Meal Planning

Hello! As I mentioned in my last post I really wanted to get better at meal planning and doing freezer meals, I'm starting my second week and it seems to be a success! Being almost 39 weeks this also seemed like the logical thing to do.
Last Sunday I spent about 2 1/2 hours preparing/cooking meals, it seemed like a long time and I made a huge mess, but it was worth it. I have found that by having things prepped and frozen hardly anything gets tossed, like fruits and veggies. They are all used and frozen.

So... to get ready I spent my Saturday night picking meals and making a list. My husband went and did the shopping by himself the next morning =) Our grocery total was $199 for EVERYTHING, including paper products. My meal list consisted of:

-Chicken won tons
-Super healthy turkey meatloaf
-Pot Roast
-Spicy tomato soup
-Crock pot BBQ beef

I made the BBQ beef on Monday, super easy, I followed the instructions exactly. It was delicious! We had a ton left, we ended up having left overs on Wednesday with sweet potatoes cooked in the microwave and veggies =) Easy enough! We had so much left that we even sent some home with my parents.
Tuesday I made the chicken won tons and salad. they were easy because I had already cooked and shredded the chicken and just had to put together/fry the won tons. Thursday we took out the tomato soup, when making/ freezing this put everything together EXCEPT the pastina, put that in we re-heating or you end up with mush, tasty mush, but mush =/

My son went to my mom's for the night on Friday so on the way home from shopping my husband picked up  Burger King...oops! We finished the week with TWO meals still frozen! I just added them to this week!

For the Pot Roast I just put it in a freezer bag with cut veggies (carrots, celery, onions) a can of cream of mushroom soup and french onion soup mix. It's all frozen and will just need to hit the fridge the night before to thaw enough and head to the crock pot the next morning!
The meat loaf is the same, fridge night before and then head to the oven when we need it.

For this week I knew I had two meals to start, so I picked 3 dinners and 1 breakfast our list was smaller than last week, even with detergents and fresh fruit/veggies and milks, the bill came to $169....wayyyyy better than our usual $300ish a week!

Our meals this week will be:

- Baked Ziti
-chimichangas
- Corn casserole

Everything we make is changed to be lactose intolerant friendly! So everything I pick can be changed easily. For the baked ziti follow the directions up to the point of baking and just stick it in the freezer. Try not to use glass containers when freezing things, they could expand and you would have a big mess! Ceramic and throw away containers are best (cheapest at Walmart). The chimichanga recipe gives directions to freeze, they are great!

In trying this freezer cooking things I have picked things I liked and altered them to work for freezing, so many of these recipes have been taken from others, links to the original sites are attached. There are some things that can't or shouldn't be frozen. Things like uncooked potatoes, rice/pasta, and raw eggs...they just become yuck! If you decide to try this be prepared for a big mess! It is kinda nice to clean up only once a week though!

Good Luck! Have fun saving time and money!
S