I’m back! Ok, not really but I needed somewhere to post my once a month cooking plan I have come up with so that friends could use it as well and the blog seemed like the best vehicle to do this. I mixed it up with recipes I know are good with some new recipes so hopefully these turn out ok. Some of the recipes are freezer to oven or grill while others go straight into the crock pot. The nice thing about having a few meals in the freezer is that if I need to bring a meal to someone and my life is crazy busy, I can pull a homemade meal out of the freezer. So, here is my plan, grocery list and websites with the recipes. Feel free to pin, bookmark, download, whatever. I also went through and put little updates after each meal about what we thought afterwards or if I would do anything differently.
The Meals:
This makes a large amount so my plan is to actually make this the day of my big cooking/assembling day and then freeze the leftovers for another meal. If you don’t want to eat the day of, then I would brown the ground beef, drain all the beans and rinse, mix everything together in a freezer bag and thaw the night before in the fridge. Serve with shredded cheese, sour cream, crushed up tortilla chips, over rice or whatever else you like!
Chicken Enchiladas x2 freezer
Bake at 350 for 25-30 min. Top with sour cream, lettuce, rice, etc. I added green chiles, onions and some spices to my chicken meat so feel free to make this your own.
Slow Cooker French Dip Sandwiches serve with french fries
My plan is to just add the cans of beef consumme when I throw the roast in the crock pot
Meatballs Freezer Recipe – x2 meals – For Spaghetti and Meatball Subs
I mix milk into my meatballs instead of water and also replace the 1/2lb veal with more pork. I also cook my meatballs in the oven but you can do either one. Then I cool the meatballs and freeze them on a cookie sheet for a bit then put into freezer bags so you can just grab how many you need for the recipe. Defrost in the microwave with a little bit of water.
Easy Crock Pot Ribs with french fries
I plan to rub the ribs before I freeze them.
UPDATE: This was a fail. Not sure if it was me or the ribs but it wasn’t good.
Beef Stroganoff Freezer to Slow Cooker x2
Mixing it all together in a freezer bag minus the egg noodles, defrost the night before then throw in the crock pot.
UPDATE: Next time I will not add the sour cream before I freeze it, it curdled up and didn’t look the best, taste was fine though.
‘Brown the beef before freezing. Add it all to a freezer bag except for the beef broth. Add that on crock pot day. I also keep the noodles entirely separate, I do not add them to the crock pot as they get soggy and soak up the juice. I keep the noodles in a separate container when we have leftovers and add them when we heat it up again.
Cilantro Lime Chicken with Corn & Black Beans Crock pot
Assemble all together in a bag, when ready to cook make sure it has thawed in the fridge first. Serve with tortillas, rice, sour cream, salsa, whatever you like!
UPDATE: This makes A LOT! My family didn’t love it, it was ok, nothing amazing.
Combine all ingredients in a freezer bag minus the cream cheese or sour cream if you use those instead of the cream of chx soup. Top with sour cream, cheese, put in tortilla shells, make it your own!
Slow Cooker Chicken Lemon Orzo Soup
Combine all ingredients except the chicken broth, bay leaf and orzo in a bag. Add to slow cooker after thawing in the fridge overnight and throw in the bay leaf and chicken broth. Cook orzo separately and add to your bowl when ready to eat. Again, I would leave the orzo in a separate container if you have leftovers so they don’t soak up all the broth.
UPDATE: This also was just ok, the kids didn’t like it at all. I wouldn’t make it again, it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either.
So this recipe will take a little more time to put together so it would be perfect for a morning when you have some time to chop potatoes and onions. The only thing you will be freezing is your beef stew meat. Thaw out the night before then follow the recipe from the beginning.
You will need to brown your ground beef and cook the noodles for this one. Also, thaw the night before baking. Bake at 350 for 30-40 min. uncovered.
UPDATE: My kids actually liked this one! I will be making it again. I made it a long time ago but kind of forgot about it so it’s nice to have something new in the rotation.
Burgers – Freezer x2 Probably serve with potato wedges, baked beans. This looked like a fun recipe if you want one: Cheddar Ranch Burgers
UPDATE: We didn’t make these yet but I plan to soon.
Pulled Pork Crock Pot make sandwiches, maybe serve with baked potatoes or french fries
Greek Chicken Salad Freezer (Double the dressing)
Mix a batch of the dressing up, pour into a freezer bag with the chicken breasts and freeze. Thaw in the fridge the night before you are ready to grill the chicken. The day you are ready to make your salad, mix up another batch of dressing for your salad. I have used frozen corn instead of ears of corn for this salad and just add some dressing before I microwave the corn. I LOVE this salad!
Oven Baked Chicken Fajitas Freezer
Throw all the ingredients in one bag, thaw the night before baking. We ate this with rice in tortillas, top with sour cream, cheese, etc.
Meatloaf freezer x2 serve with mashed potatoes
Make meatloaf and then place in freezer bag. Thaw the night before in the fridge, mix up the sauce and bake at 350 for one hour or until done in the middle. I also like making these as muffin cup size bites. Here is a nice trick from Southern Plate on freezing meatloaf:
great hint when freezing meatloaves is to line your pan with aluminum foil. When the loaf is frozen remove it from the pan and wrap tightly in foil or place it in a zipper bag and return it to the freezer, leaving your pan free to use. When its time to bake your meatloaf, pop it out and put it back in the original pan – it fits perfectly!
Pizza Casserole freezer x2
Brown the ground beef before assembling. Don’t forget you can customize this by adding in whatever pizza toppings you enjoy. You could even do half of the pan with some toppings and half without if you have picky kids, which I do! Remember to thaw the night before in the fridge, bake at 350 for 30-40 min. until done.
UPDATE: We all thought this needed more cheese and my kids were not big fans. They are picky though.
Now, onto the Grocery List. I have tried to list every single ingredient needed for the recipes. You can print out the spreadsheet here and then customize it according to what you need. Please don’t customize the list on google docs as I’m not sure what will happen.
There are some great websites that give you an idea of how to assemble, label and store your freezer meals. You can check out this post and also this one, that I thought were very informative.
Some Great websites are out there and this girl seems to have pinned a lot of them already! Check out her Pinterest board and also you can look under my recipes and crockpot boards for some more pins.
If you have any questions you can feel free to email me at ange@thebloominghydrangea.com Also a BIG thank you to my hubby for working the google doc spreadsheet for me. I was about to throw the computer out the window but he saved the day with his spreadsheet knowledge.
I hope you find this helpful! I’m off to get my grocery shop on!
Awesome – thanks Ange!! I need these for our crazy fall. So happy to see your post here today…..miss you in blogland!