Freezer Cooking Round One

If you've been following my blog, you know my family spends WAY too much money eating out. We have found that meal planning helps cut down on our eating out, but sometimes I just don't have the time, energy, or motivation to cook the meal we've planned. So, then what? We get take out. And we're back to square one.

One of the sessions I attended at the homeschool convention was "Living on More with Less". The speaker talked about meal planning and freezer meals. Basically bulk shopping for meat and key ingredients and then taking one day and cooking and freezing multiple meals. When dinner time comes, you choose a meal from the freezer, thaw it, reheat it, add any sides you would like and there's a complete meal in under 20 minutes. I was intrigued.

This morning, my husband and I sat down to make our meal list and grocery list and I was beyond frustrated. Meal planning is difficult at our house because my husband is vegetarian, and my kids are extremely picky. So, trying to plan and fix a meal that I will be the only one eating is no fun at all. Then I remembered the idea of freezer meals. I could make individual portions with meat for myself, portions without meat for my hubby,and portions without any "weird" ingredients for the girls.

We made our list and headed out to 4 grocery stores. Yes, 4 grocery stores in about 3 hours. My poor husband and kids are so great! They put up with all of my crazy ideas. But we did manage to find everything on our list!

Then it was back home for a quick nap and then to start cooking!

Here's a photo of the ingredients we used:

It took about 3 hours of me cooking and my husband grilling and washing dishes, but we managed to come up with 28 meals. I'm not going to list all 28, but here's an idea: spaghetti (we just need to cook the pasta on the day we plan to eat it), lasagna, baked ziti, vegetarian lasagna, chicken fajitas, chicken tacos, beef tacos, nachos, grilled chicken, grilled chicken salads, lemon pepper chicken breasts, bbq chicken breasts, buffalo chicken sandwiches, italian chicken breasts, italian pork chops.

There is so much more we could've done, but we simply ran out of time. Just with what we've done, we will have dinner ideas for almost a month for less than $90!

Here's a photo of all of our freezer bags full of yumminess! :)

Do you do OAMC (once a month cooking) or freezer meals? If so, what are you favorites? Any tips for me? I'm hooked now! :)