those pictures made me hungery - the girls did a great job. By the way, your daughter is a real cutie! Joanne

I know the secret of Pizza Hut crust. Everyone above who said it has to do with the amount of oil used to coat the pans is correct. They use quite a bit to get that extra crispy, fried-like crust. That's only half the answer. The rest of it is SAFFLOWER oil. I asked at our local pizza hut years ago. I knew the oil was the thing, so I specifically asked what kind they used. I guess they were afraid NOT to tell me (what with people with allergies, etc) and I got the answer. That was the day I started buying exclusivly safflower oil for use in my kitchen. It's one of the very healthy oils, it's light (only slightly thicker than water), and it's got a wonderful flavor--so much better than canola oil. It also is a very good product for using on your skin (actually a component of many high-end skin preparations) and for conditioning your hair (but use only 1-2 drops, no more is needed). Whatever recipe you decide to try, try coating the pan with safflower oil before you bake it.

Make a broccoli soup and freeze it in quart containers. Sometimes I make a split pea soup and add a bunch of broccoli. When it is tender, puree it in the blender and freeze it. I baked a zucchini cake for my sister who cut it up by the slice and froze it and she said it turned out perfect. It tastes like a carrot cake. ZUCCHINI cake 2 c sugar 1 c cooking oil 3 eggs 2 c flour 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp salt 1 Tbsp ground cinnamon 2 c shredded, unpeeled zucchini, packed (about 3 smaller ones) 1 c very finely chopped walnuts (best to chop in the food processor) 1 Tbsp vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting Scrub zucchini skin well to remove all grit before shredding it--use a vegetable brush if you have one. Mix sugar, oil and eggs on medium speed of mixer for 4 minutes. Fold shredded zucchini, nuts and vanilla into sugar mixture. Sift dry ingredients and fold into batter. Bake in a greased tube pan at 350 degrees for 60 to 65 minutes. Cool in pan on cooling rack 20 minutes and turn out on rack to finish cooling. Cream Cheese Frosting 3 c powdered sugar, sifted 2 (3 oz) packages of cream cheese, softened to room temperature 5 Tbsp butter, softened 1 tsp lemon extract. Beat thoroughly and frost your cake