The Breakdown

So, a few days ago I blogged about how I was going to make 75,000 freezer meals during the month of November and promised I'd come back and update you all on how they taste, how easy they were to prepare, all that.  Well, I can officially say that this weekend I made most of the recipes to which I posted links.

Here's how it went.

Saturday afternoon I threw a bunch of stuff in a huge stock pot to make a big batch of Chili.  This recipe is big enough that I can make a single batch and have enough for about 4 meals (one for the night I make it, and then 3 to freeze).  Since its just me and D who eat Chili (AJ refuses), the recipe itself actually makes 8 large servings.  This weekend I made a veggie version of the recipe, mostly because all the other freezer meals I made had meat in them and I didn't want to buy anymore meat than I already had.  It turned out great.

Yesterday morning I set out to make the 7 (actually 8) crockpot freezer meals from this post on the Six Sister's Stuff blog.  I didn't make the Chicken Cacciatore because it called for jarred pasta sauce and D refuses to eat store bought sauce.  Its the Eye-talian in him, I guess.  ;)  I also made King Ranch Chicken Casserole that I split between two square casseroles instead of using just the big 13x9 inch dish.  Again, since its really just the two of us eating certain meals, we don't need a casserole large enough to feed a small country (and I get two meals for the price of one)!

I started cooking at 8:44 and was completely finished with all 8 recipes at 10:26, so it took me just under 2 hours, which was fabulous for 8 (technically 10) meals!

I started by browning the ground beef and onion for Taco Soup (1) and while that was cooking, I got three chicken breasts seasoned and baking in the oven for the King Ranch Casserole (2 & 3).  These are the only two recipes for which I had to actually cook something, so I figured I'd get it out of the way early.

While the meats were cooking, I cut up my slab of pork ribs for the BBQ Ribs (4 & 5).  I bought a 4 lb rack of ribs and the recipe called for 1-2 lbs, so I was able to get two meals out of the one package of meat (yay!).  I poured the BBQ sauce over the meat and had two meals finished in less than 5 minutes!

I moved on to the chicken dishes next.  I assembled the Chicken Fettucini Alfredo (6), Maple-Dijon Glazed Chicken (7), and Cilantro-Lime Chicken with Corn and Black Beans (8) next.  These were all basically dump in the bag recipes as well, but I did have to do some chopping for the cilantro-lime chicken.

Beef Stew (9) was more of the same, a bit of chopping (carrots and potatoes) and opening of cans, then dump all in the bag.  The French Dip Sandwiches (10) were the easiest out of all, just put the roast in the bag, pour two cans of Beef Consomme over it and you're done!

After I finished all those recipes, I went back to the ground beef and added it to the bag of canned and frozen ingredients.  Once that was done, I cooked the onions and peppers for the casseroles and then you have to simmer all the other ingredients on the stove before combining everything into the casserole dish.  Again, super easy, just dump everything into the pan and stir it up.  After that you layer it kind of like a lasagna, top with remaining cheese and I covered with parchment paper and then tin foil and popped one in the freezer and one in the fridge for dinner last night.

This really was a super easy cooking "day" and so far things have been yummy.  I will have to see if the crockpot meals are as good as the casserole, I've never made freezer crockpot meals before, just casseroles.  As long as they turn out good, then I'd definitely say that they're worth the time it took to prepare them.