Freezer Meals (Part 2)

It has almost been a little over three weeks since we did out first set of freezer meals and we are in love. We had 5 meals left over from the 13 we made and never ate out during the week once, nor did we have crap food like frozen pizza or burritos.  Actually, we haven’t even gone out to eat for lunch during the week either, every dish we have made has had one or two days of leftovers for Tim and I to take for lunch. We are in love with these meals because….. Tim gets home at 5:00p, puts a casserole in the oven or finishes off the side dish for our crock-pot meal (which is canned veggies or something super easy). I get home at 6:00p and dinner is completed and the table is set. We are eating by 6:10p and cleaning up dishes by 6:30p, leaving us about a hour and a half with the boys before they have to go to bed.

This process is really easy. Start off by researching recipes that can be frozen either in a baking dish or freezer bag. I have been sticking with recipes that have 3-5 ingredients, this helps cut down prep time.  I have picked anywhere between 15-20 recipes.  Then I narrow down my recipes by common recipes so I can buy in bulk, normally narrowing it down to 12-15 meals.  For instance this week we did a few pork meals so we researched prices at various places and ended up finding the pork chop for under $2 a pound. Keeping ingredients common within recipes also saves on the pocket book.   You also want to try to find meals that can use up some of the stuff that you already have. Once you have your recipes picked out then you go to your pantry and mark off the items you do not have to purchase and compile your list from there.

Our first time around I spent about $175 for the 13 meals that we made which comes out to be about $4.48 per person per dinner (this is for one serving per dish). This time around we spent $112 for 12 meals (Aldi’s shopping woot-woot) which brings us to $3.11 per person per dinner (again one serving per dish).

This time around we did more crock-pot meals then casseroles, mainly because there is less prep. It still took us about 4 hours from the time we started until the last dish was washed (we don’t have a dishwasher).

Here are the meals we made this week:

Hawaiian Chicken

Creamy Italian Chicken

Chicken Fajitas

Crockpot Ranch Porkchops

Italian PorkHoagie

King Ranch Casserole

Spicy Beef & Bean Chili

Hamburger Pie

Beefy Hash Brown Potato Casserole

Chili Chicken Wings (wings were substituted for tenders)

Crockpot Cube Steak and Gravy

Crockpot Buffalo Chicken Cheesesteaks

If you have make bulk meals and froze them please share some of your recipes with me. If you have a question on how I converted some of the prepare and serve meals to prepare and freeze, please ask, I will be happy to answer.