I've been pinning freezer meals on Pinterest for several months and now that school has started I decided to try it. First I had to talk Richard into the idea which wasn't hard at all. For years he has prepared meals for our family 90% of the time but now that he's working full-time and long hours I've been on my own in the kitchen. He was happy to help and feel needed in the kitchen again.I learn a couple things.
1. Purchase your ingredients the day before you make the meals. We shopped at Sam's club at noon and didn't really begin until Saturday afternoon We were so exhausted by evening that we quit and had to get everything out to finish on Sunday.
2. Plan on making recipes with just one type of meat. We were working with chicken and ground beef.
5 Quart bags Spaghetti Sauce
The first thing were did on Saturday was put on a crockpot of Almost Homemade Spaghetti Sauce with 3 pounds of ground beef browned with chopped onion, 124 oz Ragu, 4 small cans mushrooms, italian seasoning, brown sugar.
Not pictured is 2 Sloppy Joe Meals with 2 pounds of ground beef, 2 cans Manwich. So we actually made 19 meals!
3 Stuffed Pepper Meals
We cut the tops off 12 green peppers and diced the tops to put in the rice mixture with 2 pounds ground beef, 4 cups rice/water cooked (made about 8 servings), onion, garlic, cumin, italian seasoning, a large can tomato sauce. Stuffed each pepper then placed on a cookie sheet and froze for a few hours before bagging. The extra rice mixture was placed at the bottom of each bag. 1 small can of tomato sauce will be place on top of peppers when we cook in the crock pot on low for 6-8 hours.
2 Baby Ray Chicken BBQ Meals
On Sunday we cut the tops off of 8 chicken breasts so we had about 3 ounce portions, then used the bottom pieces to cut into strips for the other recipes. Added 2 bottles of Baby Ray BBQ Sauce, vinegar, brown sugar, red pepper flakes and garlic powder.
2 Chicken Fajita Meals
We sliced red, yellow, orange and green pepper, 1 large onion with 3 pound of chicken strips, 2 cans tomatoes with chilies and seasoning.
1 Chicken Parmesan Meal
1 pound of chicken strips, seasoning, 1 can Italian diced tomatoes
1 Chicken Pot Pie Meal
1 pound of cubed chicken, 1 bag Campbell's Chicken Pot Pie sauce, 1 bag of frozen mixed vegetables.
3 Meat-loaves
3 pounds ground beef, 1 large onion diced, 3/4 cup milk, 1 egg, 1 sleeve saltine crackers, salt, pepper, garlic, oregano, half of a large can tomato sauce. We baked one meatloaf for dinner. I was too exhausted to make anything else!
This should help us for the next few weeks. I just don't know what to put in the crockpot tomorrow!
