Thursday, January 17, 2013

Dinner's in the...freezer. Seriously.

So, I have a confession to make.  I've done it.  I am addicted.  I am in love. 

I just attempted my first freezer to crock pot endeavor, and so far, it was a HUGE success.  I mean HUGE!  In just 2 1/2 hours I have prepped, bagged, labeled, and cleaned up after 14 dinners.  That's right, fourteen!!! Did I mention that I also cleaned out and organized the freezer.  AND restocked it.  AND only spent $108.48.  Without coupons (because I have yet to truly venture down that road yet)!

So, that breaks down to less than $8.00 per dinner.  Each dinner serves about 5-6, which means we will also have left overs.  And, for the most part, everything is pretty healthy too.  Also, like I mentioned, this was also my first attempt...so, I can only imagine that I will get better at this.

Well, not that it takes a rocket scientist to figure out why I would want to do this, but I do have some pretty good motivation.  I normally enjoy to cook.  Like really love it.  It's me time.  I have a glass of wine, put on Pandora, and start chopping away.  Its normally about a 45 minute deal and something that I actually enjoy doing.  However, turns out, without the wine and with the added exhaustion of growing a tiny human in my body, this cooking that I love is not so enviable currently.  Lets be honest, by 5:30, I am pooped.  Like ready for bed, in sweats (if I even got dressed that day), with zero interest of doing anything productive.  I am, however, quite productive from the hours of 8:00AM until then.  So, in response to everyone on Pinterest telling me to give this a try, I figured why not!  Let's capitalize on those productive hours and REALLY put them to good use.  (Instead of the incessant crafting that my nesting phase has me doing most of the time right now)  Plus, all this take out and eating out is not good for the figure or the wallet and we will have another mouth to feed in a few months.

So, I stalked some blogs and found this one.  What I loved about her is that she gives you the full shopping list at the end and instructions throughout.  The less work for me, the better.  Now she made 34 meals...that's right, thirty-four meals....in one day.  I am not yet that ambitious.  But 14 was a good start for me.

I started with her shopping list and tailored it to fit my family.  I replaced ground beef with ground chicken or turkey.  I replaced sausage with turkey sausage, white rice for barley, etc.  I also upped the veggie amount in some of the recipes.  I just kind of eyeballed it (this meant that I did have to stop towards the end and cut a few more veggies up).  I also opted for buying large versions of the veggies when she called for medium.  I used the ten recipes she listed and four of them were large enough for me to spilt into two meals each, giving me my 14 meals.

First I shopped.  I was definitely overwhelmed with what all this food looked like in my cart.  Eight zucchini, eight bell peppers, three bags of carrots, two bags of onions, five sweet potatoes...this was more food than I had bought for Christmas dinner.  I was expecting to spend a fortune.  WRONG!  I never make it out of the store for less than $200.  This was my first little burst of excitement.

Next I got home and chopped up all of the veggies.  I confess, I cheated a little here.  I bought baby carrots, I didn't finely chop everything, but I did peel all of the potatoes (even though you don't have to).  Potato skin grosses me out (it never seems clean) and always tastes like dirt to me, so I peeled them.  This is what it looks like all chopped up:


Please excuse any clutter and our little fair fish hanging out in the background.
 
All cute and colorful and organized.  I got a little excited here too.  All this chopping took me about and hour.  And I took my time.
 
Then it was time to label and stuff the bags.  I wrote instructions, a name and the date on each bag. Like this: Chicken Taco Soup: 01.17.13 Add one can of beer and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Garnish with sour cream and shredded cheese. And then I just dumped all the ingredients in either one or two gallon sized bags, following the recipes.  I did not pre cook anything.  ANYTHING.  Some of the recipes recommend pre cooking and shredding the chicken, etc.  I didn't and I'll let you know how that works out for me.  I plan on throwing it all in that crock pot and pulling it out to shred before serving.
 
This whole process took me less than an hour and looked like this when I was done:

 

 
 

I anticipated my kitchen to look like a battle field after this whole process, but really the only mess was the stack of plates from the veggies, the cutting board, and the cans to be recycled.  Clean up was a breeze (and even more so for me, as I am on a dish washing hiatus per my husband's word/this years birthday gift).  My only big mess was when I spilled the beans, literally.  Dried beans everywhere.  But nothing a quick broom and a few minutes couldn't fix.

I used the rest of my time to clean and organise the freezer, which needed to be done anyway.  I now have two full shelves of dinner ready to go whenever I am feeling lazy, or tired :).

Moral of the story is, DO THIS PEOPLE.  Do it today, or tomorrow, or as soon as you can.  For one trip to the grocery store, about $100 bucks and a little over 2 hours of my time, I have dinner, at the ready for 14 days.  I will let you all know how the recipes taste once I have given them a try :)!

Did I mention that she has a round two of recipes that you can find here. I will be checking those out as soon as I start running low on the ones that I have prepped to go! :)


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