December Freezer Meal Extravaganza Recap

I'm so pleased with myself that I was finally--finally!--able to get my freezer meals over and done with this month. I postponed my cooking day by one week, mostly due to the holidays. And I sure was tempted to postpone it another week. I was missing several ingredients, but our budget did not allow for one last shopping trip. But I knew that if I postponted the event another day, then it would just be all the easier to postpone another week, and another week, and what would be the point of that?

For those of you new to the blog, I started making freezer meals in March of 2009. That month was more or less a test run, as I only made about a week & a half's worth of food. Since then, I've been whipping up a month's worth of supper meals each month, devoting one day during the month to spending a day in the kitchen making freezer meals. I did skip October since we were on vacation for about a week, and I extra freezer meals stocked in the freezer.

Freezer meals have definitely been a blessing for me and my family. I don't claim to be a professional--far from it. I read up just a tiny bit of tips from other bloggers, like Tricia at Once A Month Mom, and friends I know who have done freezer meals, and I just kind of took it from there. I don't seek out recipes that are specifically meant for freezer meals. But I do search for recipes that sound tasty, or that we've had before and have a proven track record of being delicious. Making freezer meals has been a true adventure in trial and error, definitely an experirence in "learn as I go."

But they are definitely worth it!

I'm able to spend just a little more time with my family in the evenings, since I spend less time in the kitchen. I work full-time, and before freezer meals, I literally felt like I was pulling my hair out trying to get supper on the table and the kids to bed at a decent time. But post-freezer meals, I'm able to keep my sanity, I'm less stressed, I spend less time in the kitchen and more time with my husband and children. We typically eat supper between 6 & 6:30pm, whereas before I started making freezer meals, we were eating supper between 7 and 7:30pm. What a difference!

So not much to recap about this month's experience, except that it went well, and I finished up earlier in the evening than I usually do. But that's probably because I took a few short-cuts on several meals since I didn't have all the ingredients. Instead of making the entire meal, I just cooked the meat and froze that. Like Saucy Scalloped Potatoes--I had run out of potatoes, so instead of making the whole meal, I just cooked up the ham and froze that. I'll buy potatoes later in the week, after I get paid, so on supper day for this meal, I'll just put the potatoes & other ingredients in the crock-pot and let it simmer while I'm at work, then throw in the ham before serving it.

Even though I did take some short-cuts this time around, my freezer is full, and I have plenty of meals to feed my family for the next month. It's a great feeling. :)