Freezer Cooking 101

You may remember a while back I decided to try my hand at freezer cooking.  So last week I pulled  a few recipes from Once a Month Mom and made my grocery list.  This week I did my online shopping (I live for Lowes Foods to Go) and got started.  I decided to start small with 3 dinner recipes and 1 breakfast recipe.  I made 2 of the meals Wednesday night after Peyton went to bed and the other 2 I made last night.  The recipes were all really easy and my freezer is slowly stocking up!

I picked the following recipes to try out...

Coffee Cake Muffins (makes 12 muffins)
These are sooo good and easy to make.  I'm definitely going to make another batch or 2 to constantly keep in the freezer.  I love having something homemade I can grab and heat up for 30 seconds in the microwave on my way out the door! 

(sorry I forgot to take my own pics)

Chicken Parmesan Bake (makes 2 8x8 dishes for 3 people)

This was the easiest recipe to prepare because you don't cook the chicken before you freeze it.  I was able to get it together while Peyton ate her dinner.

 

Chicken Broccoli Bake (makes 2 8x8 dishes for 3 people)

Homemade Vegetable Beef Soup (makes 2 - 1 gallon bags)

The soup was really good.  I made it Wednesday night and took one of the bags out Thursday morning, dumped it in the crock pot, added the vegetable juice, and put it on Low while I was at work.  The bag made WAY more than the 3 of us could eat and we still have a huge container of soup left in addition to the 2nd gallon bag in the freezer. 

So at the moment my freezer has 4 8x8 casserole dishes (use the aluminum ones), 1 gallon bag of soup, and 2 gallon bags of muffins stocked and ready to go!  This is really something I want to keep up, it's so nice to know there's food prepared that just needs to be tossed in the oven for 30 mins. 

The Once a Month Mom site has been really helpful.  I love that all the recipes can be downloaded to Excel (yes I'm a dork like that) and the quantities change based on the serving size you enter.  There's no guessing at exactly how much of each ingredient you need.  She does a menu for the ENTIRE month...3  meals a day.  I'm no where near anything like that, nor will I probably ever be.  But for now I like to pick and choose from her options. 

I plan on working on a few more lunch and breakfast items in the next few weeks!  Happy cooking!