Freezing meals?

tml0701

Anyone starting to think about what to freeze. ?I have seen this Once a month cooking (OAMC) but figured I would just use my own recipes I guess. ?I also thought about going to Make and Take and letting them do it if I don't feel up to cooking a bunch of things. ?Just wondering if anyone else is doing any freezing, how far in advance and any must have freezer recipes (casseroles, chicken, soups, pastas, or vegetarian)?

TimsMayBride

I intended to do this but really dropped the ball.  Last weekend I went to Trader Joe's and stocked up on frozen meals.  So many good vegetarian meals for cheap - can't beat it!

Martha Stewart has some good looking freezer meals on her site.

peachypear

tml0701:

how far in advance and any must have freezer recipes (casseroles, chicken, soups, pastas, or vegetarian)?

Depends on your freezer. If it's auto defrost (standard for freezers in refrigerators), then it's best to not do it more than a couple of weeks or a month in advance - otherwise things will be freezer burnt. If you have a deep freeze, you can keep things frozen for a very long time.

We regularly double a recipe and freeze half. A lot of things freeze well: spaghetti sauce, sloppy joe filling, soups (not creamy), curries (not coconut milk-based), empenadas/dumplings, hummas, jumbalya... Frequently we freeze part of a meal so that we just have to make up part fresh - for example, freeze a curry and make rice the day we eat it, or freeze black beans and mexican rice and get tortillas and fixins' fresh. 

khagan9368

So far I have a white spinach lasagna, chicken pot pie, 2 containers of Sunday gravy (meat sauce) and a thing of chili. Oh and 2 quiches. I'm pretty proud. Of course I still don't have a crib set up, oops

suscq

I freeze meals a lot and plan on stocking the freezer (we just bought a deep freeze) before the baby is born.  I'll do the regular casseroles and spaghetti sauce but I also freeze a lot of meat.  I buy ground beef/turkey when they have it on sale and go ahead and brown it.  Then I freeze it in meal size portions.  I also buy boneless skinless chicken breasts when they run them on sale and cook them to almost done, then freeze them.  You can throw them into the dish and they will finish cooking (works if you grill them too to almost cooked)  Sometimes I will also cook the chicken breasts fully and shred the chicken, then freeze (works great in tacos)

If the meat is cooked, it makes the whole meal process go much faster and you aren't eating the same casseroles over and over again.

Mrs.Teddy

I plan on doing some of these. DH cooks a lot but when he works 12 hr shifts he doesn't. I often freeze 1/2 of my casseroles anyways because its just the two of us & usually way too much food. I plan on doing honey chicken mac & cheese, mexican lasagna, meat lasagna, chili & a few quiches. I also book marked this website although I haven't looked thru it yet. My mom said she would come over one day & we would spend the whole day doing freezer meals, which will be great.

https://www.momsbudget.com/freezerrecipes/index.html

If you are interested in either the honey chicken mac & cheese or mexican lasagna let me know. They both freeze well. I use either the glad freeze & bake containers or aluminum ones that I just toss after. Sometimes I will use my glass casserole dishes but I don't have enough with lids to stockpile.

light52

As long as they are wrapped up good, most meals will last several months in the freezer.  I posted several recipes this week to my blog that I made on Monday (link in siggy).  I plan on making more as I get closer to my due date.  Another thing that came in handy with DS1 was having ground beef and chicken breast already cooked and packaged in the freezer.  Those first few weeks I started back to work, these were a lifesaver for a quick and easy meal.