30 Freezer Meals in One day

Adventures in Cooking 30 meals in one day for two people

Well, This is my first blogging experience, so just go with it. :) A little about me. I'm a woodworker who spends her days covered in sawdust and enjoying being creative. My husband, David, is a professor in Mechanical Engineering. We don't have any kids yet, but we are in the long, exciting, and difficult process of adopting a baby. (More on that later.) Since David is a professor, his days and schedules are very unpredictable. So, here comes the problem. How ON EARTH do I make dinner for us. I HATE taking two hours out of my woodworking to make a meal that he may or may not be home in time to enjoy. So.. we'd wind up eating whatever we could easily make in less than 20 minutes. Usually, tacos, frozen pizza's or well, frankly McDonald's. We were in a rut.

I had heard of these super mom's who would have tons of frozen meals in their freezer ready to just cook and serve their family full-on 3 course gourmet meals. All I could think was, WHO THE HECK HAS TIME FOR THAT?? I'm obviously failing as a wife, since I NEVER do that, nor do I want to. I don't even have the excuse of kids taking up my time... Sigh what to do. Finally I saw one of my friends on facebook talking about making a months worth of meals in one day and freezing them all. For some reason I got a bug in me that I should try it. But where on earth do I start? Oh, I know. I start with my ITTY BITTY Freezer. I have one of those refrigerator/freezer combos with the side by side doors. Seemed like an awesome idea when we got it. Ice maker, no bending over to dig through a drawer freezer, and lots of space! yeah... "lots of space" was a dream. Couple bags of frozen hamburger, a few frozen pizza's and a box of ice cream and that thing is pretty stuffed. Halted my ideas right in their tracks. Heck. I even cancelled my service through Schwans since EVERYTHING has to be frozen, and I don't have room! UG. So.. that ended my ideas of freezer meals before it even began.

Months went by, and we both got really sick of Tacos. Eating out is nice, but really every meal is a bit much. January 2013 rolled around and we realized, to our surprise, that we didn't completely spend ourselves into oblivion as we normally do around Christmas time. While trying to decide what we should get with our new found "riches", the thought of dinner came up again. I mentioned that if we had a chest freezer, maybe, just maybe I could make more meals for us to choose from. Dave jumped on that right away. He doesn't like spending time cooking either, so the idea of plopping something in the oven to bake right before we eat it with little to no prep sounded great. So, off to my favorite store, Lowe's. (I'm a woodworker remember. This girl likes tools!) The chest freezers were not as badly priced as I thought they would be. We decided on one that was $329. To our sadness, they didn't carry that one anymore. The equivalent one was $450. UG! $329 was pushing it. So we could buy the one that was half the size, or resort to plan B. (tacos again..) Then the salesmen said he could sell us the floor model, which was scratched really badly on the front. I said, "Well, OK, but there will be a big discount right? It is damaged..." He gave us $100 off. So, that was a "SOLD!" moment. It lives in my laundry room anyway, who cares if it's scratched!

So, now we were all ready. Had my freezer, and knew I wanted to try this. But.. what the heck do I make? I sure don't want to freeze 30 days of Tacos... So, off to good old Google. But of course, I have lots of Super Mom friends on facebook, they may have good ideas too. So, posted on facebook that I had no idea what I was doing, but I really wanted to try it. Several friends posted some good ideas. I found great recipes on google, and thought I was all set. Then I realized, I have no idea what I can freeze and what I can't. Do you cook it completely, then freeze? Or just dump the ingredients in a bag and cook on the day you eat? hmmm. I'm lost again. After sharing my 'lostness', a friend said I should try the book "Dinner is Ready" by Deanna Buxton. (www.dinnerisready.com) Off to good ole Amazon. Ordered it right away. (And thanks to Amazon being awesome, I got the book the next day.) The book is GREAT! The first half is answering all these questions on how to do this. The second half is all the recipes you could ever possibly want. (however, I hate onions and pretty much every recipe has 1 cup of onions in it.. easy fix, skip the onions!) So I set to work. After that long explanation... Here is how I successfully made 30 meals in one day:

From the internet and the book recommended, I choose 15 meals to start with. Sounded good to me. There are only 2 of us so divide each of those in half and I got 30 meals! Next came the organizing. oy vey. That is a lot of grocery shopping. Thankfully, the book has software you can buy. You pick the recipes you want, modify them however you want and even add your own. (So remove all the onions in site for me.) Then when I had all 15 of my choices entered and ready, It prints out the grocery shopping list for you! You can even add or modify the shopping list. Very convenient since I pretty much have no clue what I'm doing. One BIG tip: Don't try to shop and cook on the same day. Trust me, both days will wear you out, and you just plain won't want to finish and you'll have a really cruddy day if you do it all at once. So, I braved Walmart and bought everything I would need on the first day. Day 2 was my cooking day. Since this is my first time, I had to buy a lot of "cupboard essentials". Things like sugar, flour, brown sugar etc. I had some, but I'm sad to say my staples were lacking. So, my bill for one full month of dinners came to $400. I would say that $100 of that was stuff I now have lots of and will not need to buy next month when I do this again. I also am bad at "couponing" and shopping around for better prices. So, I'm SURE other people can save some money on this, but hey, it was my first shot.

When I got home, I put all the dry goods on a table I moved into the middle of my kitchen. And I mean I put ALL the dry goods on the table so everything would be at hand for tomorrow's big cooking day.

I also stacked all the refrigerator goods on the same two shelves in the fridge.

So, now to organize all this! The computer program lets me printout the recipes complete with instructions. I recommend doing this. You can then write on them, and get them messy. At the end of the day you can just throw them away instead of trying to clean up the book. It also helps to have the print out separate so you can leave each meals instructions next to them as they are completed. That way you don't loose track of which pan of hamburger meat goes to which recipe and what page the recipe was on... And you get the satisfaction of seeing the "done" pile grow as the day goes by.

I had my 15 recipes broken into 3 preparation categories.
1. Crock Pot, 2. Stovetop, 3. Oven

1. Crock Pot meals. These had to be cooked on cooking day in a crock pot. My recommendation, only do 2 crock pot meals per crock pot you own. I own 2 crock pots, so I could do 4 crock pot meals. The reason? Most of these have to cook for 2-8 hours. If you have too many meals, you simply CAN'T cook them all in one day.
Now, this only refers to cooking day. If you have a recipe that only needs a crockpot AFTER you defrost it, then have at it. These types of meals are just in reference to cooking day, not to eating day. Here are my 4 crock pot meals. (I will post the recipes as soon as I figure out the best way to do it..)
1. Cream Cheese Chicken (2 hours) Crockpot #1
2. Swiss Steak and Gravy (4 hours) Crockpot #2
3. Italian Roast (6 hours) Crockpot #1
4. Crockpot BBQ Meatballs (7 hours) Crockpot #2

So, first thing in the morning, I got the first two recipes started. Cream Cheese Chicken, and Swiss Steak and Gravy. Couple of notes on crock pot meals: 1. The crock pot liners are awesome, except for one thing. If you need to stir or mix anything inside the crockpot... don't use the liner! They get in the way, and don't allow you to stir properly. They become more of a problem than a help. If one of your recipes calls for just dumping the ingredients in and leaving it alone, great! Use the liner. If you need to mix, skip the liner.
2. Since crock pot meals essentially need to just sit for hours without you touching them, make sure you write down on the recipe card what TIME the meal is done. (and set a timer, I used my husband and my alarm clocks.) Don't write down, "done in 2 hours." Look at your clock and write, "Done at 11:08am". Trust me, you will NOT remember when you started it. and, yes an alarm is going to go off, but if you don't know what the alarm is for.. you are in trouble.
3. The moment the first two crockpot meals were done, I stopped whatever I was doing and got the second meal for that pot prepped and cooking. One of my crockpots was working until 9:30pm and I started cooking at 9am, so they need to be filled and left as soon as you can possibly do them.

2. Stovetop meals. These are meals that all or part of the ingredients must be cooked on a stove top. I didn't worry about the number of these meals since essentially, you will only be cooking one or two meals at a time anyway. (Otherwise you loose your mind and burn stuff.) So here are my stovetop meals:
1. Beefy Spanish Rice
2. Shepherd's Pie
3. Taco Pie
4. Black Bean Taco Soup
5. French Dip Sandwiches
6. Jack Soup
7. Cola Chicken
8. Bacon Hashbrown Breakfast Wraps
9. Cinnamon Apple Pancakes
10. Baked Chicken-Bacon Alfredo

Stovetop tips:
Organize all your recipes that need hamburger meat browned together. I had 5 recipes that each needed 1 lb of ground beef. So, I browned all 5 lbs of meat at the same time on the stove top.

Then I poured the meat into bowls and set it on the counter with it's recipe card. Then I cooked each meal one at a time.

 

 

This worked out great. Saved some time, and made it more manageable without having to wait for each batch of meat to be cooked before adding the other ingredients.

 



3. Oven Meals I was surprised that I didn't have very many meals that needed to be baked in the oven. But, here they are! When you pick your meals, try to make sure not to overload your ovens. You don't want to be waiting on these all day anymore than you want to be waiting on your crockpots. For me.. this wasn't a problem at all.

1. Apple Cinnamon Pull apart Rolls. (OK, not a "meal" but an awesome dessert.)
2. Peachy Chicken

That's it! Only thing I can say about these, the Peachy Chicken was cooked in a normal baking dish, and then when it cooled off, I put it in gallon sized freezer bags. The Apple Cinnamon rolls smelled so good.. I was supposed to freeze them before baking, but decided to just make them and have them with dinner that night. We have been eating them each night for almost a week now and LOVE THEM.

So, If you have been counting, you'll notice that is actually 16 recipes. I didn't count the apple cinnamon pull apart rolls since they are not actually a 'meal'. But they were soooo worth making.

So, the order of business. I recommend starting with the hardest recipes first, and saving the easy or quick recipes for last. Why? because you will be EXHAUSTED by the end of the day. If you save the complicated or time consuming ones for last, you won't want to do them, and may wind up skipping them. Here is the order I did my recipes in:

1. Cream Cheese Chicken. This one was not hard, but it was the shortest time required crockpot meal, so I did it first so my crockpot would be available quicker. It needs two hours in the pot.
2. Swiss Steak and Gravy. This one occupied my second crockpot for 4 hours. It was my first try with a meat mallet! It was fun, and worked great. Had this one last night and it was really good. The gravy was very thick after defrosting. So, while re-heating it I added about 1 cup of water to the skillet. That worked great and it was really good once it was heated to boiling.

3. Baked Chicken-Bacon Alfredo, Why this one first? I hate handling raw meat, so I cut and cubed all the chicken I'd need for the day all at once. Get the icky part over with. I also cooked the bacon all at once. (needed for this recipe and for the breakfast burritos at the end.) Also, just to be done with the raw meat.
4. Beefy Spanish Rice. Next I did all the meals that called for ground beef, so I could cook the beef all at once and then prep each meal without waiting for the beef to brown.
5. Shepherd's Pie. One note on this one, it's covered with mashed potatoes. I have heard that potatoes don't freeze well. So, I made one batch of instant potatoes and put them on half the recipe. (remember, most recipes feed 4-6 and there are only 2 of us, so I divided them all in half to freeze.) On the other half I didn't not put any potatoes assuming I'll make those the day I serve it. I haven't been able to eat these yet, so I'm not sure the results. I'll post when we do eat them.
6. Italian Roast. This is the third crockpot meal, so the moment the Cream Cheese Chicken was finished, I got this one in. It needs 6 hours in the crockpot, so I wanted to get it going asap.
7. Taco Pie. We have eaten this one, actually on the first night, and I gotta say.. YUM! This is a REALLY good one. We stuffed ourselves and still had left-overs even though I divided it into two freezer meals. Works for me, yummy easy lunch when home alone! Assemble this one in disposable foil pans. It's impossible to pour into a freezer bag.
8. Black Bean Taco Soup. Yeah I know. More Taco stuff. But we do like  tacos, and these are very different from our easy fall back meal.
9. Crockpot Meatballs. This one had to be in the crockpot as soon as the Swiss steak was done. It had to cook until 9:30pm (7 hours.) but thankfully all it needed was to be cooled and dumped into a freezer container when it was done.
10. French Dip Sandwiches. This involves and entire beef roast. Haven't had them yet, but they smelled really good!
11. (Trisha) Jack Soup. OK, so it's called Jack Soup, but I don't like mushrooms and onions, so I modified it a lot. Since Jack is my last name, I just added my first name for fun. We had this one on our second night, and it's pretty good. I recommend serving it over instant white rice. And add LOTS of cheese. I used shredded cheese instead of the cubed cheese and I like how well it mixed in.
12. Cola Chicken. I have never cooked with a can of coke before, so that was fun. One thing though.. make sure you use cornstarch to thicken the sauce, NOT baking soda. I grabbed the wrong box, and baking soda and cola combined makes for a bubbly mess. oops...
13. Bacon Hashbrown Breakfast Wraps. These are AWESOME and super easy. And.. you can sit down for awhile while assembling the wraps! I cooked 18 eggs instead of 12 since that was how many I had left and no other recipe needed eggs. Then I sat at the table to give my feet a break and rolled each individual wrap. I made 24 wraps in all. (using smaller sized tortillas) These reheat REALLY well, and are very tasty. I have them for breakfast most every morning. Wrap them individually in freezer paper and use a sharpy to mark what they are on the front. Two fill me up for breakfast, 3 for lunch. 1 min 30 seconds in the microwave.
14. Cinnamon Apple Pancakes. These were a bit too thick, but I'm sure I could have adjusted the recipe some. They are really good though!
15. Apple Cinnamon Pull Apart Rolls. I can't say anything but YUM at these. They were so dang good, I didn't even freeze them. Just made them straight away and enjoyed eating them as a reward for all the hard work!
16. Peachy Chicken. Honestly, I meant to do this one around #4 on this list, but stuck the recipe in the wrong spot. oh well. Still worked out since while it was cooking in the oven, I was able to start the dishes.

Make sure you label everything and add the eating day cooking instructions!

I will post the recipes in a new entry tomorrow! I'm out of typing time tonight.

My freezer never looked better!

So, that's it! One other neat thing the computer program can do, is print out a menu sheet. (www.dinnerisready.com)  Then as you pull items out of the freezer, you can check them off. I taped mine to the top of the freezer with a pen on a string also taped to the top. This way, you know what is left, and you can write down which meals your family loved, (and maybe make a double batch of that one next time) and you can keep track of the ones that were only eh. Then you know which to skip for a month and try a new recipe!

There is no magic way to do this. Just be willing to be messy for a day, remember that it's only ONE day and you won't have to do it again all month. It took me 9 and a half hours from start to finish. (and by finish I mean clean up this messy kitchen and have all the food put away.)

 

 

9 1/2 hours and we are set for the month. And considering we do like to eat out on occasion we are probably set for 5-6 weeks. Not too bad! When you do this, know that you will be tired at the end of the day. Make sure you can be distraction free. (give the kids to grandma for the day.) It takes a bit of concentration, but is very worth not having to eat quick-prep tacos everyday.

 

I was a bit tired at the end of the day when my husband came home... But notice.. the last dirty dish on the table with me and a cooked taco pie on the counter behind me ready for us to eat dinner!