Freezer Meals, take 2

I'm sure many of you that are interested in freezing meals have probably already checked out my original freezer meals post. It's by far and away the most popular post on this blog, and I'm so glad it has been helpful to people! In preparation for baby #2, we knew we'd freeze meals again. Actually, ever since we did that massive freezer meals session, we have been a lot better about keeping our freezer stashed with at least a few meals. Whenever we make a large batch of something we know we won't finish, we'll freeze half, and we frequently make things like spaghetti sauce and muffins to keep in the freezer. It's pretty much essential with 2 working parents if you don't want to rely on prepackaged meals or take out on hectic nights.

A few things we did differently this time around - we modified what we made based on things we liked the most, obviously. Because we barely ate the breakfast burritos last time, those got nixed. A concerned anonymous commenter let me know that aluminum foil apparently seeps into food, so I used plastic where I could, and upgraded to heavy duty foil (which is intended for lining baking pans) for the casseroles and enchiladas that I wanted baked in the foil itself. I could have gone completely foil-less, but honestly - everything is bad for you, including plastic and disposable pans. I did some research on the topic and am comfortable with our methods of freezing food.

This whole process, including grocery shopping, took one day from about 9am-4pm, and one evening. From that, we have about 30 dinners for 3, 15 wraps for lunches, and 3-4 dozen muffins for breakfasts.

Big special thanks to my in-laws for watching Annie while we made the majority of these meals! We still could have done it with her around, but it would have been a lot more hectic :) The biggest props of all go to Ben, who really did most of this! I seem to have had much more energy last pregnancy... this time, just standing up for 20 minutes got to be a bit much, but I did at least make all the muffins and did a lot of the packaging while sitting down :)

Before going into the meals we made this time, here is a list of things we usually have on hand in the freezer:

Chopped blanched carrots and celery - inevitably, we don't use all that we buy for 1 or 2 recipes, so we chop the rest, blanch them (drop in boiling water, and immediately take out and put in ice water), and freeze in 1-2 cup portions for use in soup or chili recipes.

Frozen bread - we buy the baquettes you are supposed to bake, and cut them in thirds, wrap in foil and put in freezer bags - 1/3 of a loaf is perfect for us to eat with soup.

Frozen fruit  - Ben makes smoothies every day for breakfast, so we always have frozen blueberries, strawberries and mangoes

Chicken breasts/thighs 

Sauce - Pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, pesto - if we make this and have any leftover, it goes in the freezer
Cornbread Muffins - I personally love having these with chili and black bean soup, but Ben is so-so, so I keep some around for myself (and Annie).

A few tips on freezing food:

-Freeze in the portion sizes you want for one dinner - for us now that is for 2 adults and 1 toddler.

-Vary the type of meals you are preparing - no one wants to only have the option of lasagna if you haven't prepared a meal.

-Don't forget about breakfast and lunch! As nice as it is to have dinners prepared, breakfast and lunch can be the toughest to manage when you are on maternity leave because you're typically alone - at least usually in at night you may have your spouse around to assist with baby-holding.(although with a toddler and a baby now, I'm guessing days alone with a baby will seem quite calm... we'll see)

-Remember when you put things in the freezer - we were horrible about this before, but now make it a practice to put the date on each freezer bag so we know to use it in a reasonable amount of time. Reasonable to me is about 6 months, but I'm sure others feel differently. I also somewhat psychotically created a spreadsheet of the contents of our freezer so we wouldn't forget about anything that may get buried within the depths of our freezer.

It's essential to be stylish when preparing freezer meals at 38.5 weeks pregnant

Without further ado, here is a big list of the food currently residing in our freezer! I'm just including the name, the link to the recipe, a photo, and any modifications to the recipe we made.

Blueberry Muffins - Recipe from Simply Recipes

I made these for Kate's shower, and doubled the recipe, which made about 36 muffins. There were some leftover from the shower, so I had almost 2 dozen in there! (I say "had" because I couldn't resist having some already last weekend... oops!)

Note - for all muffins we made, I baked them, cooled, and then froze on the cooling rack in the freezer prior to putting in a freezer bag so the muffins wouldn't stick together.

Pineapple Muffins - Recipe from Annie's Eats

These seem to be prone to burning, probably due to the high baking temp. Next time I make these I'm going to try baking at 350 for longer instead of 425. I used orange passion fruit yogurt because that's what was available, and didn't do the glaze.

Banana Nut Muffins - Recipe from Simply Recipes

 

These are so easy. I've made them several times before, and I love that they require just one bowl and no mixer. I didn't add the espresso this time. I just made these to bring to Rebekah and Rett after Harriet was born and that time didn't add nuts, but added some cinnamon - just as good that way too!

Chicken Rice Wraps - Recipe originally found on a message board, nowhere to be found now. This recipe is VERY adaptable - basically just some combination of chicken, rice, spices and salsa - you can add cheese or not, we did not this time.

2 cups dry rice, cooked
~1 lb cooked and shredded chicken (we baked a lot of chicken for several recipes and shredded it in the Kitchen Aid which worked great, but causes the chicken to be a little mushier than if it's shredded by hand)
2 cups salsa (we used the salsa we made and canned this summer)
1 package taco seasoning, or you can make your own, which is what we did
Large Tortillas - this made 15 wraps for us, but it varies depending on how much filling you use per wrap

Mix all ingredients together, scoop into tortillas (I used my large cookie scoop and did 2 scoops per wrap), and wrap burrito style. Individually wrap in plastic wrap or foil, then place in freezer bags.

To reheat, unwrap from foil or plastic, loosely wrap in paper towel, microwave on 50% power for 2 minutes, then full power for 2 minutes, flipping over in between.

These are GREAT to have on hand for quick lunches that you can eat one handed, or even in the car.

Pizza Dough - Recipe from Annie's Eats

Super easy thing to have on hand - we've used this many times before and homemade pizza is well loved around our house. Yes, we'll still have to prep the toppings, but at least the dough is prepared! I just made one batch but this could easily be doubled or even tripled to make 4 or 6 pizza doughs.

Crockpot Chicken & Veggies - Found via Pinterest on Mama and Baby Love

As we said over on We Got Fed when we made this once, this was totally blah to us. We plan to amp up the 2nd batch with more spices, potentially throw some beans in there (basically make it chili) and serve with some sort of starch. Someone suggested this method of freezing crockpot meals on my last post, so I was excited to see that it worked well and that the meat could just be put in the bags raw. I know others have loved this meal, but it didn't do it for us.

Chicken Chili - Recipe from Ben - once we actually eat this, we'll finally put it on We Got Fed - can't believe it's not there already!

3 chicken breasts, 3 chicken thighs
2 28 oz can of tomato sauce
2 15 oz can of black beans (drained and rinsed)
2 15 oz can of corn (drained)
2 diced onions
2 heads of diced garlic (8-10 cloves)
4 stalks of diced celery (we used 2 cups chopped that we had in the freezer)
chili seasoning, recipe below
2-3 jalapeno peppers, diced (keep the seeds if you want it to be really spicy, otherwise toss the seeds out)

Cook on low in crockpot, check after 4 hours to see if the chicken is done.

Chili seasoning

• 1 T flour
• 2 t chili powder
• 1 t salt
• 1 t ground red pepper
• 1 t garlic granules
• 1 t sugar (white or brown)
• 1 t cumin
• 2 t oregano
• 1 t paprika
• 1 t black pepper

We are trying the above crockpot frozen meal method for this - typically we just start with cooked, shredded chicken, but instead we're putting the chicken in the crockpot raw and shredding at the end. We froze this in 3 bags - so if you make this as written it'd probably serve around 10 people.

Spaghetti Sauce - Recipe from Mom's Budget

We've made this many, many times now, and actually discovered that we had 5 bags of it already in the freezer - so, spaghetti once a week from now until the end of my maternity leave, I guess! Luckily we all love it :)

Creamy Chicken Taquitos - Recipe from Annie's Eats

We've made these a few times, and frozen as well, so I can vouch that these taste great from the freezer. We froze in 5 taquito batches - 2 for each of us, 1 for Annie. We had smaller tortillas this time, and I used my little cookie scoop to put 2 heaping scoops in each one which seemed to be a good amount.

Chicken Enchiladas - Recipe on We Got Fed

Since this is our own recipe, there are no modifications :) These were one of my favorites last time though - so easy to just pop out a pack and throw it in the oven! You don't even NEED a side dish, which is great.

Black Bean Soup - Recipe from Simply Recipes

Tons o veggies

A double batch BARELY fits in our dutch oven

As we note in our We Got Fed post on this meal, we use bacon in place of the ham hock. We doubled the original recipe and got 5 meals out of it. This is another family favorite, so hopefully this works well from the freezer! We tried this once in the crockpot and it just wasn't as good (got a bit too watery), so we stuck with the stovetop.

Lasagna - Recipe from the Pioneer Woman

We froze this in 2 8x8 portions, lining the pan in foil and wrapping up - freezing for awhile then putting the square into a freezer bag. Made this one a few times before too. The only change was to use no-boil noodles. This is a TON of meat, you could easily cut it down - it was kind of hard to cut the portions in half but we managed and I'm sure the combination of noodles, meaty sauce and lots of cheese won't be bad no matter the ratios :)

Chicken Spaghetti - Recipe from the Pioneer Woman

This again was split in half and froze in 8x8 pans. Ben used a whole onion and a whole red pepper (not 1/4 cup or whatever the recipe calls for). This is delicious and bakes from frozen very well, as we know since we made it last time and have prepared before.