The Big Freeze (Eating from the freezer for a month)

Over the last couple of months I have been trailing freezer meal recipes, after finding many pins on Pintrest about freezing a months, worth of meals in a couple of cooking sessions, I thought “I like the sound of that” however when I started on the research I found that a lot of the recipes used just weren't suitable for our needs.   For one thing a lot of the American recipes involve pasta, we do eat pasta but not in the quantities that I found on the net, also a lot of American’s seem to have no problem with defrosting and refreezing raw chicken!!  I can’t bring myself to do that either so that was out, and lastly the Americans have the “coupons” advantage (anybody that has seen Extreme Couponing, knows what I mean), this means they can go out and buy masses of ingredients in one go without needing to re-mortgage the house.   Anyway, not to be put off by these few stumbling blocks I thought there must be a way for me to manage it, I have always used my freezer for fruit/veggies, soup mixes, shepherd’s pie, meat on it’s own, but having a whole meal prepped and ready to go just makes things so easy,  research done, shopping for twice the usual meat etc, stretched over a month, the family thinking I have lost the plot cause everything is going in the freezer, I am pleased to report success!!!! We have so far enjoyed 8 days’ worth of stress free eating, I just have to get a tray etc out of the freezer in the morning (or evening if it is something for the slow cooker) and bung it in the oven, I sometimes need to do a few potatoes, on the other hand sometimes I don’t because I have frozen some portions of mash, baked potatoes, and ready to roast potatoes, anything requiring rice is sorted as I froze portions as I went along, and I have trays of ready to roast veg and bags of prepped veg ready too.   The biggest advantage to all this, isn't really to do with money (at this stage anyway, though I am sure I will be taking advantage of offers and reductions in a much better way now) it is more about the carefree meal times.   I have devised a system so that we know what is available, and if it came to it anybody in our house could sort the tea out (Wow that would be good!!!!).

I have a small ring bound note book in the kitchen, each time I prepare a freezer meal (or pudding) I write it on one page, together with how many portions (some meals are split down into single servings as sometimes we aren’t all there to eat together, in that case, say I had 4 individual portions of something, I write along the bottom of the page – 4 3 2 1), I also put any cooking instructions on the page.   When we use something, I tear the page out of the book, or cross a used portion off, that way we know what we have in the freezer and what the options are for tea!!   On the back page of the notebook is a list of sandwiches that I have made up and frozen, I have been trialing what works well with those too and we now have no worries for packed lunches or impromptu picnics, a short hop to the freezer and we are sorted (excellent in the summer when bread goes off so quickly).  I am sure that I will find more and more useful things, and although I have always managed to get 2 weeks of meals frozen and sorted for Christmas, I am determined to make this a whole year and whole month way of feeding the gang, so I will continue this another time however I am sure a quick taster of what we have available at the moment would be useful.

Balsamic roast Sausage, Balsamic and Honey Pork, Hawaiian Pork, Turkey rollups, Spaghetti bolognaise (sauce only),Shepherd’s pie, Loaded Baked potatoes, Curries (stacked together with rice portions and naan breads), Cooked chicken for super fast fajita’s, Corned beef pasties, Lasagne, Pasta sauces, Fishcakes, Home cooked sliced Ham. Potato Muffins, Mash and rice, packets of prepped soup mix, muffins and pancakes, pies and crumbles for puddings.   More research to come and a bigger freezer me thinks!!