Meal Planning Mondays: How to save yourself from Mealtime Madness

I’ve had 8 children. That’s meant a lot of time being pregnant, and a lot of time recovering from childbirth. During these seasons, I learned the immense value of planning ahead (admittedly, not my strong suit). The BEST thing I ever did for myself during these times was putting meals in the freezer for those days when I was just too tired to get in the kitchen. When most of the work had already been done, spouse and/or children could even pitch in to help.

The main problem I had with the meals, however, is that they were often lackluster. Food that I cooked prior to freezing had the distinct flavor profile of leftovers. I don’t mind eating leftovers for lunch, or if I plan for them (I’m talkin’ ’bout you, holiday leftovers). But I wanted more from my freezer meals. They just didn’t excite me.

That’s when I discovered the beauty of UNCOOKED freezer meals ~ taking raw ingredients, slicing, dicing, and seasoning them up to your heart’s desire (or to the specifics of a recipe, to be on the safe side), plopping them into a labeled bag, and tossing them into the freezer. THESE meals taste great! They can be cooked in a variety of ways: oven, grill, stove-top, crockpot, and even instant pot.

I rarely cook a meal start to finish anymore. The time I save chopping, prepping, and cleaning up just ONCE for 10 meals instead of 10 different times for each meal means I have more time for other things (like writing this blog post). So, to introduce you to the joy of “fresh” freezer meals, I’ve documented my mini-session from this week.

Freezer Meal Mini-Session

I call this a mini-session, because a full session for me is 10 meals. Since we have pizza on Fridays, baked potatoes on Sundays after church, and a pot of beans usually once a week, a 10-meal plan lasts me just over 2 weeks. But the full session takes 2 hours, and I rarely am able to dedicate that much time for it during the school day. A mini-session is a cool 1 hour. I can do that.

So I start off by choosing my recipes based on what I have on hand and in the freezer (yeah, this was slightly unplanned ~ that’s how I roll). So, these are the meals I decided on.

Pork Roast

Garlic Pepper Chicken

Latin Lettuce Wraps

Mediterranean Roasted Vegetables and Chicken

Garlic Balsamic Chicken

The pictures are from the handy recipe cards that came with my original freezer meal workshop. More on that later.

First things first: setting up. I read over the recipes to see what all I needed. I gathered meat, veggies, utensils, measuring cups & spoons, mixing bowl, and scale. I don’t need a lot of space for this. I worked at the small L-shaped bar area in my kitchen so I could keep an eye on homeschool happenings.

All the veggies for the session.

My sous chef-she tasted sweet potatoes

Notice my sous-chef waiting for a taste of veggies! These are all the veggies for this session. When I do 10 meals, I will prep all the veggies first, using a chart to help me keep track of what veggies go in what recipe and how they need to be prepared. Since I was only doing 5 meals, and 2 of them didn’t even have veggies, it seemed easier to me to just do one meal at a time.

The first meal I started on was Mediterranean Roasted Vegetables and Chicken. Since I’m feeding 10 people my bags are always VERY full, so I like to mix things in a bowl. This bowl proved to be too small. No worries. I have learned to be fLeXiBle. 🙂

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All I had to do was put the veggies into the prepared bag, measure out the seasonings, and divide the seasonings equally between the bag of veggies and the chicken in the bowl. I mixed the veggies by “squishing” (technical jargon) the ZIPPED UP bag until all the veggies were fairly well coated with seasoning. I tossed the chicken by hand and then transfered it to the bag, and struggled a few minutes before getting it zipped up. That bag of food weighs roughly 6 pounds. Ten people eat a LOT!

I followed the same basic pattern for the remaining meals: mixing in a bowl with seasonings, and transferring to a gallon zipper bag.

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And drum roll…

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The finished product! That is one happy freezer, folks! It was down to 1 lonely, little meal! Next month, I plan to actually SHOP for food for my freezer meals. And probably do a full 10-meal session.

If you would like specific recipes for these meals, including the particular seasonings I used, or if you would like help in putting together your own freezer meal workshop, let me know in the comments below.

P.S. Soon, I will have a download of the handy chart I use for keeping track of the ingredients for the freezer meals. Keep your eyes open!