9: freezer cooking round up

We’re in the single digits!! Baby here we come!

After a week of planning, shopping, and cooking, we are finally at the end of freezer cooking week. I didn’t get as much done as I had planned, but I have a freezer full of yummy foods to get me through those long days as a new mum, and a pantry with extra staples that will make life easier and tastier.

Planning the week was one of the most time consuming parts as I had to figure out the common ingredients of all of the recipes so I could know what I needed to buy in bulk. The Plan to Eat website made this process a lot easier by providing me with a shopping list for my inputted recipes, however it provided the amounts in normal recipe amounts (i.e. cups and tablespoons) and I had to figure out what that was in pounds, grams and ml for picking items up at the store.

I was lucky to have a lot of the dry items in my pantry already, keeping the costs down, but otherwise the total shopping bill came to around $200. With all of these meals in the freezer, I can go to the store with the baby in the stroller and just pick up fresh veggies and milk or cheese on a weekly basis. Exercise and low cost shopping! Most of the casserole recipes make around 4-5 single servings, so if I’m able to make one casserole/dish a week for the next couple months, I should be able to keep my freezer stocked with a variety of meals.

My freezer is now stocked with:

15 casseroles (sized to provide me with dinner and lunch the next day)
12 soup servings
6 marinated chicken servings
10 burgers
10 burritos (with extra meat to make 10 more)

I also have baking mixes, meat seasonings and breakfasts to make for more easy-to-prepare meals.

Here is the final list of recipes:

Soups

Potato Leek
Chipotle Chili
Chicken Tortilla
Cauliflower Soup (which I didn’t make this time)

Casseroles

Shepherd’s Pie
Lasagna
Chicken Spaghetti
Tomato Mac ‘n Cheese

Meats

Southwest Burgers
Freezer Burritos
Chicken Marinades (I found chicken thighs on sale, so I made up 3 packs today)

Staples

Muffin Mix
Hot Roll Mix
Taco Seasoning
Shake ‘n Bake
Granola
Pizza Sauce (in freezer)
Candied Nuts

The whole thing was MUCH more difficult to complete than previous times I’ve done any Once a Month Cooking – perhaps being 9 months pregnant really does slow you down! I tried to take as many breaks to get my feet up as possible, or to sit on a stool when chopping veggies, but my feet are still aching anyways. I am THANKFUL for some cooler weather so I can open the windows and avoid overheating in the kitchen, and for help from my mamma with shopping at Costco and for doing some cleaning around my house while I cooked.