Missed the first post on Freezer Cooking? Click here to read how I planned and get links to the resources I used.
Hey y’all, as promised I’m back to share how our freezer cooking day went last Saturday. I’m happy to say it went really well! Of course, as with anything, going forward there are things we’d probably do differently. I thought I would take some time in this post to share what worked, what didn’t and what we’re planning for future freezer cooking sessions (yes, there will be more!).
Let’s start with what worked:
- Using the planning forms from Money Saving Mom was a great first start. It helped me plan well and gave me the ability to delegate tasks to my hubby.
- The recipes from Six Sister’s Stuff were super easy to follow and they were pretty basic ingredients, which meant that I had a lot of the staples already in the pantry. (You can find a link to the recipes in Part 1 – there’s a link at the top of this post.)
- Having Adam there to help was awesome. It made things go so much more quickly than had I done it by myself.
OK now what we would do differently for the future:
- Next time I would do either all recipes that require cooking prior to freezing OR ones that don’t. Most of the recipes were just “dump ingredients in a bag” type, but there were a couple that required cooking and that took a lot of time at the end when we were just ready to be done. I think doing one or the other would be better.
- I had planned on cleaning out and organizing the freezer prior to our big day, but that didn’t happen. Because of that some of our newly frozen meals aren’t flat for easy storing. Next time I’ll make it a point to have one shelf bare so we can freeze things flat.
- Many of the meals we froze were slow cooker meals, which are awesome, but need to be thawed for 24 hours prior to putting in the slow cooker. They aren’t really convenient in case we need a quick meal to avoid hitting the drive through. Next time I’ll probably plan a few quick fix meals that we can just thaw and heat.
I’ll be back with part 3 of this mini-series tomorrow, where I’ll offer some tips and answer your questions about freezer cooking. Leave any questions in the comments below and I’ll add it to the list!
