Freezer meal success!!!!!! (so far)

I work 12 hr shifts, so on those days dinner is my husbands job. He has to get home in time to get Fred off the bus, go get Barney from daycare, if it's Tues. or Thursday they go to Taekwondo, then come home and get dinner going. With evenings that crazy, dinner is usually pizza, macaroni and cheese or chicken nuggets. On the days I'm at home it's still hard. I don't know about you, but for me, dinner is painful.  Making the meal plan, shopping, planning, deciding what to cook each day and finally cooking. It's exhausting. Then there's always the question of whether everybody is going to eat it, or if even one of them is going to eat it? And most likely SOMEBODY is going to take issue with SOMETHING that's not pizza, macaroni and cheese or chicken nuggets. One time I made these awesome hot ham and cheese sammys on hawaiian buns with this brown sugar glaze. Nom nom nom. They were *snap*snap* fabulous. Fred took one bite and just sat there. He whined, "they taste like pretzels." First of all, no they don't. And second of all, what's your beef with pretzels? He says he doesn't like them. Well child I got news, you are the only person on the planet that doesn't like pretzels and they don't taste like pretzels anyway so EAT! And I'm left to try and not lose. my. damn. mind. when they turn their noses up at all my hard work. I have felt for a long time now that there's gotta be a better way. Why isn't this working for us? One reason I came up with is I'm a planner. I can't just fly by the seat of my pants with dinner or anything else for that matter. So my idea was to do a little planning and preparation with dinner which lead me to freezer meals. Basically the idea is to make a bunch of meals that freeze well, put them in the fridge the night before to thaw, and they'll be ready to pop in the oven the next day. Hot damn this is genius! THIS will work. One small requirement is that you need to have a deep freeze, so I had to spring for one of those. But if you've already got one, you're half way there! It doesn't have to be big. I debated between 5.5 cu feet and 7.2 cu feet. I got the 7.2 but really I think we would have been fine with 5.5. Up to you.

Next I went on the hunt for recipes........

Katie over at Happy Money Saver has some ideas I borrowed

Chicken pot pie (2)
Honey glazed pork chops
Lasagna

The ladies over at six sisters stuff had
Homemade chicken nuggets (these were good, but quite labor intensive)
Poppy seed chicken casserole (I omitted the poppy seeds. My kids aren't going to eat anything with black dots in it)
Easy cheeseburger casserole
Ricotta stuffed shells
Baked ziti

The mom over at moms budget has a plethora of useful stuff! There's so many recipes to chose from. I could link to a bunch of stuff but you can just go check it out for yourself. She also has these freezer meal list so you can keep track of what you have and what you've used. (This will be useful. Trust me.)

Can't forget queen Martha
She, of course, has all her shit all figured out. I hate to have to love her, but I do.

I used a few of my own recipes too. P.S. I'm not good at measuring, temperature for oven or length of cooking time. I always just kind of guess. So sorry, you're on your own with that part.

Pulled pork
Just throw a pork roast in a crock pot with a packet of french onion soup mix and a can Pepsi, Coke or Dr. Pepper with a little water as needed. Cook for 6-8 hrs or until meat pulls apart easily. Add BBQ sauce to taste. Eat some now and let the rest cool and place in freezer bag.

Enchiladas
Cook how ever much ground beef you want depending on much you want to make and mix with enough canned enchilada sauce to coat the meat. Toss in a handful of cheddar cheese and mix. Fill and roll tortillas and place in foil pan. An 8x8 pan holds 4 tortillas. Cover with foil and freeze. When you're ready to cook them, pour another can of enchilada sauce on top. When half way cooked, top with cheese and finish cooking.

Breakfast burritos
Put scrambled eggs, cooked sausage (whatever form you want), and cheese in tortilla and fold in half. I then put 2 in a foil pie pan, cover and freeze.

Breakfast burritos

Chicken nuggets

Chicken nuggets in freezer bag

Chicken sans-poppyseed casserole and chicken pot pies

Lasagna - Cheeseburger casserole - Baked ziti

Some people tout this as something that can be done in one day. For me this was not a one day deal. I shopped one day, cooked the stuff made with ground beef one day and chicken the next. It helped to cook up a bunch of ground beef and chicken and set up an assembly line system. I also froze 1 lb bags of cooked ground beef and some chicken breasts as well as chopped peppers and onions. So if I come across a recipe that I want to make that day I have some basics on hand already prepped. Mom's budget also has some great marinades and sauces that you can make up and put in a freezer bag and add chicken or pork chops for an instant meal!

I bought the foil and foil pans at Dollar Tree. Best deal around for this stuff. One thing I learned is that the 8x8 pans are ideal for my family. I could either use one 9x13 and have leftovers (which never get eaten). Or two 8x8's and get two meals out of it. I ended up with about 38 dinners. 2 meals from each of the 16 recipes + the chicken tetrazzini and meatloaf each made 3. I figure we probably won't have freezer meals every night. We'll grill out and I'm sure the kids will still want pizza , macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets from time to time so this should last us at least 6 weeks. 

So far it's been really freeing, although I do kinda dread my next marathon cooking session. I've considered looking into calling the Schwann's man. I'm not there yet but I may think differently after I repeat the process. But for now I'm kicking back and enjoying the less stressful afternoons! 

Messy kitchen

We look like we're stocked up, ready for the big bang