My First Attempt at Freezer Cooking

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This past month I tried out freezer cooking. You may be asking, “What is freezer cooking?”  Well, it is making a bunch of meals at one time in order to freeze them for a later date when you are too busy to cook. I should say for me it means being too busy to cook, but people do it for many different reasons.

So, this last month, since freezer cooking is sort of new to me, I kind of wanted a bit of hand-holding and so I decided to try out a program I had heard about called Once a Month Meals. Once a month meals is a website where you pay a small membership fee, basically for them to do most of the pre-organizing and recipe conversions (depending on how many people you cook for usually) for you.

I have to say it was mostly a great experience. The not so good parts were entirely my own fault. The great parts being:

1. So far all the meals I have cooked have gone over really well, taste-wise, to (almost) everyone in the family.
2. Knowing I have a bunch of delicious, healthy meals in the freezer, ready to thaw and throw in the crock-pot or oven, has truly been a lifesaver on busy nights, especially on busy nights when we are all home at different times to eat. (you can get an idea of how busy life is around here if you check out a day in the life)
3. My kids were able to help out with a bunch of the cooking (usually, I’m too stressed at the last minute and I just end up ordering everyone out of the kitchen!)

As I said, the “bad” parts have honestly been my own fault. I got too gung-ho about starting right away, that I grocery shopped and did part of the prep work one night and tried to prep and cook at the same time on cooking day. I just ended up exhausted and didn’t finish doing some of the meals.

Will I do this again?

Definitely!

The peace of mind this gives me for at least a few meals a week, is so wonderful.

What will I do differently?

I will certainly try and be more organized and not so gung-ho to get it all done at once. I’m going to try extra hard to do all the prep the night or day before. There is an excellent video all about this which I will share here:

The other change I think I will make is to reconfigure my menu a little bit. This past month I did 4 breakfasts, 3 lunches and 8 dinners with the freezer cooking. I think I will do mostly dinner meals and a few lunch ones, but no breakfasts. We have a pretty good repertoire of quick breakfasts and lots of lunch ideas already.

My child is picky/allergic/can’t eat ____, are there any menus/recipes to help me deal with that?

I have to say a huge bonus of having a Once a month meals membership is that you can easily customize your menu to the types of meals you know your family wants and needs (they have over 600 in the archives!)

For instance there are specific menus for:

• Paleo
• Gluten free/Dairy free
• Traditional fare
• Vegetarian
• Diet
• GAPS
• Real Food

If you decide to head over to their website, make sure you sign up for the newsletter and receive your free, dietary specific mini menu! It gives you a good idea of what to expect if you sign up for a membership.

Have a great week!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links which means if you click on them, my blog may get compensated, but at no extra cost to you. I promise that we are only affiliated with programs and products which we have personally tried and tested and believe to be great.  Thanks for supporting our homestead dreams!