Have you ever looked at the clock and thought, “Not again! It’s 6 pm and everything is frozen!” Yeah. Me, too. All the time! And it drives my husband crazy! The kids and I are perfectly happy with cereal or sandwiches or eggs or even cheese and fruit. But he wants a meal.
I started researching something I’d heard about before–making a bunch of meals at one time and freezing them. I’ve had a lot of success in the past with making a few meals at once and freezing the extras–see my post on beef HERE and chicken HERE. So, when I read this post over at Annie’s Eats about freezing food for all different meals, I decided to give it a try.
My list evolved over several days to include:
Baking: bread, hamburger buns, muffins, cookies
Burritos: breakfast, bean & cheese, beef and green chili, chicken quesadillas, and chicken enchiladas (all use tortillas! 😉 )
Ground beef: tacos & nachos–cook up ground beef and shred cheese, freeze separately, then bag together.
Chicken: chicken nuggets & marinated teriyaki for stir fry
Stew meat: stew (of course) & stew pastries (sounds yummy!)
Pasta: lasagna, manicotti, penne pasta
Veggies: zucchini & squash, twice baked potatoes
Turkey pot pie…
Yes. I feel a little overwhelmed, too. But today, I got busy. First, I made pancakes. A LOT of pancakes–regular, chocolate chip, blueberry, and strawberry. Enough for 4 breakfasts. Then, I got two batches of bread going–one for hamburger buns and one for regular bread. As the bread was rising, I made a batch of cranberry-orange muffins (3 breakfasts!), including one batch of mini-heart shaped muffins for Valentine’s Day. 🙂 Then, I made peanut butter, chocolate chip, and oatmeal cookies. It took me about 3 hours. I ended up with two loaves of bread, 12 hamburger buns (2 dinners for us), a dozen muffins + my V-Day muffins, 2 dozen peanut butter cookies, 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies, and 3 dozen oatmeal cookies. All stored up in my freezer. So cool!
If only we could live on cookies and muffins…
Since I don’t think that will fly with you know who, I’m going to tackle my tortilla foods tomorrow. I’m thinking I can whip up all those burritos, etc in the morning and MAYBE have enough steam to get some of the other stuff done. I’m planning a burst with my business in the next few months, so I know I’ll be glad I took the time now to stock up!
I’ll let you know how the rest goes…
Karen