Have you ever tried freezer cooking? I started doing it a bit last summer and I have totally become a convert. While I totally and completely envy those that can pull off a full month's worth of meals in a single day or weekend, I'm just not that organized or ambitious. What does work for me is a freezer cooking mini session.
This weekend I kept it simple --- just did the meat prep for about 10 different dinners. And its just so easy! I browned up a ton of ground beef with diced onions and shredded zucchini (sneaky veggie insert). I took about half of that and added Mexican seasonings to have prepped meat for tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas or Penelope's favorite Nacho Bake. Then I divided all of the meat into meal sized portions and bagged it up and popped it in the freezer.
Start to finish, that took me one hour and fifteen minutes -- including clean up! Because I could chop the onions and shred the zucchini all at once, brown the beef all at once, season the meat all at once, and do just one cleanup, it saved massive amounts of time for the month to come!
While I had everything browning, I also threw together 2 dozen muffins and a pan of cheesecake bars. So I've got some breakfasts and desserts covered too!
I'd love to hear if you made anything great this weekend!
That's how I maximize freezer time, too. I don't do all that one months worth of shopping and cooking in two days one weekend a month. What if I want to do something fun with the 14 year old one of those days?!?! So I make great use of one hour increments randomly all the time and I always manage to stay ahead and never run out of stuff. I usually have to give single servings of made ahead meals to make room for the new ones! My bachelor brother loves me :)
ReplyDeleteAnd now I believe I'm caught up on all your posts :) I'll stop cyber stalking your blog now!!!! LOL...
ReplyDelete