The Good – I won’t have to really think about a menu or dinner much over the next 2-3 months. Plus, I had a fun weekend with friends doing the work. Oh, and we did add in one additional set of meals for a friend going through chemo right now. Her freezer is now full of meals and it’ll last her family a couple months. So that’s pretty great feeling to be able add just a little bit more work and at the same time bless her family with a bunch of meals.
The Bad and The Ugly – Apparently I’m either not very organized or just did too much. Every time we do freezer cooking I swear I’ll never do it again. The task is so overwhelming: the planning, the shopping, the prepping, the cooking and the cleanup. My feet and back hurt…still and it’s been 3 days. And I don’t care if I ever see a zip lock baggie or baking dish again in my life.
This time I spent about 30 hours doing it….and my friends were there for most of it, too:
10 hours planning/shopping/unloading
10 hours on Friday night
5 hours on the Saturday finishing up what we didn’t on Friday
5 hours on Sunday cleaning my kitchen and dining room
This. Is. Ridiculous.
So if you are thinking about doing a freezer cooking marathon – GO FOR IT! But be really prepared (better than me) and have some fun help to get through it all.
Anyhow – I KNOW it’s worth it but right now I just need to not think about it.
If I can be convinced to do this again I think we will split up the shopping and prep work evenly (chopping onions and carrots, cooking and shredding the chicken, cooking the ground turkey, etc). If we do that I think it would save us about half the cooking time when we get together.
This time we did 15 different dinner recipes and 3 different dessert recipes. We each took home two sets of meals and spent a total of $395 on 30 meals.
The recipes are:
- Macaroni & Beef Casserole*
- Chicken Quesadillas*
- Taco Soup*
- Creamy Chicken Lasagna*
- Lasagna*
- Chicken Pot Pie (makes 2)*
- Pa’s Sweet Chili*
- Jalapeno Popper Chicken Chili
- Cilantro Lime Chicken
- Grits Casserole
- Baked Ziti
- Fluffy Potatoes
- Garlic Chicken Farfalle
- Pesto Stuffed Chicken
- Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
- Chocolate Muffins*
- Apple Harvest Bread*
* Any recipe without a link is listed out on this document (click here —–> Freezer Meals – August 2014). These are my own recipes or ones I have used for years and there are no links to them online that I can find. For those with links online you can hover over the recipe names for the links to them. I have not posted these recipes on my attachment – so that I don’t get fussed at by the internet gods like I did last time. : )
Oh, and a little bit of Vodka makes everything more fun…..it wasn’t added to the recipes, promise.
So I Don't Forget 
You have truly captured the raw emotions of a big freezer cooking day! Love your honesty – it is an undertaking, but so very worth it! Thanks for including our recipes!