Kennewick food blogger shows you how to cook, freeze and save money

Karrie Truman’s great-grandparents homesteaded in Franklin County in the 1930s and passed along their love of self-sufficiency.

Now, the popular Kennewick-based blogger who offers advice ranging from couponing and saving money to feeding a large family at happymoneysaver.com is out with the ultimate guide to preparing freezer meals for hungry families.

Her book, “Seriously Good Freezer Meals,” published by Toronto-based Robert Rose, was released last month.

Truman will sign copies from 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday at Fountain Books, 8508 W. Gage Blvd., Suite C-103, in Kennewick. It also is available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble.

Truman traces her love of cooking to growing up in a large family with deep roots in the Mid-Columbia. One set of great-grandparent’s arrived from Nebraska in the ‘30s with her infant grandmother in tow. Her father’s family homesteaded in Eltopia.

Her own parents had six children and her mother, a nurse, came up with the clever idea of assigning each child a special menu to prepare, starting at about age 10. Truman’s specialty was oven-baked chicken but she relishes the sense of pride she felt when her family raved about special additions, such as pie or some new dish.

“(The praise) would be enough to feed your ego for a month,” she recalled.

As she grew older, she worked her way through the classic red-and-white Betty Crocker cookbook, starting with the sweets and moving on to more complicated entrees. When she married, she brought along her love of cooking.

“I really loved cooking for my husband,” she said.

But when twins arrived 18 years ago, planned meals took a backseat to the chaos, and she confesses she occasionally served cereal for dinner. The incident reawakened her love of cooking and she sought a better way in the form of a freezer cooking class. She was hooked.

Truman transformed her housekeeping savvy into a blogger. She began writing about couponing and offering tips homemade recipes for cleaning supplies.

Her recipe for a carpet cleaning concentrate remains her all-time most-viewed. As her couponing and other advise caught on, she found herself making a living at blogging, working with sponsors and advertisers.

The mother of four began adding freezer recipes chiefly for her sisters and interest in her blog soared, leading to inquiries from potential publishers.

With help from an agent, she pitched the concept. Robert Rose signed with her, giving her an advance and a took her on, paying an advance and giving her a 167-day deadline to research, test, photograph and write about 150 recipes.

It was a daunting job, far more complex than the homespun church compilation she’d imagined.

Robert Rose sent a 45-page style guide and required third-party verification of the recipes. Each comes with a chart that translates measurements into metric and does the math for those who want to double or triple their recipes. Editing consumed seven months and involved three rounds of editors.

“The last two years of my life were strapped to a computer,” she said. “It was an intense process. I thought it would be easy.”

Her mission is to dispel myths about frozen meals and to help families both large and small with recipes.

Her recipes are frozen fresh, meaning they’re not cooked until needed, not merely reheated in a microwave.

Truman describes herself as picky about flavors and foods, a love that is infused into her recipes.

“There’s no right or wrong. You don’t have to cook 30 (meals) in a day,” she said.

Her own personal favorites depend on the season, but when pressed, she said her Seriously Good Chili is a personal favorite.

“You know something is good when you eat it for leftovers, even if you hate leftovers,” she joked.

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This story was originally published March 27, 2018 at 3:19 PM with the headline "Kennewick food blogger shows you how to cook, freeze and save money."