Freezer Cooking

Ever since the very first time I heard of the concept of freezer cooking, I wanted to try it. I thought it sounded like a great idea! Over the years, I have doubled a few meals and frozen part of it, but I have never attempted a "freezer cooking day"! But I love the idea of taking one day to prepare meals for the month for my family!

 

Last weekend I finally got brave enough to do it! I had a friend of mine that wanted to do it too, and having her cooking with me made it even more fun!

 

I have been collecting freezer meals recipes for years. So I got a collection of recipes together and decided what we were going to make and put together a shopping list. This shopping list was crazy! Here is the list I sent my friend:

 

That's crazy! Did you notice it said 23 chicken breasts? We both ended up bringing about 30 and realized we needed more! Probably about 35-40!! That is just crazy!!

 

Here is what we made:

Golden Chicken

Bacon Feta Stuffed Chicken

Cheesy Slow Cooker Pizza

Tater Tot Casserole

Upside Down Fettucini Bake

Chicken Enchiladas

Angel Chicken Pasta

Potato Soup

Greek-Inspired Slow Cooker Chicken

Chicken with Honey Sauce Marinade

 

 

 

That's just crazy!!

 

Before the big day, I got all the freezer bags ready by writing the cooking day instructions on them. Then on cooking day, I got got out all the ingredients and laid them together so we could be somewhat organized.

 

 

 

I really think it was just organized chaos!

 

 

I had printed or written all our recipes and laid them with the ingredients and the bags.

 

 

We started out the cooking process by dicing onions and trimming the fat off all the chicken breasts. This is what took the longest of all, of course we kept having to take breaks because the onions were killing our eyes!! We finally decided to move the onion-cutting station to the stove and turn on the vent-a-hood. That made a HUGE difference! So that is your tip of the day, when cutting onions, turn your vent on and cut under that so the gasses from the onions just go up and out!!

 

Once the onions and chicken were done, we started with the recipes that didn't have any cooking involved. These seemed to go pretty quickly for the most part.

 

Now for the best part of this particular evening...we had a big storm come through that night! When I started working on the recipes that needed to be cooked the big part of the storm was getting closer! The power kept flickering! I just knew the power was going to go off, so I was trying to will things to cook faster!!

 

 

I had already browned all the ground beef and cooked the fettuccini and the sausage. I only had a few more things that needed to be cooked. When the big part of the storm hit us, I was working on the chicken enchiladas and the upside down fettuccini bake...

 

 

 

(they look good, right?!) at this point I was quite literally yelling at the stove to cook faster and yelling at the power to stay on!

 

It didn't work!

 

Mother Nature decided she wanted to have a little fun with us...the power finally went out!

 

So we had to make due...

 

We got out candles, flashlights, and lanterns and kept going. Unfortunately, I do not have a gas stove, but the stove stayed hot for a while after the power went off, so I was able to finish cooking everything!

 

One of the recipes required melted butter. By this time the heat had gone out of the stove and we still had no power...but we had candles!! So I put my friends hubby to work melting the butter...by candle! Haha

 

 

Yes, seriously!

 

 

This just makes me shake my head!

 

Then my genius husband hooked up this amazingly bright light up to the truck that was in the garage!

 

 

He is the technical one, so I have no idea what he actually did. All I know was we had enough light that we didn't have to carry flashlights around all the time! He is my hero!

 

 

I don't know if cooking by candlelight makes us hard-core or just crazy! But we were determined to finish! And we did! I was proud of us!

 

We used 26 gallon size freezer bags...10 quart size freezer bags...4 9 x13 aluminum pans...2 aluminum pie pans...we cooked for 5 hours and prepared 14 meals for our families! And half of the time we didn't have any power!

 

 

 

 

I love having these meals in the freezer! They are so easy and so quick! And they all sound so yummy! I can't wait to try all of them!

 

I am working on posting the recipes for all these meals too!

 

Have you done any freezer cooking? Do you have any recipes that are your go to freezer meals? I would love to hear them! Please share!