Freezer Meals

As with every other family, we are incredibly busy. Gymnastics, yoga, teacher training, working, house renovations, baseball, swimming, and every other weekend where our kiddo is gone. A few times this winter I spent a few hours on a kid-less weekend making crock pot meals that I was able to freeze ahead of time, take out the night before to thaw and throw in the slow cooker the morning of. It was an incredible time saver and, ultimately, allowed us more time as a family together. With just a little bit of prep, price matching to keep it relatively inexpensive and a meal plan for the week, we were able to really benefit from doing this! Which is why I recruited my best friend, Katie, to help out one day. I know that there are a ton of blogs about this and I visited quite a few either for tips or for recipes, which I've added below.

Katie and I started the day by gathering recipes. Neither of our families eat much beef or pork and her hubby has recently given up most pastas, so we stuck with mainly chicken recipes (although ended up adding one pasta dish to satisfy Katies carb cravings. She is, after all, expecting a little in just a few months!!!). We then created a shopping list and got out our flyers to price match. I prefer to use the "old fashioned" way by using the hard copy flyers. (I plan to blog about this soon, so stay tuned!!). Katie, on the other hand, prefers to use an app called Flipp. She swear by it.

Just as a little teaser to prove how much of a difference price matching can make, check this out:

RIGHT?! Just make sure to check back for some serious money saving tips :)

So after grocer shopping, we got to work. We did one recipe at a time, prep and all. I know some people will prep all of the recipes at the same time, however we didn't have a lot of overlap in the things that actually needed prepping, so it seemed easier to do one at a time. This is what all of the ingredients looked like together:

Katie and her hubby ended up having a ton of the ingredients in their cupboards already, which made this process just THAT much easier! Overall though, we spent roughly $60 each.

The first recipe that we did was Sweet & Sour chicken. We found the recipe at joelandkitty.com. There's literally 4 ingredients: chicken, cranberry, Catalina dressing and onion soup mix). How much easier can it get!?!?

The second recipe we tried was for a pasta dish that I found on Pinterest. There is no site attached to the link, but if you know where the original is form, please let me know and I will be happy to link to it! It had 1 small bag of spinach, 2 cans of diced tomatoes, 1 bag of tortellini, 4 cups of vegetable broth and a package of cream cheese. Umm easssssy!! You literally throw it in the crockpot on low for 5 hours, serve and enjoy!

The third recipe was from the Fun With Sharpes blog. Super adorable couple with a fantastical blog! We made their  Italian Chicken. Again, there is a theme here: SUPER EASY! Chicken, water Italian dressing, garlic, chili powder and a packet of ranch seasoning. She has also added a ton of other recipes from her experience in bulk cooking!!

The last one that we made was a mushroom and peanut butter rice topping. I know what your thinking. I am too, to be honest. And I don't even really understand whether it's a soup or a rice topping or what. I'll update as soon as I've tried it. Its really just chicken cubed, two cans of cream of mushroom soup and a cup of peanut butter. We'll see!

Overall, I am so happy that we made the dinners. Not only was it a nice time spent together, but we have four meals that are already made for weeks that get really, really busy. We're planning on doing it again shortly before the baby it due, so keep your eyes peeled :)