Saturday, July 28, 2012

Freezer cooking is the new fast food

With life getting busier and busier by the day around here, I was looking for options to make mealtime easier. Luckily, I happened to stumble this website, www.onceamonthmom.com and it's awesome!! Not only did she explain how to do freezer cooking (pre-prep and/or pre-cook and freeze meals for later use), she makes it so darn easy.


Her website allows you to choose from several different menu options, surprisingly enough, one of them is gluten and dairy free - MAJOR SCORE FOR THIS HOUSEHOLD! Being new to this whole idea I didn't know where to start and she even has specific posts geared as newbies. When I actually printed everything out to take a look at what I had to do I was even more pleased. The recipe list allows to select the number of servings you'd like to make, this auto calculates everything for each recipe and then my favorite part happens... all of the ingredients are entered (with the proper totals) into the grocery list, which is already sub divided by category to make shopping a breeze! Then there are even prep night and 'day of' cooking instructions to guide you through how much of which ingredient to dice, mince, chop, etc. It totally takes the guesswork out of everything.
My first time through I made a mistake but it still turned out ok. Next time I will take her advice and chop the night before. This time I chopped and prepped on the same day and I was just a bit tired at the end! After two hours of chopping, and 6 hours of prepping and freezing, I had 16 family dinners, 30 individual servings of breakfasts and 12 individual servings for lunches.

Now the next two weeks will be a breeze to get dinner on the table! Oh, and did I mention that this is all free - that must be the cherry on top!