In an effort to get a little ahead for this coming schedule, I searched my Pinterest boards for easy freezer recipes. Now, my definition of easy is easy to put together now and easy to cook later. Simple instructions, common ingredients. I read through dozens of blogs and websites for ideas and basically found what I needed to get started in one place. Baked in the South not only had delicious sounding recipes but many of them were open some cans, dump them in a bag, add uncooked meat and spices. Done! Forgive me if I sound like a snob or lazy but cooking the entire meal then cooling it and freezing it only to reheat it when I need to sounds like more work than needs to happen. Freezer meals are supposed to be easy (see above definition).
So I armed myself with a list of 12 recipes (half from the above blog, 3 from a cookbook I have, 2 from another website, and 1 from my recipe clippings file). I searched my pantry and made out a shopping list of what I needed and got to work.
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| I'm keeping this list of freezer meals on my fridge so I'll know what I have available. Once we eat something, I'll cross it off or replace it with more. This list was my task to complete over 3 days. |
With the exception of the meatballs, chicken/turkey soup, chicken pot pie, and spaghetti sauce, I've never made or eaten any of these recipes so I don't know how well they'll turn out. Everything I read in the blog comments was positive so I'm giving them a try!!
When I got home from the store, almost everything I bought was for these meals so rather than storing them in the pantry and dragging them out again, I organized everything on the dining table by recipe and labeled them with Post-Its so I could easily grab the main ingredients when I wanted to make a certain meal. On the Post-It I also wrote what other ingredients I needed (usually the meat) to make the meal happen.
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| I bought aluminum pans with covers to freezer casseroles in because I didn't want to sacrifice my 9x13s to the freezer for unknown time. I know there are options for using glass pans...but these are just easier!! |
I divided the recipes into 3 days because of the schedule I was working with. Day 1 I had no meat to worry about, day 2 was all open and dump recipes, day 3 were recipes with a little more prep to them.
NOTE: Because I got these recipes from other blogs, I'm not going to write them out here. I'll supply the links, you can visit the original site if you're interested. I just wanted to summarize how I broke everything down and maybe encourage you to make a system that will work for you. :)
NOTE AGAIN: I was specifically looking for recipes I could move from freezer to crockpot. Not all of these do that but most of them you can. Before I start loading things into the freezer bags, I use a Sharpie to write the date, meal, and instructions. Then when I go to use it, I don't have to look up a recipe to see how long to set the crockpot or what to add. It's all right there.
So Day One...
I made spaghetti sauce from tomatoes I froze last year. I know sauce is something that doesn't take a lot of time but I had the ingredients and that means 1 less jar I need to keep in the pantry. I kind of followed Mark Bittman's recipe in How to Cook Everything: The Basics but I made it my own by adding mushrooms, grated carrots, and putting the tomatoes through the food processor to get the chunks out. I did have to cook this to get it thick but it cooled pretty fast and then into a freezer gallon bag.
Then I made Loaded Baked Potato Soup using the recipe from Baked in the South. She has 5 posts of freezer meals, each post containing 4-5 different meals. This was super fast: cut up potatoes, onions, (I skipped the ham because of my migraine trigger), load into a bag, done! Of course when you're ready to eat it, you'll add more ingredients, which I listed on the bag.
That was all I got done the first day but hang on!! Day 2 was fast and furious!! To be continued...
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