Meal Planning by Freezer Cooking

If there's one thing I need to work at, it's definitely meal planning. I guess I tend to wing it quite often because I like to cook whatever I am hungry for that day. But since I have such limited time with having two little ones now, I do try to save some time in the kitchen by doing some freezer cooking.

A few years back, I went to one of those places where you pay $$ to go in and make up meals for yourself to freeze. It was so nice not to have to grocery shop or cut up items, but the price was quite costly. Afterwards I thought, I could do this myself!

So I scanned the Net for freezer cooking books. I stumbled upon The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet: A Month of Meals Made Easy. I liked that the recipes were simple to do and very simple tasting. We aren't big "gourmet" eaters here!

What I like about the book is that not only do you get the recipes in the book, but you are also given a username/password to access their website full of more recipes! Some of my favorites that I make are from their site!

There are basically two ways to freezer cook. You can double your recipe for every meal you make during the week and freeze half. This will give you a few nights of "freedom." Or you can set aside a long weekend and spend it making up meals for a few weeks or a month. If you choose this method, I definitely recommend that you start off small and plan for just a few recipes- just until you get at least one sesson under your belt.

I am hoping to get in another session here soon. I've been keeping busy with exercise and planning Nathan's b-day party. But when I do get my session in, I'll be posting the recipes on my other site here.

You can see one of my past, but very simple, sessions here and here.

So if you aren't that great at meal planning either, consider trying freezer cooking. You can have plenty of foods frozen that you can just throw in the fridge the night before and warm up for supper the next day.

I had planned to post this today and oddly enough, Money Saving Mom is doing one of her baking days. These are great posts and you'll definitely want to watch as she tells you about what she makes on baking day. Check out her first posting here.