Freezer Cooking Results

You may remember about a month ago I talked about freezer cooking here. I got excited about freezer cooking after reading about it here. Rebecca's tips are great and the two that I think need repeating are:

1. Make sure you triple check your recipes to have everything you need.
2. Try to do this when you don't have little kids around. Bailey was here on both the days I cooked and it was hard to keep her occupied while I tried to cook.

My Mom does a lot of dual cooking - making one meal and putting the other in the freezer so my first step was to call her and find out what recipes we use on a regular basis would work well for freezer cooking. Then I made a grocery list and check the cabinets for anything I already had. This step was done Sunday night.

I dropped Brent off at school Monday morning and headed to Wal-Mart. About $200 and almost 2 hours later Bailey and I headed home. I brought all the groceries in, put the cold stuff away and fixed Bailey lunch. As soon as she was down for her nap, I started cooking. Monday was chicken day. I didn't plan it that way it just happened.

The chicken recipes I made were:

• Saucy Chicken and Asparagus (3 meals)
  
• Souper Chicken (3 meals)
  
• Creamy Chicken Breasts (2 meals)
  
• Chicken Bangkok (2 meals)
  

I also made a huge pot of spaghetti sauce as well as browning five pounds of ground beef to freeze.

This is Chicken Bangkok. I left off the almond and crushed corn flake topping until serving day.
Creamy Chicken Breasts with swiss cheese and stuffing topping.
My kitchen during the whole cooking process.
The stove and oven working over time.
Saucy Chicken and Asparagus.
A big pot of yummy spaghetti sauce.
At the end of day 1 I had 10 meals, five one pound packages of cooked ground beef, five containers of spaghetti sauce and a homecooked meal of pasta with spaghetti and meat sauce for dinner.

Day 2 was ground beef and steak day. I started out the morning by browning the second five pound package of ground beef.

Here are the recipes I created on Day 2:

• Hamburger Cabbage Casserole (4 meals)
  
• Minnesota Hamburger (2 meals)
  
• Cabbage Soup
  
• Best Meat Loaf (2 meals)
  
• Parmesan Round Steak (3 meals)
  
• Eggplant and Ground Beef Casserole (3 meals)
  
• Lasagna (4 meals)
  
• Macaroni and Cheese (2 meals)
  

Pictured top to bottom - Macaroni and Cheese, Parmesan Round Steak, Minnesota Hamburger
The kitchen during day 2 of cooking.
And the stove and oven during day 2 cooking.

At the end of day 2 I had 20 meals and five servings of soup ready for the freezer. I also browned another three pounds of ground beef and a couple of pounds of grilled chicken to freeze. We also had another homecooked meal of Minnesota Hamburger.

I got up this morning and got the kitchen back in shape and ran the dishwasher one last time. Today is not a cooking day but I am cooking and plan to divide Swiss Steak in the Crockpot into three servings. One for tonight and two to freeze. Total for two days cooking - 30+ meals in the freezer, spaghetti sauce, cabbage soup, browned ground beef and grilled chicken in the freezer. I am feeling good about all the good food we have in the freezer and the easy dinners in my near future.

I wrote this post in response to Once a month cook's question on my first time freezer cooking.