Saturday 25 January 2014

Adventures in Freezer Meals


Ok, so I know I'm not one of those "Practical" Bloggers, I like to get what's in my head out. BUT - For those of you who enjoy a more practical look at life, and who appreciate a challenge will want to know about our day of "40 Freezer Meals in 4 Hours."

Everyone knows that when the two adults in the house are back at work, dinner time can take a significant hit. To save some time, we didn't reinvent the wheel, instead we borrowed a set of recipes from a website and went from there.

http://whoneedsacape.com/2012/11/crockpot-freezer-cooking/

The woman who writes this website miraculously made all forty freezer meals in four hours, and had a clean kitchen, and it seems that she did it all on her own. We learned that in the past few days, that is something akin to running a marathon. HOWEVER, if there are two willing participants in your household, with two days, a wad of cash and nothing to do, why not give it a try.  You can call it a "Marriage Strengthening Exercise".

We started out yesterday, and between the items we already had and the items we needed to purchase, we had all of our shopping done in visits to two stores in about exactly two hours.  Now, many of the Freezer Meals websites claim that they were able to stock their freezers for around $250.  We weren't quite that successful, but we attributed that to the fact that a lot of these estimates come from bloggers in the USA, and meat prices down there are...well, enviable to say the least.  The protein component was definitely the most cost consuming, and the sheer amount makes me believe that Costco now has our pictures posted in the poultry department with a big WARNING sign over our heads.  However, even though the cost was higher, it is a fraction of the cost of using a weekly meal plan over two months.


This morning was prep time.  It took us around two hours to get all veggies and meat diced, chopped and ready to go.  I would say the only frustration at this point was translating some of the required amounts from the recipes to actual amounts for prep.  For example, I peeled 18 cloves of garlic, when I should have peeled more like 30, but those little kinks were easy to work out, and because I chose a working partner who is also a genius, our amounts were right on.



 

I would say the more challenging part came in putting the meals together. We started out by laying out the recipes and the already prepped freezer bags, it helped us keep everything organized. We set up a sort of assembly line, and decided to work through each recipe, one at a time, in order to make sure that we didn't miss any ingredient in any meal.  Amazingly enough, we hardly had any leftovers.





The Results -

Well, we weren't able to finish in four hours, it took us about six (and our kitchen looks a little like something exploded in there), but we were able to create 43 freezer to crock pot meals. We are really excited about the overall cost and time savings - after all, my most dreaded Saturday morning task is always trying to figure out what to eat for the week. Not to mention we are eager to try out the many different recipes that we worked on putting together this afternoon.




So, if you are interested in trying a little experiment of your own, let me know! I'll be sure to do a followup to let you know how they all turned out!

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