Latest Freezer Session

I have been in a funk about cooking lately. The monthly grocery budget has suffered tremendously because I have done no meal planning. I feel like I've gone to the grocery store daily. I run in to get the makings for what I decided 5 minutes before would be dinner. In for chicken and salad and out with about $60 worth of stuff. I was surfing Pinterest the other night and ran across some new freezer recipes that I have never seen. I haven't had much luck with the "throw this in a bag and dump in crockpot" so a lot of those don't appeal to me. We have several favorites of those, but for the most part I steer clear of that kind of freezer meal. I found a site where two moms do a lot of freezer prep, and they are the "crunchy, Earth loving" moms that made their own dough and stuff. I "might" have fibbed a little on a few of those. There was another site with about 70 recipes I had never tried, so I made a list of ones to try, printed those off, compiled a grocery list, crossed off items I had after inventorying the pantry and freezer, and headed to the grocery store. This session took about 4 hours of cooking. I have to give a big old shout out to the hubs for playing with kiddos so I could do this. We will all reap the rewards. Here is the before shot:

All the ingredients

All the recipes

It took some time and some prep, and honestly if I had taken time to really organize beforehand it might not have taken as long. Freezer meal prep is a little messy.



During

But the yield was totally worth it!!! I got a ton of food.

Here's what will be on the menu around here for the next little bit:

Chicken Pillows - They have a quick sauce to mix up before and serve with them

Creamy Italian Chicken - This one was a dump recipe where you mixed everything up, put it in a      freezer bag and then you dump in crockpot.

Hot Chicken Salad - one small round pan

Beef Green Chile Taco Casserole - I got 2 pans of this

Cheesy Black Bean and Chicken Enchiladas - I got on big pan and one little pan. I cheated on this one with rotisserie chicken. I added dried onion and garlic powder. I also used store bought taco mix. This was the last recipe I finished, so I was tired.

Chicken Parmesan Casserole - Just add noodles to serve with

Oven Fried Parmesan Chicken Tenders - I doubled this one, and I got a big bag of chicken strips.

Baked Penne Pasta - I got 1 large pan.

Baked Potato Casserole - I got 3 round pans of this and a pan to bake tonight.


I am so happy I don't really have to plan food for a bit! I will let you guys know how it all turns out since all of these are new recipes for us.