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Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Freezer Meals

On Friday, my mother-in-law and I decided to make some freezer meals. It was kind of a spur of the moment decision but something that we had talked about wanting to do for a while now. We headed to Costco with a grocery list in hand and several recipes on our phones. A couple hours and a LARGE cart later, we headed back to her house to begin the prep.
I mainly pinned recipes that did not require any cooking. The two recipes that I wanted to make were the Slow Cooker Honey Sesame Chicken and the Crock Pot Red Pepper Chicken.  All you do for these recipes is portion out your raw meats, vegetables, and seasonings into bags. You then seal and freeze the bag and you are done. I liked the idea of having essentially a fresh meal ready to go. It is just a matter of throwing in the crock pot. My MIL wanted to make jambalaya and turkey burgers. The jambalaya was a bit more involved. It required prepping and cooking the entire thing so that once you were ready to eat it, all you had to do was thaw and reheat in the oven. We decided to tackle them all. I am glad that the jambalaya was the only recipe that require cooking because it was definitely the most time consuming. 

Still, I was amazed at how much we accomplished. We worked nonstop from 4:30 pm till 8:30 pm and we made fourteen entrees! Not bad for 4 hours of hard work. It was so rewarding to get stuff done. I love that I am better prepared for busy days when I would probably cave and order pizza. Having stuff ready to go in the freezer builds a little bit of a buffer into my meal planning routine, which I am still working to flesh out. Now I smile every time I look at my freezer. I am really thankful I have a mother-in-law who wants to spend all day shopping and cooking with me. 

Have you used freezer meals in the past? What do you do to be better prepared for hectic schedules?

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