One of the many tasks on my list for this summer was to prepare a bunch of "freezer meals." These are fully (or nearly fully) made meals that you pre make and store in the freezer until you are too lazy to cook a meal, or have company and want a nice meal, or just don't feel like doing groceries. Last year I did this during my last week off before work and although I griped and complained at the time about how much work it was (about 5 hours), I was SUPER thankful throughout the year to have 19 meals in my freezer ready to go. It seriously is so handy.
I decided yesterday, that today was going to be my freezer meal cooking day and set aside the bulk of today to make some meals. Yesterday I went through my recipes from last year and kept the ones we really liked (chicken florentine, broccoli & cheese soup, balsamic and brown sugar pork chops) and turfed the recipes that garnered a rating between 'meh' (tropical chicken) and 'that legitimately fully tastes like barf' (beef stroganoff). I picked some new recipes that looked good, made sure the dishes were done and the house was clean, and made sure that I had zero plans for today.
It's currently 11:45am and I am done.
14 freezer meals in two hours.
I should pretty much have my own Pinterest website.
WOW! After anticipating a long, hot, sweaty, exhausting day, I prepared 14 meals (and did the dishes and cleaned up) in one hour and 58 minutes. I liked freezer meals before, I LOVE them today! And as I enjoyed half a cup of broccoli and cheese soup as my reward for working so hard, I saw in myself actual learning on this project. I learned how to make things go quicker, and how to get things done more efficiently. Here's what I did differently to save myself 3 hours of work today.
1. I did all my shopping yesterday.
2. Any meats that needed pre-cooking, I cooked in the crock pot last night so they were ready for me this morning.
3. I did a tally from my recipes of how many cups I would need of each vegetable and then cut up enough for ALL of my recipes at once.
4. I didn't pre-cook all my meats like I did last year. That was unnecessary work.
5. I worked on two recipes at a time. One that required sauteing, or cooking, or simmering, and one that didn't. That way between stirring and frying, I could mix spices and things together for the other recipe.
6. I pre-labeled all my bags last night and put all my ingredients on the counter so I didn't have to search for them today.
The only down side is that Arron and I made a deal that because I would be cooking ALL DAY, he would make dinner for us when he got home from work and now I feel like if I make him cook I'm kinda cheating on our deal.
If you are interested in recipes, send me an e-mail and I'll get them to you.
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