I'm somewhat of a novice when it comes to freezer meal prep. I've done a few here and there but up until this weekend, never more than 11 at a time. Today's 23 meals in one day kinda crushed that old record. And the fact that we did it in just under 2 1/2 hours? Ummm yeah. Pretty crazy. (We made 23 meals, cleaned the kitchen and (Rusty) hung up Christmas lights all during nap time.)
Our big trick to making it work was making multiples of the same meal. I know not everyone is going to love that idea so you could totally mix it up (or find a freezer meal group and switch meals with them). I don't mind this because I know we can easily grab a pot roast or pizza or whatever else to supplement what we have if we are worried about getting sick of something but it makes a huge different in the price of the food if you can buy bigger packages and use it all up.
The other disclaimer: our meals are for 3ish eaters. I mainly used the square freezer tins but did make the meatball sub in 9x13 (then counted it as two meals since it will last us two nights). If you eat more than that, your family would get half the number of meals as we ended up with.
What we ended up with:
-Three meatball sub casseroles in 9x13 pans (total of SIX meals)
-THREE cheeseburger casserole
-FOUR broccoli, cheddar, chicken pasta
-ONE cheddar & chicken pasta
-FOUR chicken, rice & peas casserole
-FOUR chili
and some extra of the cheddar chicken pasta that we ate for dinner tonight making a total of 23 meals. At a total bill of $124.50, that's $5.42/meal! Not too shabby!
Between Thanksgiving, Christmas parties, Progressive Dinners, the occasional pot roast for when we are tired of chicken, nights out and more- I'm hoping these will about last us till the end of the year.
The recipes are linked above. This link (where the middle four recipes are from) has some helpful tips if you read through it. I recommend using square pans instead of round though to maximize freezer space/meal size. I did find you had to guess on some of her sizes because the recipes aren't exact but since they are casseroles it really wasn't a big deal. (Though we ended up with way more pasta than we maybe should have, thus the extra meals). We didn't divvy up the broccoli right so that's why one of the meals (cheddar & chicken pasta) is slightly different.
So basketball starts on Monday and I have a freezer full of meals. I think I can do this!! ;)
(Also, please come eat freezer meals with me while my hubby is on the road eating sack dinners all winter!)
