I love to cook. It is something that brings me such calm in this busy life we're living. I love watching the people I love eat my food and I bask in the praise they give me when it tastes good.
The first 4 months Forrest and I were married I cooked a different meal almost every night (I had planned for leftovers, but if you know my husband you know that it is rare the night a meal makes it to night two, much less night three). I loved it, but I soon became exhausted.
Since we moved and my daily commute is longer and my classes at the gym start later, I have been getting home around 7 and have been too tired to cook anything that takes longer that 20 minutes. I also have been getting really stressed about cooking and what we are going to eat and when I will have time to make it and will it last a day or two... Something I once loved has now become something that causes me stress. I don't like this at all.
Forrest and I have never been food hoarders. I buy each week what we will need for that week and there is little extra in the pantry or the freezer. Now, I grew up in a family of food hoarders. I remember cleaning out Nannie's pantry and finding canned foods at least a decade past their expiration date. When my mom was making dinner and realized she was missing something we would call Nanny and she would say, "Come on over to Elsie's store and pick it up." I am not sure who Elsie is, but Elsie's store always had what we needed...in abundance. My Dad, growing up in this environment picked up the habits of his mother and to this day has about 5 cabinets of non perishables.
I have always prided myself on my bare pantry and lightly packed freezer (that meant there was always room for a quart or two of ice cream...genius right?). But recently, I have just run out of steam during the week to put a meal together. Forrest and I really don't like eating out much or spending our money on food we can make ourselves (and know every ingredient that is in it). I realized that I have been running to the store buying what at the moment I think I want to eat only to come home and realize I'm not really in the mood. I have not been planning anything and food has been going to waste. When there are children in the world who would eat those things I am throwing away, I decided we needed to do something different.
I started to realize maybe there was a happy medium between my food hoarding past and my week-by-week plan.
It all actually started a little backwards. The other day I had time to make some soups. I made 2 and 1/2 quarts of veggie soup, veggie black bean soup and chili (each). I bought some containers to freeze them and thought, "Man having these already prepared will really make my life easier." But then I started to think about making other meals in advance and freezing them. hmmm....
So I sat down and charted out a plan. Now, there is nothing really exciting on this menu. In fact I have already started thinking about some of my favorite meals that this menu does not allow for during the week. My hope is that having this plan during the week will relieve the stress I have felt about cooking and will allow me to be creative and actually enjoy cooking on the weekends.
Here are the menus (click on them to see a larger size):
Now I have set it up so that we have Mexican Mondays, Italian Tuesdays, Soup & Sumthing Wednesdays, Leftover Thursdays and Random Fridays. I built in a day to eat leftovers so that nothing goes to waste. I have allowed for eating out a few Fridays because that is the day I want to cook the least. I also made those meals really easy...breakfast and homemade pizza...so that I know even if I am cooking it won't be a stressful meal. I also didn't plan any meals of the weekends because then I can really cook what I am in the mood to cook and can enjoy buying fresh ingredients. I also have decided to keep salad stuff around the house so that we can have fresh veggies with our meals since most of the food has been prepared in advance.
After buying all of the ingredients for the soups and the containers to put them in. I cooked them up and here is a picture of the results.
Then I decided to do some food hoarding and purchase all of the supplies I would need in advance.
Here is what I purchased and either stored away in the pantry or in the freezer:
1 box of whole wheat penne pasta
1 box of whole wheat spaghetti
1 box of whole wheat rigatoni
4 jars of pasta sauce
1 jar of vodka sauce
5 cans of refried beans
2 cans of black beans
1 box of 3 taco mixes
1 Frontera Fajita seasoning mix (it is a big bag with way too much sodium to use in just one recipe so I am going to split it up and use it twice).
2 cans of diced tomatoes
2 boxes of Spanish rice mix
2 packages of Butternut Squash Ravioli (Trader Joe's)
1 package of cheese tortellini (TJs)
1 bag of sun dried tomatoes (TJs)
2 jars of BBQ sauce
2 packages of frozen meatballs (1 turkey and 1 beef--TJs)
2 whole wheat pizza dough (TJs)
1 box multi-grain pancake mix (TJs)
2 packages of peppered Turkey bacon (TJs)
1 bag of sweet potato fries (TJs)
1 bag of burrito size tortillas (8 count)
1 bag of fajita size tortillas (10 count)
1 bag of taco size tortillas (20 count)
1 jar of pesto sauce (TJs)
3 bags of frozen chicken (Purdue or TJs)
Here are the things I had around the house that I can use in the recipes:
1 can enchilada sauce
2 boxes of boil-in-a-bag rice
1 box of cornbread
1 taco seasoning mix
Plus I also had some pasta sauce, beans, frozen corn and pancake mix.
Everything that fit in the pantry I put in there...it now looks like this:
Then I cooked up all of the chicken, chopped or sliced it depending on how I plan on using it in the recipe (I also allowed more for tacos than for any other meal, and more for burritos than for quesadillas). I packaged them in containers or freezer bags and put them in the freezer.
I also took all of the packages of tortillas and separated them with wax paper and put them in gallon size bags based on the meals (so I put in 3 for quesadillas & burritos, 5 for fajitas, and 6 for tacos). I don't plan on have many left overs from the Mexican or Italian nights, but my hope is really to reduce the amount of food wasted in our house over the next 9 weeks.
Now my freezer is chock a block full...
I also made the mini breakfast quiches to make my morning meal easier and froze those as well. You can see the recipe for those
here. I made some with red & green peppers, onions, turkey bacon and cheese and another batch with spinach, tomato, onions & turkey bacon. I have about 42 of those which I packaged in twos so I have about 21 days of breakfast (or 5 weeks worth) prepackaged and ready to go.
I don't know how well this is going to work, but it seems like a good plan. After doing all of this, I recently saw this and plan on using it next time because I like all of the fresh ingredients!
Slow Cooker Frozen Meals
Anyhow...I will keep you posted on how this works. Have a great day!
