A long time ago, I went to a homemaking meeting ( back when it was still called that)and one of the topics was freezer cooking. I wasn't sure exactly what they were talking about but I was totally interested in it. Once the girl started I was sold. I was already to implement this new way of cooking into my life. If you have never heard of freezer cooking, it just means making double or triple of a recipe and freezing them, to pull it out later. Some do it all on one day, some do one day of main dishes and another day of say cookies or breads. It sounded right up my alley...except for one small thing. Or a couple...
1) we were poor starving college students, we could barely afford rent let alone a membership to Costco
2) Ben was gone at school a lot
3) We only had Harmony...and she wasn't even eating baby food yet.
So I decided not to do it. The kids didn't really start eating all that much until we were living in Norfolk. I didn't do it then either because they had double coupon stores and my freezer and pantry were constantly stocked. (Those were the good ol' days huh Angie?)
Now being over here, my kids are really starting to eat. A bowl of cereal for breakfast is just not going to cut it. They are constantly eating. Plus, our lives are a lot crazier. With Girl Scouts, church callings/functions, wardroom functions, birthdays, and everything else that we are bombarded with. So I decided that now is the time.
I made what I thought was an enormous meatloaf, only to have the kids completely chow it down. There went my plan to put half in the freezer. However today I am on a roll. 2 pans of banana bars, one loaf of banana bread, white choc. chip macadamian nut cookie dough. Go me!!
Does anyone else do this? If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them! All I know is what I have been reading.
6 comments:
Hey Marie,
I've been going to do this for a while, but just haven't made the time to get started. Go check out the dinner diva's site (from flylady) she has a whole month of menus that you can stick in your freezer and their relative reasonably priced (okay for WA). By the way email me sometime, I lost all my email addresses. Julirae
I really need to start doing this, because there are a lot of times where I am NOT in the mood to make something, and we really don't want to spend money to buy fast food or get a pizza delivered so we eat something like mac and cheese. The kids like it, I don't. When Josh returns, I think I'm going to start this. =)
Deborah, last night, we were off doing errands right at dinner time. Ben had to be at the church so the kids were begging for pizza. Our prices are about $3 more expensive...well the price was $25 for 2 two topping pizzas. I was like you guys do you know what we could buy with $25? That is when I knew that this was the right way to go!
There is a cookbook called cook once eat twice and it has lots of good ideas, the thing I like is that you aren't eating the same thing twice you cook extra chicken one day and use it for something different a few days later or freeze it.
Not necessarily in the line of freezing, but a good cook ahead idea is the Make a Mix books.
I'm late on this, but I have a couple of ideas for you.
1. If you are going to make something with chicken in it, buy a whole chicken to boil or cook and then cut up. It's more work, but really tasty and so much cheaper per pound than chicken breasts. I can get 2 or 3 9x13 casseroles out of one chicken.
2. A while back, several friends and I did a frozen meal exchange once a month. There were 6 of us with similar sized families and we would each make 6 of the same dinner that had to include a meat (casseroles, burritos, stew), and then got together and exchanged them so we ended up with 6 different frozen meals, but we only had to shop for and prepare one kind. (I hope that made sense). It was fun to see what people came up with and so nice to have something to just throw in the oven when I didn't want to cook.
Good luck!
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