This post may be a little lame, but I'm just SO excited...and maybe a little proud of myself....that I am going to share anyway.
As embarrassing as it is to admit, we have fallen in to quite a rut of eating out for dinner WAY too often. It's not because I love restaurant food, in fact I prefer homemade food. The problem is that I can't seem to get it together and cook dinner. You'd think that with my baby being 3 months old now, I would know that around 4-5 p.m. her - or someone - is going to be fussy, requiring my attention and making dinner will be hard. I should really plan ahead and start dinner earlier in the day, but I never remember and find myself at 5:30 most nights feeling exhausted and thinking, "Oh shoot, what are we going to have for dinner?" So Marty would pick something up on his way home or we would order pizza. It's terrible for our waistline and for our wallet's.
So, I decided it had to end. Last weekend I called up my sister, Emily, who has made a freezer meal before and asked her advice. Then I set off to make the few meals I already had ingredients for - but never got around to making - to be prepared for nights when I just don't have it in me to make something.
In one afternoon I made 8 freezer meals. And it was actually not too hard - of course Marty was around to watch the kids since it was the weekend. But I bet I could make a few on a morning or afternoon during naps as well. (Who am I kidding?)
The 8 meals are: 2 Lasagna's, 3 Sour Cream Enchiladas, 1 Manicotti, 1 Pepsi Chicken and 1 Zesty Pineapple Chicken. It has been SO great this week to know that no matter how the day goes, we will have a home cooked meal for dinner. I wish I had a bigger freezer so I could make even more in advance, but for now 8 was pretty close to maximum capacity. I could probably fit more in there if I moved stuff around, but I have to have room for my ice cream!
The other benefit to the freezer meals is that I split them in to smaller pans. We always have a TON of leftover's when I make something in a regular 9x13 pan, (my kids are not exactly big eaters) and sometimes it ends up going in the trash. But this time I split things in to 8x8 foil pans, so we cut down on wasting food as well! YEAH!
The final result of 8 freezer meals:
The unfortunate result of making 8 freezer meals in one afternoon:
Even though the dishes required 2-3 loads through the dishwasher (no way was I washing by hand) it has been totally worth it!
In fact, I think I'll do it all again this weekend!
In fact, I think I'll do it all again this weekend!
11 comments:
Thanks for my plug :) But you put me to shame! I have never done that many at once - you rock! I'm glad you took my advice to buy foil pans, I know it's a bit more wasteful (and costs more), but then you can do smaller portions and not tie up your pyrex dishes in the freezer.
My mouth literally started watering at the talk of your freezer meals... I actually sat down to find a quick online recipe ;)
Why can't us mothers ever figure out that 4-5:00p.m. WILL ALWAYS have some big event/thing keeping us from making dinner? It's our fate I'm sure!
Wow! I'm jealous! I'm going to have to do something like this. My kids start going crazy around that time as well, and I get too stressed out to even think about cooking dinner! I can't imagine what it will be like with a newborn next week!
Jealous! I should hire you to come make some for me...
I want some recipes!!! :)
You are a rock star. Seriously, amazing.
ooh. what a great idea. you should link that over to the burk recipes blog and add the recipes. . .share the love. i mean if you want;)
great idea! I like doing meals in 9x13s because we always have leftovers for the next day. BUT 8x8s might be better for portion control at dinner and I wouldn't be eating more than I should (cuz I normally do). I'm going to have to keep that in mind...
You amaze me with your newly aquired domestic skills.
Wow, that is so inspiring, Camille! I wish I would of thought of that after having Zack. I could never get it together after he was born. Now, we eat dinner at four. That's solved the 4-5 problems. I don't know why, it just did. Some kind of time bomb I'm avoiding, i guess?
I have some really yummy freezer meals. I'll share mine if you'll share yours! :)
Good idea. When I cook I make 2 of everything so I can just freeze it. The bad thing is that we end up eating everything in the same week.
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