Freezer Cooking

A few posts ago I mentioned that I had been freezer cooking and I was loving it.  I have been meaning to blog about my adventures in freezer cooking for a while so here it goes.

My friend Amy posed the idea of regularly freezer cooking almost a year ago and while I was a fan of the idea I really had no clue what she was talking about.  I mean I knew she meant that we would cook meals ahead of time and freeze them to eat later.  But, I had no clue how to actually do this.  So, 2 weeks before Caleb was born we sort of freezer cooked.  I think we spent about 2 hours making some random things and froze them.  I'm pretty sure I ate everything within a week.  So, really we probably could have just put the stuff in the fridge.

Fast forward to 5 months later.  Amy brought freezer cooking up again and since I wasn't 9 months pregnant and didn't have a newborn anymore I was game.  We actually got together to plan our first cooking adventure which helped a lot.  And a week after we planned we embarked on cooking.  Since then we just do all of our planning via email and shared Google docs and get together to cook once a month.

Now to explain how it all works.  Every month we plan to cook 8 double meals.  So we each go home with 8 ready to heat and eat entrees for our family for that month.  Some of the meals turn out huge so we end up with leftovers for another dinner or a weeks worth of lunches.  I can usually avoid cooking 2-4 days a week (depending on how I plan out leftovers) because of these freezer meals.

Each month we have a shared Google doc with our cooking plan and one with our shopping list.  Because we do the cooking at my house I do the majority of the shopping.  It just makes sense to do it that way instead of transporting it twice.  We also cook the meat ahead of time if it needs to be cooked, chop vegetables, cook rice, beans and anything else that's easy to do ahead.  That way on cooking day we do mostly assembling and a little bit of cooking.

Cooking day is a little crazy but it's fun.  Amy starts the day by dropping of her oldest (C) at preschool and come over to our house with her youngest (A).  Caleb naps and Grace and A run around the house.  During this time Amy and I do round 1 of cooking.  Then Amy takes Grace and A to go pick up C while I clean the kitchen, make lunch and deal with Caleb.  Then everyone eats lunch and the kids all go down for nap.  And round 2 of cooking begins.  We have about 4 hours total of good cooking time and we manage to get it all done.

I'm going to blog some of our recipes soon but for now I'm just going to give you a list of some of the things we've made in the last 3 months.

Taco Soup
Goulash
Chicken Tetrazzini
Vegetable Soup
Penne with Chickpeas
Oriental Chicken
Zesty Pineapple Chicken
Chicken Stuffing Bake
Chicken Enchilada Lasagna
Chili
Meatball Subs
Meatloaf Muffins
Chicken and Corn Tortelini Soup
Southeast Asian Curry
Chipotle Macaroni Casserole
Chicken Pot Pie
Lasagna
Turkey Black Bean Soup
Chimichangas
Buffalo Chicken Calzones
Sausage, Eggplant, Tomato Pasta
Chicken Broccoli Casserole