A month of freezer meals in a day

I love food. I love eating. I love enjoying a meal with my family. What I don't love is the constant struggle that is deciding what we are going to eat for dinner. My husband and I have been together for 14 years now with me taking on the responsibility of meal decision making. In the beginning, I would just go to the grocery store and buy things that looked good. I'd come home from work, look in the freezer and cupboards and then come up with something to make. If I couldn't come up with something, we'd order out. It sucked and we ended up ordering out more than I care to admit.

Once the kids came, the freestyle approach didn't work anymore. Money was tight. We couldn't order out all the time and I was throwing away food because some would spoil before I used it. So I started meal planning a couple of years ago. I made a list of every recipe I know how to make and I use it to fill in a calendar for the month every month. When I go to the grocery store, I buy only the foods I need to make the recipes for the week in addition to our fruits, veggies, deli meat, dairy, etc.  I have found that we waste a lot less food this way and save money in the process. And the best part - LESS STRESS.                                 

That being said, I'm always trying to improve to make things run more efficiently. We've all seen the thousands of "month of freezer meals" pins on Pinterest. In theory, its a great idea and since I already meal plan I figured it should be easy enough to pull off. So I decided to give it a try.

First, we started with the meal plan. I planned out for four weeks allowing myself one freshly prepared meal every Sunday and one day of leftovers. Yes, the L word. I know, we're not crazy about leftovers either. But the reality is we do usually end up with at least one serving left over and throwing it away is like throwing money in the trash. After a few days, if no one has eaten the leftovers for lunch it goes to leftover night. If we don't have enough leftovers or we really don't want to eat it, then I'll do a breakfast for dinner night or a whatever is kicking around the freezer night.

The challenge to this was finding recipes that would freeze well. There are plenty of things we like to eat that just taste better cooked fresh. I went online and researched a ton of freezer meal recipes and added them to my list. Once I had my plan then came the grocery list. It was long, sloppy and handwritten so I won't show you the list itself. In addition to the food, I included a box of gallon sized Ziplock freezer bags and two tin casserole pans. The whole process of planning took me about two hours.

 

Next, it was on to the grocery store. Unfortunately, the day I had planned to tackle this project we had a two hour delay for my boys. This meant a significant delay in my plans. I managed to leave the house with Miss Emma at about 10 am. She did surprisingly well considering that we had to do a cart change in the middle of the trip because we had so many groceries (they held onto the full cart at the front). 

Overall, it took about 1 1/2 hours between two stores and cost a little over $300.00 for everything, including all of my regular weekly groceries. Most of the meats I purchased were in bulk so I ended up saving a bit in that department at least.

Lugging all of the groceries up the stairs (we live on the second floor) was not fun. But luckily it happened at a moment when my husband was home so I had help. I put away what I could and what needed to be in the fridge and then just left the rest out while I cooked.

This picture doesn't look like $300 in groceries, but I assure you that it was.

At this point in my endeavor, I had to deal with the obvious flaw in this wonderfully efficient plan. My beautiful two year old. She'd been lugged around and needed some time with Mom so I took a break to play and cuddle with her before jumping into cooking. Luckily she ended up falling asleep for her afternoon nap within a half hour so I couldn't have asked for better timing.

And so I began. I sliced, chopped and diced. I started with beef dishes and busted them out as quickly as possible. I made a huge pot of meat sauce and then used that as a base for my lasagna, stuffed peppers, and sloppy joe mix. What was leftover went into bags to be used for chop suey and spaghetti. Then I moved on to pork dishes, followed by chicken.



 

For each meal, I wrote the name, date and cooking instructions on the bag with a sharpie before filling. When it was time to put them in the freezer, I did what I could to get them to lay flat.
The only big mistake I made here was how I placed these in the freezer. Knowing my menu, I think it would have been a good idea to order it as the meals were scheduled so I didn't have to dig through the freezer to find what I wanted.

 

 

It took me about fours from start to finish to cook 22 freezer meals. 

Here is a list of what I made:

Savory Pepper Steak

(2) Sweet and Sour Meatballs

BBQ Cranberry Chicken

Pork Carnitas

(2) Southwestern Chicken Chili

Sausage & Peppers

Apple BBQ Pork Tenderloin

Pineapple Chicken Burritos

Beef Stroganoff

Bourbon Chicken

Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo

Creamy Mexican Chicken Pasta

Pot Roast

Spicy Braised Peanut Chicken with Chopped Veggies

Teriyaki Pork Chops

Lasagna

Stuffed Peppers

Sloppy Joes

(2) Meat Sauce bases for Chop Suey/Spaghetti

 

My response to all those posts that say it only takes a couple of hours - uhhhhh, no. Unless your Martha Stewart, or have no children, or have help, its going to take you a whole day to complete this process. Partly because in addition to the meal prep, you are doing load after load of dishes. A second set of hands would have been immensely helpful.

Having been a week into eating these meals, we've learned some recipes are winners and some aren't. We all loved the pepper steak and the sweet and sour meatballs. The alfredo on the other hand was just plain awful. But such is life. The benefit is the freedom I have from being a slave to dinner every night. Most of the meals only require a crockpot and a side. I can whip up a salad or rice in ten minutes and have dinner on the table with little effort and a lot less dishes.

I think for my first effort, it went pretty well. I am hoping that most of these recipes turn out well and can be used again in the future. I'll be keeping my eye out for new recipes to replace the bad ones. I hope this post has given you some insight on how to do this for yourself. Feel free to send me some of your favorite freezer meal recipes to try out on my next round. 

Project 66 - Update 3

I'm now well into a month of my little experiment. Happily, I can say I'm still going strong with a least two of my challenges. I even ordered my coffee correctly at Dunkin's! I'm quite pleased with myself for being able to resist the lure of their coffee with copious amounts of sugar and cream. Considering that my coffee is a habit I can't break, keeping control of the add ons is a challenge. I've also managed to cut out most if not all bread intake. I've had one sandwich since this started and didn't feel guilty about it.

Regretfully, waking up early has completely gone out the window. Between two weeks of kids staying home sick, holidays and an abundance of snow days (seriously, the kids have not had a full week of school since BEFORE Christmas), I've become accustomed to sleeping through till 6:30  am again. I know...some might say I'm ridiculous for calling 6:30 am "sleeping in" but the reality is this house is full of early risers as it is. If I ever want to get things done without a child hanging on to me (my 5 year old enjoys sticking his hands in my back pockets and following me around while I do chores), I have to get up before them.

Of course, with all of these distractions I've neglected to keep up with my writing. Hence the delay in posting an update. I have been working hard on projects and taking time to photograph along the way with the intention of writing about them. So I guess its time to move past intentions and into action, right?

I saw this quote the other day on Pinterest and really appreciated the message. I even hung it up in my household command center as inspiration to keep going when I have set back. I knew going into this that it wouldn't be easy. But instead of expecting and accepting failure so that I can feel bad for myself, I will simply get back up, dust myself off and try again.  I know who the person I want to be is and its up to me to become her.