Freezer Meal Ideas and Tips

I've been working on putting together my collection of photographs to photo-commemorate the year 2012, and was thinking of posting it today.  The pictures, for the most part, are images of very adorable children, smiling parents, and loveliness all around.  However...  given that today was one of the most difficult days of the past six years, it seemed a little hypocritical and ridiculous to put my "awesome family life in 2012" post up today.  (If you live in the Eastern half of the United States, it's very possible that you heard the echos of my immature outburst, the gist of which was, "I can't take this anymore."  Around 10am?  Yeah, that was me.)

So instead of completely misrepresenting the kind of day I had by posting something similar to a Color Me Happy Year in Review, and without actually talking about today because that dirty laundry isn't ready to be aired -----------

I decided to respond to the request of a few friends (hey, gals!) and pass on some ideas and recipes for frozen meals.

Some random thoughts to consider:

* I usually set aside three or four weekends for major cooking.  (usually in Nov.)

* I raid my recipe box and pull out everything that I'd like to make, then divide the recipes up into piles according to the weekend they'll be made.  I try to lump like items together - soups, casseroles with similar ingredients, meals with chicken, meals with ground beef, crock-pot meals... however you want to divide it up.

* I use the recipes to create a shopping list for each round of meals.

* I buy lots of extra gallon-size freezer bags and aluminum casserole trays at the Dollar Store.  I also buy Dollar Store tupperware if they have larger sizes available.  (I usually double bag the bags, just to be safe.)

* For soups especially, or for any meals that require a lot of veggie and onion chopping before you cook, I often have a "chopping night"  and enlist my husband's help.  I'll chop all the veggies and meat the night before and put them in ziploc bags so they're ready to go the next day.  For some soups, all the ingredients go in the pot at the same time, so they all go into one large ziploc.  But if a recipe needs the onions added first, for example, I'll put the rest of the veggies in a big bag, and the onions in a smaller bag within the larger bag.  I just like to keep everything as easy as possible for the cooking day.  Don't forget to label these bags too!
*  Don't make unnecessary dirty dishes for yourself.  Why use two pans when you could use one???   If you're making beef chili and shepherd's pie within a couple days of each other, cook all your ground beef together in one pan.  Then you can divide out what you need to use right away and what needs to go in the fridge for later.  Same with chicken, potatoes, etc...  (easy every-one-already-knows-this tip: if I cook more ground beef than I need - which I usually do - I freeze the extra to add to spaghetti sauce for an easy last-minute meat-sauce night.  Just a little review from Freezer Food 101.)  

* I usually make double of everything, except for recipes I know we all love.  Those I may quadruple.  When I freeze meals, most things I freeze are intended only to feed my family of 6 (wow!  I can't believe I can say 6, because the baby eats table food now!!)  Some casseroles I've made in the past and so I know the recipe leaves me with tons of leftovers, so I will make a double batch but divide it into three aluminum pans.  Perfect size meals for our family.  I do freeze some bigger meals to use if we have company.  I will label those bags/pans accordingly, so that I don't have to wonder which meals are the larger sizes later on.

* Don't forget to label your meals going into the freezer with instructions of how to defrost, cook, serve, etc...  

I can't think of anything else right now.  I have put some of the favorite recipes to freeze on the "Recipe" page up top. I can't wait to hear what you try!  And, if you have any fabulous recipes for freezing and feeding to hungry families, send them this way.  I love trying new ones!

Finally, if you're anxious to see 2012 in photos, check back in a couple days when it won't be so "off the mark" to post it!  I'll be *trying* to link it up with Dwija at House Unseen!  

My beautiful, wonderful freezer

No more cooking for me for quite a while because I'm DUH-UN.  (that's done with an emphasis, ok?)

My freezer is stocked.  It's beautiful.  Here, take a look...

Meals, meals, meals !  Soups, chili, casseroles.  The bottom pull-out drawer is all home made applesauce and berries we froze from summertime picking.   In the door is what's left of our freezer jam, frozen pumpkin breads (yum!), and of course - my Perry's Pumpkin Pie ice cream.   What did you expect ???  It's limited edition, so I have to stock up on my favorite flavor while it's in stores :)  

It's so beautiful it's almost a shame to start removing meals from it thus diminishing the stockpile.  But I'll get over that pretty quickly.  You know there are few things I like more than pulling a ready-to-go homemade dinner out of my freezer.  If my estimations are correct I won't be doing much cooking until mid to late  February. (we do planned leftovers.)    That was how far we got last winter before I had to cook up a second round.  Last year's second round conveniently came a few weeks before the birth of our fourth baby.  I was nesting in high gear and was able to channel all that prenatal hyper-energy into my cooking.  I actually made three months worth of meals in about 5 minutes.  Sadly, this year I may not approach the second round with the same gusto.  

So, what will I do with all of my new-found late afternoon/early evening spare time?  Stop. Right. There.  Let's not kid ourselves - just because I don't have to make dinner doesn't mean I suddenly have "spare time."  

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that I'm in a place in my life where even if a few hours were actually added on to the end of every day, I still wouldn't feel the effects of "spare time."  There is always more to be done.  However, it is my hope (and part of the plan) that in those last few hours of each afternoon I will not feel the stress and distraction that comes with preparing a hot and healthy meal while supervising (and sometimes entertaining) four littles.  I hope we'll be able to complete more craft projects, finish more puzzles, paint more pictures, read more stories, build more marble tracks, construct more forts, go on more excursions.  What a gift to my family (and to myself!) to be able to say, "Sure, we can do that.  Dinner's already made!"  

Go ahead. Ask me what's for dinner.

Go ahead.  Ask me what's for dinner.  It's a question that comes up a couple times a day around here.  It's often part of the breakfast conversation.  Sometimes I know the answer and sometimes I ask myself, "Hmmm... what is for dinner?"

There are seasons of my life when it's very ok to throw together an oatmeal dinner at 5:15 pm.  I won't pretend that it doesn't happen.  Thankfully, all of my old-enough-to-consume-gloppy-food family members like oatmeal.  (Except me.  Too gloppy.  Baked oatmeal, though, that's more my taste.  I mean... consistency.  Whatever.)

On non-oatmeal nights, I sure do relish the sense of accomplishment when at the end of the day we've actually had the dinner that I designated for that particular day.  I keep a very official weekly dinners list on my refrigerator dry erase board.  It becomes somewhat less official when a child erases it and I start to panic, "What was I supposed to make tonight????"  But, there are some weeks where I actually make all the meals I was planning to make and there are leftovers for leftovers night.  It all makes me feel so competent.

Kitchen competency.  It's become a very personal and touchy subject for me.  I'm not a chef or even a chef-type wanna be.  I don't do creative things in the kitchen.  I don't add a little of this and little of that and know that a meal will come out tasting delicious.  I follow recipes, meticulously.  Or I call my mom.  She's very helpful to me; I ask her things like "Can you freeze wine" and "I just found a three-year-old steak in my freezer.  Is it safe to give to the kids or should I test it on my husband first?"  I still have to call my mom to get instructions on how to hard boil an egg.  Even though I have the recipe for it in my recipe box.  I'm not kidding.  It's not my mother's fault that I lack kitchen confidence.  She taught me a lot about baking and cooking when I was younger (and she still does, apparently.)  I recall making muffins from a box mix and trying recipes from a kids cookbook, most notably Hamburger Pie.  And I was there when the one-time lobster splurge went into the pot.  And yet, something must have happened along the way, something I've repressed, because to this day, much of my self worth hinges on whether or not I can make a dinner that my family will appreciate.

I definitely don't have creativity in the kitchen going for me.  But I have other strengths.  Yes, I do.  I can research, plan, and prep with the best of them and I've gotten pretty darn good at producing mass quantities of... well, just about anything.  And a couple years ago my husband got me a gift that says I love you like no other... an upright freezer.  So, my skills combined with that kind of storage capacity... you can see where this is going.

Every Autumn the weather gets cooler and I get "the bug."  It's been coming on gradually the last month or so - a doubled soup recipe here, an extra batch of applesauce tossed in the freezer there.  But yesterday was the transition day - it went from gradual to get-out-of-my-way-it's-full-speed-ahead.  Last night I was on a homemaking high.  With the kiddos in bed at 6:45, and the bottle of Chardonnay my husband brought home, there was no stopping me.  Batches of granola were flying in and out of the oven.  (not a dinner food, but still an important staple around here.)  Multiple casseroles were were packaged up and sent to the freezer.  I put together six gallon-bag Crock Pot freezer meals for friends - I like freezing dinners ahead of time so much, I have a party each year to celebrate this kind of kitchen efficiency.  (Ok, not really a party, but a super great frozen meal exchange!)  This evening I bagged up six more Crock Pot meals to be frozen until the appointed time (to be determined by the dry erase board.)  After this initial flurry of meals, I have three more rounds to go until I rest: (1) soups (2) chili  (3) miscellaneous casseroles.

It feels great.  This is me in my element.  This is what I do to prove my competence in the kitchen.  More importantly, this is what I do to care for my family in a special way throughout the winter.  Meals are available, no wondering what's for dinner, no fuss.  I'm not flustered or distracted during the most critical time of the day (you all know that a perfectly fabulous day can be turned upside-down by those weird things that the 3 -5 o'clock hours can do to children and mothers.)  I can confidently answer "what's for dinner," because I made it many, many weeks ago, and it's written right on the bag.  On any given cold winter evening there is the guarantee that the house will smell amazing, the dinner will be hot, the children will have had plenty of afternoon attention from me, and that I will feel like a homemaker-magician hybrid.

So, go ahead.  Ask me what's for dinner this winter.  It's not going to be oatmeal... I've moved that back to the breakfast cupboard!