October Freezer Cooking: Take 2

The first day, I cooked ground beef, made burger patties and assembled crockpot meals. On the second day, I did everything else that was left on my list.

Not quite as organized but I plowed through it anyways! I had to cook some meal components for the casseroles I was making and then assemble casseroles, which do take longer than crockpot meals in a bag!

My list:

• Breakfast-in-a-hurry (9x13)
• Cheesy Beef and Rice (9x13)
• Spinach and Cheese Casseroles (2)--my husband loves these; they make a nice addition to a fish meal.
• Gingery Pork and Mushroom mixture for lettuce wraps: recipe from this cookbook. 
• Bake brown rice.(2-9x13 pans)
• Shred cheese.
• Bake bacon. 

My plan of attack:

• Bake brown rice.
• Bake bacon. (In the oven at the same time as rice.)
• Shred cheese.
• Assemble Breakfast-in-a-hurry.
• Assemble Cheesy Beef and Rice.
• Bag up rest of brown rice.
• Leave the house for a few hours.
• Assemble Spinach and Cheese Casseroles.
• Make Gingery Pork and Mushrooms. (Ended up making this for dinner that night!So absolutely yummy!)

I'm happy to have so many  frozen entrees and sides in the freezer to eat this month (and some of next)!

The only picture I took on day 2--I was in a rush!

Do you do freezer cooking? What are your favorite recipes to freeze?

October Freezer Cooking: Take 1

In September, I did one grocery shopping trip for the month with some serious planning which included a freezer cooking session. It worked so well and saved us money so I did it all again for October!

This month, I split my freezer cooking list into two 2-3 hour sessions rather working non-stop for 5-6 hours like I did last month. Both work and are efficient but a shorter time slot was better for me this time. I made a plan, worked the plan, cleaned up the kitchen and left for work! Then the next morning I did it again!

We are relying on crockpot or easy make-ahead oven meals for dinner these days. Between September and October, I've tried a pile of Crockpot Freezer Meals that I've found via Pinterest. These are fabulous! Most require no prior cooking (except browning ground beef ) so they are extremely fast to put together. And so easy to put in the crockpot on serving day!

I doubled up on a couple of the recipes that we had already tried. I bought two packages of chicken and we got a good deal on a big package of sausages so I made two of the Thai Chicken and the Italian Sausages with Peppers and Onions. This will give me a head start on next month since we probably won't need them this month.

Ingredients for Thai Chicken with Peanut Sauce

Most of my 1st cooking session for October was assembling crockpot freezer meals.

Session 1 list:

• Slow Cooker Pepper Steak
• Thai Chicken with Peanut Sauce (2)
• Crockpot Cheeseburger Soup
• White Chicken Chili
• Crockpot Italian Sausage with Pepper and Onions(2)
• Cook ground beef for crockpot meals, Beef and Veggies, Taco Soup and Southwestern Lentils , Cheesy Beef and Rice (7#)
• Make burger patties(2#/8 patties)

My Plan Of Attack:

1. Cook 7# ground beef. Drain and let cool.
2. Assemble Thai Chicken.
3. Make burger patties.
4. Chop/slice peppers and onions. 
5. Assemble Pepper Steak.
6. Assemble Italian Sausage with Peppers and Onions.
7. Assemble White Chicken Chili.
8. Assemble Cheeseburger Soup. 
9. Bag and label ground beef for Beef and Veggies(3), Taco Soup (1), Cheesy Beef and Rice, Southwestern Lentils(1/2#) and and extra 1/2#. 
10. Clean up kitchen; fill up the freezer!

I've done lots of freezer cooking over the years. It has saved me hours of time and hundreds of dollars! I've simplified my methods a lot over time and making crockpot freezer meals definitely simplifies freezer cooking day. Making crockpot meals to freeze is a fast way to make a bunch of freezer meals! In fact, this post about crockpot freezer meals promises 20 meals in 2 hours. I could get into that!

Finished meals!

Tomorrow: October Freezer Cooking: Take 2!

February Freezer Cooking

I've been trying to make a habit of planning for some freezer cooking once I do my big shopping trip at the beginning of the month.

With my fridge and pantry well-stocked, it's a good time to prep foods for easy cooking later in the month. Instead of bringing meat home and freezing, then thawing it to make into meals later, I've been prepping it right away--ground beef, chicken legs and chicken breasts are good for this.

What I made this month:

• 2 meatloaves.
• 3 pounds browned ground beef--bagged in 1/2 pound portions.
• Spaghetti sauce--5 containers of various sizes.
• Pot of chili--3 (quart) jars. 
• Chicken and brown rice stuffing--9x13 pan. This size will feed us for about 3 meals or is a good size for using for our Sunday fellowship. 
• Shredded cheese--11 (1-cup) bags.
• Brown rice-- 9 (2-cup) bags. 
• 2-Spicy Dijon Chicken (from this cookbook).
• 2- Garlicky Italian Chicken (from this cookbook).
• 1- Israeli Spice Chicken.
• 3- bags of chopped chicken for stir-fry. 
• Turkey gravy-- 1 (quart) jar. I froze this last month for the first time and it turned out really good!

This cooking was done in several 1-2 hour sessions.  It would be nice to just get it all done at one time but my schedule just doesn't allow for that right now! Plus I was feeling pretty sick last weekend so this all took much longer than normal as I was absolutely wiped out after about 1 hour of cooking!

Because of this, I simplified my plan somewhat, making meatloaves instead of meatballs and freezing plain cooked ground beef instead of seasoning some of it. 

But thankfully, I got this much cooking done and I'm feeling better too! I know not everyone is a fan of freezer cooking but for me it's a lifesaver. It would be very difficult to get home-cooked meals on the table every day without having some of the prep work done for me already!

It's important to us (and our budget) to eat mostly unprocessed foods and homemade meals made from scratch. Freezer cooking is one of the ways we can do this without cooking all. the. time.

I heart freezer cooking!

First Freezer Cooking Of The Year

I received this cookbook for Christmas.

Needless to say, it was one of my very favorite gifts---full of freezer cooking wonderfulness! I could hardly wait to get home and start cooking!

I've long been a fan of Jessica Fisher's blogs--Life As Mom and Good Cheap Eats. Mostly for the recipes! We have enjoyed every recipe that I've tried from her sites. She's frugal but still a foodie--kinda like us!

The cookbook is even better! It's full of recipes, tips and tricks for successful freezer cooking. This cookbook takes freezer cooking way beyond canned cream soups and casseroles. One aspect of the book that I really like is that most recipes call for frugal ingredients I would normally have in stock with some special ingredients thrown in here and there.

I've already had a lot of fun with this cookbook and highly recommend it!

Last week, I worked on a list of freezer cooking. It took most of the week to complete--I had one day off so I spent that morning doing the bulk of the list--then the rest was completed one or two recipes at a time during nap time the remainder of the week.

Not everything was from the new cookbook but those are marked with ** below.

• 2 carrot cakes. A 9 x 13 recipe divided into 2 smaller pans.
• 4 meals pancakes. Using this brown rice pancake mix that I got for cheap at a salvage grocery store.
• 3 meals carnitas.** Using a pork roast from the freezer.
• 10 bags cooked brown rice. Frozen in 2 cup portions.
• 11 bags shredded cheese. Frozen in 1 cup portions. It would be easier to buy it pre-shredded, yes, but using the block cheese tastes so much better! And doesn't have the additives that pre-shredded does. Call us cheese snobs--hahaha! It's not much of a chore to shred using my food processor.
• 1 pound cooked bacon.** For recipes. I baked it in the oven while cooking other things at the same time--similar instructions can also be found here. 
• 3 jars spice blends. Taco seasoning **, Onion soup mix and Rotisserie chicken spice mix. 
• 5 containers seasoned pinto beans.** Frozen in 2 cup portions. 
• 7 servings smoothies. Frozen berries, crushed pineapple, and coconut milk.
• 3 meals meatballs.
• 3 meals Catalan meatballs**. Used my recipe for the meatballs then used her sauce recipe. 
• 3 jars chicken gravy**. Chicken gravy served over rice is one of our favorite frugal meals around here! I added some diced chicken to this recipe. If we like it after it's frozen, I'll make a big batch of turkey gravy using turkey broth and turkey that was frozen after Thanksgiving. 
• 2 pans Sweet and Sour Chicken.  Divided one recipe into two smaller pans.

Love having  my freezer full of ready to eat foods!

 

Freezer Casseroles

This week, I'm going to be stocking my freezer with some casseroles and other easy to heat and serve dishes.

We have family coming to visit us during the month of December and I thought some freezer meals would come in very handy so I'm not spending all of my time in the kitchen while they're here.

I was inspired by Good Cheap Eats to have some casseroles ready to just pop in the oven! Then all I'll have to do is serve a simple side or two such as a salad and/or veggie to have a filling meal. We won't have casseroles every night---we'll change things up with some crockpot meals too.

 Sausage-Stuffed Acorn Squash prepared and ready to freeze!

Since changing our eating habits, I've realized that we don't eat that many actual "casseroles" anymore.

But I've come up with a decent list that includes some "tried and true" recipes that we like as well as a few new ones!

Tried and True:

• Unstuffed Pepper Bake
• Chicken and Brown Rice Stuffing Bake
• Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash--I hadn't thought of freezing this recipe until I saw this!
• Several Egg Casseroles for breakfasts. 

New to Me:

• Broccoli Chicken Cheese Bake
• Ham and Swiss Pork Chops- from this cookbook.
• Pineapple Chicken--also from this cookbook.

Not Really Casseroles but Easy Make Ahead Meals:

• Meatballs
• Sloppy Joes-in-a bowl: Freeze sloppy joe meat, cooked brown rice and some shredded cheddar cheese in a meal kit. Serve with chopped onions, black olives, pickles, tomatoes, peppers or whatever you desire!

I'll start working on this list tomorrow and see how it goes. Even if I only do half of the things on my list, I will still be a couple of steps ahead making for a smoother December!

What's your favorite freezer recipe? 
 

Four Weeks To Fill Your Freezer: 4 Chicken Meals In 30 Minutes

Trader Joe's carries organic free range chicken legs for $1.99 per pound. That's a very good price for free range meat and helps to balance out our grocery budget while still eating better quality meat at least some of the time. When we go to TJ's, I've been buying several packs of these to last a month or more.

Last weekend, I bought 4 packages of chicken legs so today I set to work getting them made into freezer meals! Approximately 30 minutes later, I had these 4 meals prepared:

• BBQ Chicken. Place chicken pieces in freezer bag. Pour your favorite BBQ sauce  in the bag, mush around to coat chicken and seal. Grill or bake when ready to serve. If baking, I'll probably add extra sauce at that time. We like Bulls Eye BBQ sauce. No high fructose corn syrup!
• Israeli Spice Chicken.  This is seriously our favorite chicken! Drizzle olive oil on chicken pieces, rub Israeli Spice Blend all over and pop in a freezer bag. Grill, bake or cook in skillet on stove top when ready to serve. Tip: Keep a batch or two of the seasoning blend made up for quick fixes like this! 
• Sweet & Sour Chicken (recipe below). Ok, so this one took a few minutes longer to prepare. But it's not hard and I had all the ingredients on hand, including a smidgen of brown sugar that just needed to be used up already!  I used 2 packages of the chicken legs to make a whole recipe of Sweet & Sour Chicken and then divided it into 2 casserole dishes-- 1 for tonight's dinner and one to freeze for later. 

Sweet & Sour Chicken 
Serves 6. 

This recipe is from my mom and is a family favorite! This is also really good made with pork chops.


1/4 cup water
2 T. cornstarch
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup vinegar
1 cup pineapple juice( reserve juice from pineapple chunks)
1 T. soy sauce
3/4 cup green pepper, cut in thin strips
1/4 cup onion, thinly sliced
1 (20 oz.) can pineapple chunks, drained
1 chicken, cut up or about 3-4 pounds of your choice of chicken pieces
Oil, for browning chicken

Combine water and cornstarch; add salt, brown sugar, vinegar, pineapple juice and soy sauce. Cook on low to medium heat until thickened, stirring frequently. Add green pepper, onion and pineapple chunks.

Brown chicken in oil; place in greased baking dish and cover with sauce.

Cover and bake at 325 degrees for around 1 hour or until tender. Serve over rice!

To freeze, prepare dish and freeze before baking, wrapping well. Remove from freezer and thaw overnight in fridge and then bake.


** This post is part of Money Saving Mom's 4 Weeks To Fill Your Freezer Challenge!
 

Four Weeks To Fill The Freezer: Ground Beef

I got several pounds of ground beef at Trader Joe's last weekend so today's freezer cooking was all about the beef!

I made one pound into hamburger patties to freeze and put the rest into the crockpot to cook. I cooked it on low for about 3 hours, stirring and crumbling it every so often, draining it well when it was cooked.

Of the 3 pounds beef I cooked:

• 1/2 pound was used for tonight's supper.
• 1/2 pound was put into a container to freeze to use for a quick dinner later.
• 2 pounds were made into Sloppy Joes and divided into 2 meal-sized portions to freeze.

So four more meals in the freezer!

**Visit Money Saving Mom for more freezer cooking ideas! 

Four Weeks To Fill The Freezer: Rice, Creamy Chicken Casserole, Cookies

I'm still plugging along and doing some freezer cooking! I'm a little slack in posting about it; the food in this post was made late last week!

One day,  I baked 2 big pans of rice and divided it into 2 cup portions to freeze. I used several bags of cooked rice for the next day's Creamy Chicken Casseroles.

The Creamy Chicken Casseroles were made by combining:  

• 2 cups cooked chicken 
• 5 cups cooked brown rice 
• double batch of homemade white sauce(recipe below) with some white cheddar cheese thrown in
•  half bag of frozen broccoli which I steamed lightly before adding. 

 I made 2 9 inch square casseroles; one for that night's dinner and one to freeze for later.  I freeze these unbaked and then bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.If casserole is not fully thawed, longer baking time may be necessary.

These are not the most attractive casseroles but they are yummy, made with whole food ingredients and frugal to put together.

I also made a half batch of these Healthier No-Bake Cookies but they didn't make it to the freezer! Not that we were surprised or anything; they are so good!

Homemade White Sauce


1/4 cup butter
3 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
2 cups milk
1 cup cheddar cheese (optional)

Melt butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. Blend in flour, salt and pepper. Cook over low heat, stirring until mixture is smooth and bubbly. Remove from heat and stir in milk. Heat until boiling, stirring constantly; boil 1 minute.

If making cheese sauce, add 1 cup shredded cheese and continue stirring, until  chese is melted and sauce is smooth.

This is great over mixed vegetables, as a gravy with meat added or as a canned cream soup substitute.

Have you been doing any freezer cooking?

**Head over to Money Saving Mom to read about and join in with her freezer cooking challenge!

Four Weeks To Fill Your Freezer: Chicken Veggie Soup

Today's' freezer cooking session involved putting ingredients for Chicken Veggie Soup into the crockpot and letting it simmer all day. Doesn't get any easier than that!

This used broth and chicken from yesterday's chicken cooking session and a variety of odds and ends from the freezer.

I froze most of the soup in muffin pans for easy lunches-- 4 "soup pucks" fills our smaller mugs perfectly.I put a meal's worth in the refrigerator for a lunch this week too. I don't see any reason to fill the freezer and then not have anything in the house to eat right now! So I try to balance it out by cooking for both at the same time!

As with split pea soup, I didn't use a recipe for this but added broth, tomato juice, canned tomatoes, carrots, celery, onion, chicken and spices to the pot and let it cook!

**For more freezer cooking inspiration, check out the challenge on Money Saving Mom--she even freezes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!**

Four Weeks To Fill Your Freezer: Chicken Breasts

Heading into the 2nd week of Crystal's freezer cooking challenge, here's a quick recap of what's made its way into my freezer so far!

• Crustless Spinach Quiche
• Cooked Lentils and Millet
• Split Pea Soup, Ham and Broccoli Casserole and Pina Colada Pops

Counting a few freezer meals I already had in the freezer prior to beginning this challenge, I now have 12 main dishes at the ready. This not counting a few sides and meal components such as cooked ground beef and the above mentioned lentils and millet. My goal is to have around 24 frozen meals by the end of May. This would have us set for a couple of weeks worth of dinners plus some lunches during our move.

Honestly, I haven't really made a plan going into this challenge. Instead, I've been going by what's available to cook as I dig through the freezer and pantry and what I find on sale at the grocery store!

I purchased a couple big trays of split chicken breasts last week which were the inspiration for today's freezer cooking session. Split chicken breasts go on sale for $.99 a pound often in my area and I've discovered that with just a knife and a few minutes of time, I can quickly cut them into boneless skinless chicken breasts and tenders myself. This saves a lot of money and I get a lot more meat for my dollar as well.

I started with cutting the chicken off the bone, going ahead and throwing the meaty bones right into the crockpot to cook the meat and make broth. I put the chicken tenders in a baking dish and covered them with BBQ sauce for tonight's dinner.

From the 2 trays of meat, I got 8 chicken breasts. It didn't take long to prepare them for freezing:

• 2-Mexican Chicken Skillet meals: Each kit included 2 cubed chicken breasts and chopped onion and green peppers. I bagged the chicken and veggies separately then put them together into a gallon bag. Fajita kits can also be made with this same  concept.
• 1- Israeli Spice Chicken: 2 breasts coated with Israeli seasoning blend and placed in a zipper bag ready for grilling or to be cooked in a pan.
• 2- Cubed Chicken Breasts: 1 cubed chicken breast in a bag. perfect for throwing into stir fries!

Plus I have a bowl of broth and 4 cups of chopped chicken from cooking the meaty bones!  Don't be surprised if the chicken finds its way into some other freezer sessions!

**Read more about the 4 Weeks To Fill Your Freezer Challenge and join in at Money Saving Mom!

Four Weeks To Fill Your Freezer: Lentils and Millet

Ok, so today's freezer offering is rather boring but useful-- cooked lentils and millet all ready to throw into soups, grain salads, casseroles or heat up and eat on their own for a quick meal.

In yesterday's freezer post, I mentioned preparing to move. Well, moving gives me the desire to clean things out and use them up! So I've found some items in the freezer and pantry that I could go ahead and cook up and have ready to eat!

We eat a good amount of lentils and even though they are relatively quick-cooking as legumes go, it's handy to have some already cooked up for even faster meals!

We don't eat a lot of millet but I found a zipper bag of millet in the freezer and thought we could go ahead and use that up. I figured we could use it instead of rice for meals, add it to grain salads or make this yummy looking Southwestern casserole.

I cooked the lentils at the same time I was preparing supper tonight (yesterday by the time you read this!). And simmered the millet while washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen.

Yield: 3 containers of lentils (varying amounts in the 1-2 cup range) and 6 (2 cup) bags of millet.

Into the freezer they go!

**Be sure and visit Money Saving Mom for more freezer cooking inspiration!**

Four Weeks To Fill Your Freezer-- Crustless Spinach Quiche

I was excited to see that this month's challenge on Money Saving Mom is freezer cooking. Every weekday for the next 4 weeks, Crystal will be making at least one food item for her freezer and she's inviting us to join her!

Well, I don't know if I'll be able to do something every. single. day. but I'm going to try to participate at least 3 days every week if I can. We are planning to move sometime in June, Lord willing, and I was wanting to stock up my freezer to help us eat well and more inexpensively throughout this busy time.

My hope is that as the moving boxes fill up, so will the freezer!

I discovered that I had all the ingredients to make a Crustless Spinach Quiche so that's what I did today.  I made two--one for eating this week and one to freeze for later. This makes a terrific breakfast, lunch or light dinner!

My recipe is here. Today I used frozen spinach (thawed and squeezed dry), a little bacon, chopped onion, and a combination of cheddar and feta cheeses. And of course, eggs, milk, salt and pepper.

To freeze crustless quiches: Mix up and bake following recipe instructions. Let cool. Wrap well--I like to double wrap with plastic wrap and then cover with foil. Using a Sharpie marker, label the foil with what it is, the date and how to prepare for serving. Freeze.

To serve: Remove from freezer and let thaw in fridge overnight. Be sure to remove plastic wrap before heating! Cover with foil and heat at 350 degrees for around 30 minutes or until heated through. Can also be thawed and then each slice heated individually in microwave, if desired. Or once thawed, quiche can be served cold!

What foods do you like to freeze?

**For more freezer cooking inspiration, visit Money Saving Mom!

Soup Frozen In Muffin Tins

Just when you thought I would not find another alternative use for muffin tins, I came across this on Pinterest.

I thought this would be an excellent use for leftover soup. Especially if there's only 1 or 2 servings left.

I had an extra quart of chicken and rice soup last week so poured it into a muffin pan and froze it.

Yesterday, I popped them out and stored them all in a gallon freezer bag. Run a bit of water over the bottom of pan and they'll pop right out!

To use, just place several "soup pucks" in a mug and microwave.

I haven't actually tried the nuking in the microwave part yet but I don't see why it wouldn't work!

I'm thinking this would be a great way to have chicken soup on hand for sick season!

**And in other muffin pan news, Jessica shares how to make lemon cubes. In muffin pans!

Freezer Cooking Day: Completed Meals and My Thoughts

I survived my first Once-A-Month Cooking Day!

Here's the list of completed meals and foods:

• 2 Chicken Fajita Kits
• 2 meals of Chicken Chimichangas
• 3 quarts of Chili 
• 3 meals worth of Fish and Veggie Packets : My first time freezing these so it's an experiment!  I don't see a reason why these wouldn't freeze well, though. 
• 1 container of Hummus
• 1 container of Roasted Red Pepper Hummus
• 3 Chicken Pot Pies
• 2 Spaghetti Pies
• 2 Spinach, Mushroom, and Bacon Quiches
• 2 Cheesy Beef and Rice Casseroles
• 7 dozen Meatballs: 1 recipe; depending how I use them and how many people I'm serving should end up being about 6 meals. 
• 3 quarts Spaghetti Sauce
• 1 bag cooked brown rice
• 1 bag cooked and cubed chicken
• 2 bags cooked kidney beans
• 5 bags cooked pinto beans

Whew! That's  a lot of food!

My thoughts:

• The biggest hurdle to overcome when starting is to stop thinking about it and just do it. I dreaded making the lists and making it work with my recipes but once I got started it was not as difficult as I originally thought. I had read a lot about freezer cooking online and learned from my sister which helped a lot. I have also done a lot of freezer cooking in small increments over the years. Ultimately though, reading through Once A Month Cooking and seeing how they orchestrated the cooking days with their recipes and then following the tips in the book for adapting the process to your own recipes was my biggest motivation.
  
• This didn't cost a lot of money. I planned the meals based on what I had on hand in the freezer and pantry and spent about $40 more to get the rest of the ingredients, which also included fresh produce and other things we needed that were not included in the cooking day.
• Next time, I would like to plan ahead a bit better and have fresh meat to marinate and throw in the freezer, ready to cook. Some ideas would be roasts or whole chickens with a marinade or spice rub or any of these Dump Chicken recipes. ( The Lemon-Garlic chicken is good and I have the cranberry chicken in the freezer but haven't tried it yet.)The reason I would do more of this is that these would be less time-consuming than doing mostly casseroles. Because I used already frozen meat, I didn't want to thaw meat and refreeze it without cooking it.
• All the planning was good. My personality loves checking items off lists and knowing exactly what comes next. Knowing this about myself, my list was made up of lots of small tasks rather than large chores, so I could cross things off more quickly. It was motivating to be able to cross things off relatively quickly. There's nothing more discouraging to me than working half a day and only crossing a couple of to-do's off my list!
• While doing all the prep work the day before actually turned my cooking day into 2 cooking days, it was well worth it! My work space is quite limited and doing all the prep and cooking everything from scratch in one day would've been very overwhelming. Pulling prepared meats, veggies, rice, beans, ad cheese out of the fridge was wonderful! The assembly was pretty easy.
• Next time, I will not plan to away from home the day before!
• The Spaghetti Sauce is not my favorite. It has added cinnamon and cloves so is a sweeter type sauce. While good and certainly edible, I doubt I'll use this recipe again. Or if I do use it again, I'll omit the cinnamon and cloves.
• This is not all we will eat for the next month. I have other meats in the freezer and I will still want to cook some nights to give a little more variety. That being said, I won't be surprised if this stash lasts us about 2 months. Most meals are enough for supper and lunch the next day for the two of us. My family will be visiting for Christmas and I would love to still have a few meals left by then to serve them! (If not, I'll have to make a few more.)
• I'm planning a baking day for next week. I purposely did not include any baked items on the list because of previous attempts of making pizza dough, bread dough and casseroles at the same time. Too varied and time and space-consuming. The pie crusts for the quiche and pot pies was enough this time around!!!
  
• As well as journaling my experiences here, I need to create a notebook or document on the computer with my recipes and lists that I used for reference for next time. Each time should get easier as I fine-tune the process to what works for me. 
• If you're wanting to stock your freezer, do what works for you. You could do a  whole full-blown cooking day like I did, or simply double or triple your supper recipes for a week and freeze the extras. There's really no right or wrong way to do it. 
• I'm not that terrrified of a little freezer burn, since we use stuff pretty quickly. My previous experience with freezer meals has been good. I do double wrap most items. All pans are wrapped in plastic wrap and then in foil. For Ziplocs, I use only freezer bags.
• Standing a Ziploc bag in a quart jar and using a canning funnel is an easy and mess-free way to fill bags with soups and sauces. 
• I laid all filled bags on cookie sheets so that they froze flat. After frozen, they can be stacked on the shelf or in a  basket.
  
• I label everything. For pans, I just write the name, date and cooking instructions on the foil or on a sticky note which I tape to the pan. Labels are nice but I had run out of them. some day, I'll get all fancy and print some custom labels on my computer. Writing full instructions is important in case my husband is cooking the dish or if I use it for hospitality. I know where to find the recipe to see how to cook it but someone else may not. 

For easy reference here are all my posts about this freezer day:

Freezer Cooking Day- Menu and list of prep work.  (Recipe links.)
Freezer Cooking Day: Preparation
Freezer Cooking Day: My List and Progress
Freezer Cooking Day: Halfway Home
Freezer Cooking Day: Done! 

Food in the freezer is like having money in the bank. I can't wait to use it!