Getting meals on the table for a family every night can be daunting. Throw in school, work, sports, lessons, homework and everything else that needs to happen and it’s enough to drive any mom crazy. Until we reach the era of the Jetsons, with the push of a few buttons our meals come out hot and ready, there will always be a need to cook or plan to cook.
Freezer meals are the only way my family gets through the week without eating junk every night. To me, freezer cooking is a mindset. In part 1 and part 2 I shared how I have developed my own freezer cooking plans and tips on how to make a day of it run smoothly. I do plan on eventually sharing my actual recipes, but I feel understanding the mindset and the process is what can make or break everything.
But I can’t allocate a weekend to make tons of meals!
I can’t always either. Sometimes I just don’t WANT to. My freezer begins to look bare, the calendar is already pretty full and the last thing I want to do is spend a full weekend in the kitchen. If you saw my kitchen you might wonder why anyone would EVER want to spend an hour in there, let alone a day! The doors don’t close, we find screws in the pans and the drawer fall out if you open them too far. But, I knew when we bought the house the kitchen needed to be redone, now we just have to have the budget to match our design…
Enough about why I don’t like to spend time in my kitchen. Fact is, sometimes there just isn’t enough time to commit to a day of freezer cooking. Not interested in cooking from scratch every single day either?
Double up and bulk cook
I’m not really sure where I came up with that term, it just sort of happened. If you remember in part 1, I broke my planning down into a few categories. Those categories come in handy again. Develop two or more recipes that start with the same basic ingredients.
Often I find we’ve used up or stockpile of meals made with rotisserie chicken before the others. Costco recently opened a location much closer to our house, and I’m so excited about this! Now, when our chicken meals are dwindling, I can run in and pick up a few rotisserie chickens.
Just like on my big freezer cooking weekends, the legs get eaten that night (along with baked beans and fruit!). Wings are added to my bag already in the freezer. Maybe I have time to shred the chicken up after dinner, maybe I postpone it to the next day. Four large chickens gets me 8-12 meals! Even just freezing the chicken by itself portioned for casseroles saves valuable time later. An hour once the chicken is shredded is all it takes me to make up 2 or 3 chicken meals, a few of each recipe and one of the meals gets eaten that night.
Grandma’s Sunday Roast
Sunday’s used to be for big family meals. Why shouldn’t they still be? Generations before us started with large cuts of meat and used it all week.
My most recent cooking day I over calculated when making my homemade BBQ sauce. I didn’t want it to go to waste and I didn’t have jars on hand to can it and store it in the pantry. IronFish suggested pulled pork! It’s something we all like, as sandwhiches, over mashed potatoes, whatever. We ran over to Costco after church and as luck would have it, pork roasts were on sale!
We also grabbed a big bag of potatoes and a few breakfast and lunch items I hadn’t remembered. Pork went into the roaster and we peeled potatoes. Once boiled and mashed we were done until dinner time. Closer to dinner I portioned out the mashed potatoes, now cooled, and put them in the freezer. Added some butter to the remaining potatoes and reheated them. Sauteed some green beans while the roast cooled for a few minutes.
After dishing up everyone’s plates, I cut the remainder of the pork into smaller chunks so it would cool faster. The girls cleaned up the kitchen and I shredded the remaining pork after dinner. BBQ sauce poured on top of the pork in the bag and we had 3 more dinners from that one cut of meat!
Turkey doesn’t have to be for Thanksgiving
Our local grocery store gives away free turkey’s when you spend a certain amount of money in the fall before Thanksgiving. This same promotion is done before Easter. Prices per pound on turkey is also best leading up to these holidays. Why not take advantage of it and get a spare turkey?
Just because holidays come with lots of fixings, doesn’t mean we can’t cook a whole turkey and serve it with some StoveTop (or homemade from left over bread crusts…. from cutting all of O-Man’s crusts off, grr) and steam in the bag veggies on one of the other 363 days in the year. Without all the guests, that turkey is going to go a lot further! Use the meat just like you would holiday left overs or rotisserie chicken meals.
Quadruple taco night
Cook once, eat twice is a great concept, but why just twice? Instead of buying one pound of ground beef, I’ll pick up 4 when it’s on sale. It takes me only a few minutes longer to cook all of it, say for tacos. After dinner the night I cook it, I can freeze the rest into 3 meals.
This works for any ground beef meals! As long as your skillet is large enough a few extra minutes at the stove now will save you tons of time later.
Speaking of sales…
I can’t be the only one that has nothing left in the house running into the grocery store for chicken breasts because it’s easy, can I? We’ve all been there, so when you’re pleasantly surprised to find out chicken breasts are half price or you just hit the meat department after they marked everything down, grab extra!
Maple mustard chicken was created in our house after not having the ingredients I thought I had (honey mustard). Using whatever mustard we had on hand, I mixed in maple syrup (also out of honey) a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, crushed garlic, onion powder, salt and pepper. Spread it all over the chicken and bake at 350 degrees until cooked through (about 20 minutes). Rave reviews came from this creation and it freezes really well too. When I find a good price on chicken breasts I stock up and make 3 more meals in addition the one we eat that night.
Change the way you think about dinner
Kids don’t need to have a different meal every single night of the year. Rotation is fine and probably preferable to them! Seriously, ask them! I bet some of your simplest recipes are their favorites. Personally, I try not to use much processed foods. Common or minimal ingredient recipes are my family’s favorites.
Is your freezer full or bare?
