My co-teacher and friend Lindsay Donaldson sent me an email suggesting that we try some freezer cooking for the beginning of the school year and to take to our other co-teacher who just had an adorable little one at the end of July. So we set last Thursday as the cooking day! We knew we were in for an adventure when we started out, but didn't know how much we were going to enjoy this adventure! I need to get more pics from Lindsay and will post what my freezer looks with everything in it. However, I will tell you about our experience first.
First, we both gathered recipes from different websites and got our start on Pinterest. She chose three recipes, and I chose about 3 with some staple items in my house as well. I had started our grocery list before she got here and then we added her items to the list. For those who know me well, they know I like my list!! I use a notepad from Real Simple that I love to make sure I get everything I need.
Our next stop was the grocery store. We started at Sam's Club to get meat, bulk vegetables, salad dressings, etc. We finished off our list with some of the smaller things at Wal Mart right next door to get fresh veggies, tortillas, milk, butter, etc. I think you get the idea. However, we were SUPER EXCITED! We just knew the bill was going to be high. We kept reminding ourselves we were cooking for 3 families and it would be well worth it. Our final bill was only.... $190. If you do the math.... around $66 per family for about 20 meals! I can't seem to get out under $125 in a normal week for 2 of us, so I was ECSTATIC!!!
So we now love ....
After we got all of our groceries into the car.... Lindsay's trunk was FULL! We journeyed back to my house to unload and begin our cooking for the day. We made it home around 11:00 and took no breaks.
We started with the foods that had to be browned or cooked with some small projects here and there. We had a timeline of 3pm to finish, so we knew we had to get a move on! Lindsay did the chopping with a little bit of crying (onions) and learned to chop many new vegetables!!! Cooking class at my house, oh boy!
Just a little list of how we worked it all out: (tripled most recipes if not made 6 servings for 2 of us in each family!)
- We cooked the Italian pasta bake, put the cheese on and wrapped it in foil. Flash froze it in foil in my 8x8 pan, and labeled it.
- Fixed Taco Meat... could be used for an array of things.
- Prepared hamburger patties with ranch dressing mix and then wrapped them in saran wrap and foil.
- Fixed Breakfast Burritos- this was Lindsay's doing.
- Italian Marinated chicken- chicken put in freezer plastic bags with Italian Salad dressing poured on them.
- Sunshine Barbeque Chicken- barbeque sauce and orange juice marinade
- Crockpot Chicken recipe off of one of the websites on Pinterest.
We were able to do all of this in 4 hours. We didn't get to everything we wanted to so both Lindsay and I are cooking a little more this next week to finish putting in our freezers. Here is what we still lack:
- Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
- Meatloaf
- Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins
- Chicken and Rice Wrap Ups (Mexican)
- Corn Flake Chicken Tenders
So, needless to say the three second grade teachers at Terrace are happy women because when school starts we don't have to worry about what we will fix for dinner. All we have to worry about is what we are pulling out of the freezer in the morning before we leave for work!!!! We are all super pumped and want to do this again.
Like I said, I would take a picture of mine when everything is done, but I will leave you with a picture of Lindsay's that I stole off of Facebook.
I hope this helps and maybe on the next freezer meal making day we can have a couple of groups doing different things and join up to share all of our goodies and share the wealth!!
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