Freezer meals take over

Yesterday I finally did something I’ve been planning to do for a long time.  I made freezer meals and a lot of them.

With school starting last week, a full time job, writing here and for the Examiner, keeping an exercise schedule, maintaining a house and having time for my husband, family and friends I try to find as many time saving tricks as possible.  Even though these took a long time to make, I’m hoping that it will save me time in the long run.

There was actually a lot of planning that went into the big day of freezer meal making.  Last Thursday I came up with meals that I wanted to make.  Once my friend told me which ones she wanted to do I made an excel spreadsheet with the ingredients and amounts.  This made it easy to create a grocery list.

Saturday I did my grocery shopping and Sunday we began cooking.  Here’s the list of meals I made.  Some of the recipes I followed exactly, but most I varied from at least a little bit.

Two pizzas using this crust recipe: Hawaiian pizza with bell peppers and pork, bacon, mushroom, spinach and feta
Almond butter chili x 2
Black bean and tofu enchiladas
Clam chowder
Sausage, mushroom and spinach lasagna
Italian mac n cheese
Pumpkin Lasagna
Quiche with spinach, mushroom and chicken sausage x 2
Quinoa chicken and broccoli casserole
Pork (instead of shrimp) verde enchiladas
Stuffed chicken
Taco soup

I ended with a total of 15 meals.  Half of the recipes I’ve made before and the other half I can’t wait to try!

Although yesterday was a ton of fun, I’ll be doing things a little different next time.

1. Only choose 6 recipes to make then double/triple them.
2. Start even earlier.  We began at 9am and didn’t finish til 7pm with the meals and clean up.  A 7 or 8am start time will happen next time.
3. Make more room in the freezer.  To stack the meals they need to be frozen which was kind of tricky with an already half full freezer.
4. Chop all the veggies at once.  I think we cut onions and mushrooms for the majority of recipes and it really could have saved time if we did it all at once.

Have you ever made freezer meals before?  What is your favorite freezer meal recipe?

My mom and I have made freezer meals before at home and also at one of those freezer meals businesses where everything is prepped and you just follow the instructions.  I liked that I could choose exactly what I wanted to make and lighten up recipes too.