Okay, so cruising through Pinterest I noticed a lot of pins for Freezer Cooking. The idea is that you cook a ton of food once a month and then you just throw it all in the freezer. Then for the rest of the month you can just pull out a meal, reheat and eat. While I love this idea, you have to be highly organized, ready to cook your brains out for one to two days, and be ready to fork over a few hundred dollars for essentially a months worth of food. I am none of those things…
I love the idea of having ready to eat food that you can just throw in the oven, or on the stove without a lot of fuss. I just don’t have the time or energy to spend two days on cooking, and we don’t eat a lot of casseroles or crock pot meals. So here’s what I did to maximize the idea of freezer cooking, that works with our cooking style.
I wrote down directions in the note section, so if Steve is cooking, he can figure out what freezer things he’ll need for that meal.
I did my weekly meal planning, just like I would any other week. Here’s the run down for this week:
Sunday Chili
Monday Chili Quesadillas (I love these, just add a few table spoons of Chili into a quesadilla, they are fantastic)
Tuesday Hamburger Helper
Wednesday Chili Quesadillas
Thursday Pasta
Friday Venison Steaks
Saturday Out/Leftovers
Then I looked at what I needed to do to actually prepare for these meals. My biggest prep day is for Chili, which I made on Sunday. I also knew that for the pasta, I usually add bell peppers and onion and a pound of ground meat to what ever jar of sauce we have. I had a jar of pasta sauce in the fridge, so why not make up the sauce now? Hamburger helper also takes a pound of ground meat browned. All of these things could be done ahead of time, frozen and easily reheated.
So I went to work, defrosting frozen meat, chopping the veggies I need, browning ground venison. The end result of a little over an hour:
A whole crock pot of chili (4-6 meals depending on how it is used)
Two pounds of ground venison, browned and ready to be added to anything (2 meals)
Two perfectly portioned pasta sauces (2 meals)
So now I have a surplus of between 3 and 4 meals. If I do this again next week, I now have 8 meals and so on. Plus, most of the prep work is done, which makes me much more likely to cook. Since I cleaned and packaged things as I cooked I only had about ten minutes of clean up. I just labeled everything with what it was, when it was made and when it needed to be eaten by (3 months). I wrote it all down on a post-it and taped to the container. Let everything cool down to room temperature and throw it in the freezer.
What would giving up an extra hour of prep work on the weekend give you? If you save even 10 minutes of work during each week day, what would that mean for your family? An extra bedtime story for your kids? Playing fetch with Fido? Cuddling up on the couch with your Honey? Organizing a drawer, cupboard or desk? This all sounded good to me too…
1undomesticgoddess 