Freezer cooking, my sanity saver!
One of the biggest challenges of raising a big brood is the never ending question…what’s for dinner? I was truly struggling with the dreaded dinner hour until about 2 years ago. I started freezer cooking (once a month cooking) with a friend. We started small, we each made 3 main dishes and 1 side. Needless to say, like anything, it has grown into an obsession. For a while before the discovery of gander 6’s allergies I was involved in 2 freezer exchanges and still cooking with the same friend every 2 months. Each of the freezer exchanges consisted of about 6 mom’s cooking enough of a single meal to feed 6 families (about 6-8) servings each. That would give me 15 or so meals in the freezer each month. This was enough with leftovers and one made-from-scratch meal a week to feed us for the month. It was fun to have new dishes to try and I enjoyed the variety. Everyone else missed the goose’s cooking though.
I have a couple of tried and true websites and cookbooks I use pretty consistently.
- www.30daygourmet.com To be honest, I don’t use a lot of recipes from this site, but what I have used has turned out fine. It is a great starting point with loads of information for a newbie to freezer cooking though.
- www.recipezaar.com They have a huge OAMC (once a month cooking) section of recipes.
- My favorite freezer cookbook is: Dont Panic - Dinners in the Freezer: Great-Tasting Meals You Can Make Ahead
- I also like: Dream Dinners: Turn Dinnertime into Family Time with 100 Assemble-and-Freeze Meals
- This one is also very popular with some freezer cooking friends: Holly Clegg’s Trim & Terrific Freezer Friendly Meals: Quick And Healthy Recipes You Can Make in Advance (Trim & Terrific)
You might wonder how to begin freezer cooking. I usually start by looking through my stack of favorite cookbooks and websites. Depending on the season we have some favorites. For example as we are heading into warmer weather I am thinking about things that can be put in the crockpot or grilled outside, marinades are really good for this. I recently started a freezer cooking binder where I keep my favorite recipes printed off the Internet as well as notepaper with my monthly list of freezer meals and where they can be found (the name of the cookbook, page,etc). This has been a great help and certainly streamlined things. Once I have a few ideas I start watching the ads for sales on meat, which usually narrows down my recipes. I won’t be making 3 chicken recipes if I can’t find chicken breast on sale somewhere for example. I have become strict with myself and try not to buy chicken breast unless it is below $2 a pound and when it is I stock up the freezer. I usually email back and forth with the ladies I am cooking with until we all get our recipes decided. We all try to keep our numbers of beef, chicken,pork,soups,marinades,etc. as even as possible so we don’t have 6 beef meals and 3 soups.
On cooking day everyone is usually at my house by 10:00 am and we are usually finished by 4:00 pm. Depending on whether we have little babies that need attention or are 9 months pregnant which does happen amongst my crowd more often than not, we sometimes make a meal or two ahead of time to make the day go more smoothly. We usually stop for a quick lunch somewhere in the middle and we all share in the clean-up.
I am back to cooking once a month with my dear friend who has 4 little ones in her brood. We have similar cooking tastes and styles and really enjoy our Saturdays cooking and chatting. My sister-in-law has since joined us to help cook for her brood of 5. So I still get plenty of meals in the freezer and more time to spend cuddling, reading or playing outside with my brood in the late afternoon.
