Saturday, February 2, 2013

Repost of my 32 meals in 3 days

So after being hopelessly addicted to Pinterest for recipe ideas I was inspired to bite the bullet and do some freezer meals. I have always wanted to do a months worth of cooking in one day, so on those days that I really don't feel like cooking I could just grab something yummy and homemade out of my freezer. I gathered as many family favorite recipes that I thought would be good to freeze and made a huge grocery list. Initially I sort of had a heart attack about the mass amounts of food I was needing to buy, but honestly its a months worth so it should be a lot for a family of 6. The day before shopping I checked out the store adds to make sure I was getting the most for my money and the few weeks before Thanksgiving is a great time to do this. I ended up buying the majority of my produce and meat at Sam's Club because their prices were as good if not better than the stores sale prices. All in all the groceries ran about $400-$450 which includes all the items needed to complete the meals (i.e. hamburger buns, sour cream, cheese, etc...).The second day was prep day. I cooked all 7lbs of hamburger and placed each pound into a freezer gallon bag. Then I cooked the 6lbs of chicken in my crockpot then shredded and divided into bags. I had planned to get the pancakes and muffins baked this day also but it was just to crazy so I actually did it another day.

The third day was the longest day by far but has been so worth it thus far. I tried to organize my groceries as to make the process smoother (i.e. canned beans, other canned items, seasonings, veggies, etc...). When all the other girls arrived to my house we got started. We started off with the ground meat recipes and moved through the lists. One by one bag were filled with yummy food and my counter was filling up with finished meals. The whole process seemed to take forever but we were stopping to pick up kids from school and eat lunch. I think minus those activities it would have taken 4-4.5 hours straight to finish.

So now for anyone who wants to try out my recipes here they are along with the grocery list above. The highlighted ingredients are not to be put in the freezer bag but are to be added when you are preparing the meal to eat. So far I have used a handful of meals and they've turned out great. Feel free to modify the recipes such as used minced dried onion instead of real chopped onion or pre-minced garlic instead of hand mincing garlic. Let me tell you my house smelled of onions and garlic for a few days :)

Ground Hamburger Recipes
Shredded Chicken Recipes
Boneless/Skinless Chicken Breast Recipes
Flank Steak/Stew Meat Recipes
Chuck Roast Recipes
Other Meat Recipes

1 comment:

  1. I am going to try this. I plan on having a 2nd kid soon and I think this will help a lot after the baby is born. Love this and thank you.

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