My first attempt at freezer cooking
Hi Everybody in my blogosphere (and welcome to those who came from Pinterest). I wanted to share with you guys my experiences with my first attempt at freezer cooking.
What exactly is freezer cooking you say?
Freezer cooking is where you prepare (and sometimes pre-cook) your family meals in advance for a specified period of time (ex. 2 weeks or a month), so that you dont have to cook each night. You simply take out your frozen dinner item the night before you want to eat it, and then you put the thawed food in your handy dandy crock pot (shown below) that morning before leaving for work. Or you can put the thawed food into your oven right before dinner time. Either way, your not physically preparing and cooking food each day.
If your in the market for Cuisinart Slow Cooker (Google Affiliate Ad) just click that link.
So how do you get started with freezer cooking?
Well, you want to come up with a list of different things that your family likes to eat, than can freeze well. Not everything tastes good after being frozen. After you come up with your family menu, you want to raid your pantry to see what items you have, and what items you will need to purchase when you go grocery shopping. If your into couponing, grab your coupons and weekly circulars to see who has the best deals, and then go to the supermarket. I decided to do my grocery shopping primarily at Winco Foods this month (but I also went to Vons (twice), Vallarta, and the .99 store)
One of my couponing websites I follow, advised me that
K. M. Logan had her book the
ABC's of Freezer Cooking available for free for Kindle, and I downloaded it. (not sure if its still free, but check on Amazon) Yesterday morning, I read it and decided that I would go on my first freezer cooking venture.
O.k, I have my groceries, what now?
Its all personal preference on which order you want to complete the following tasks, but you'll want to do them all.
1) wash and cut up your vegetables
2) wash and cut up (if needed) your meats
3) bag them
4) label them (my handwriting sucks, so I printed out all my labels besides the cabbage one)
I looked online for my freezer cooking recipes. I started on Pinterest, then I went to a few blogs to get majority of the recipes, but here is what I ended up preparing:
1) meatballs (my own recipe)
2) meatloaf (my own recipe)
3) salisbury steak
4) teriyaki chicken
5) delicious chicken
5) curry chicken and potatoes
6) mediterranean pork chops
7) bbq pork ribs
8) pepper steak
9) beef and brocolli (first installment is in the crock pot now)
All in all I think I had approximately 17 nights off from the kitchen (a.k.a dinners).
Since its just the hubby and I, each bag contained just enough for the two of us (and maybe a little left overs for lunch the next day). So you'll want to make sure that all of your recipes will be enough to feed your family size.
I'm not gonna lie, its time consuming to do all of this in one day. But just think that if it takes you 1 hour each night to cook dinner, then 1 day of sacrifice is worth it, then you can enjoy whatever you want to during that 1 hour off from the kitchen. (ex. spending time with the kiddies, gym time, lattes with the girls, intimate time with your husband, boob tube time, or whatever floats your boat).
I think I liked doing it and will most likely do it again. Here are some pictures from my finished bagged products.
Have you ever freezer cooked? If not, would you try it?
hugs,
Tatiana
