Friday, January 25, 2013

Confession #39: I'm a food hoarder, and darn proud of it!

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Remember last month when I blogged about meals in a jar? You don't? Well click here to refresh your memory. Well in preparation for our new arrival I have been busy in the kitchen (with the "help" of my two year old) making freezer meals. Hoping this will make our world a little easier come February.
I used Pinterest (surprise surprise) to get most of the recipes. A few I snagged from a simple google search (but pinned them later). It took me three evenings, worth every minute of it.
Planning is key. I made an exact list (down to the teaspoon) of everything I needed and I bought disposable baking pans from the dollar store. I didn't want to come home and realize I forgot eggs or something.
Here's my menu:
*Note since we are a family of three, I put all my meals in 8 x 8 containers so that each recipe turned into two smaller meals.

1. Meatloaf  This recipe says it makes one loaf, but I found that if you add a little more of the cheese mixture (like 1 1/2 x the amount) you can get two loafs out of it.

2. No Bake Mac and Cheese.

3. Chicken Enchilada I used regular green enchilada sauce because that's what I had on hand. I also doubled this recipes to make 4 meals.

4. Enchilada Casserole This smelt SO good while I was making it. Glad I doubled it! I used ground turkey and not beef.

5. Chicken Roll Ups 

6. Chicken Broccoli Alfredo I doubled this too and we ended up eating one of them that evening. My family loved it.

7. Lasagna Doubled the recipe and used ground turkey instead of beef

8. Mexican Stuffed Shells- doubled this recipe and we ate one that night. Glad I doubled it, they were super good!

9. Breakfast burritos- This recipe is my own. Burritos don't really need a recipe. But if you must. Here it is:
16 large flour tortillas
12 eggs (scrambled)
2 lbs breakfast sausage (I used turkey instead of pork)
1 cup cheddar cheese
1 cup  jack cheese
1 8 oz container of  mushrooms, sliced
1 8 oz container of spinach
1/2 onion, chopped
1 16 oz jar of salsa (bonus: I got to used my homemade salsa!)
2 cloves minced garlic
any seasoning you want

Brown sausage with onion and garlic. Add mushrooms. Then spinach and any seasoning you want to use.

Next all you do it put a little of everything in each tortilla, roll up, wrap in tinfoil and label.

Now for a little dessert:

10. Coconut banana bread I used regular milk instead of coconut because that's what I had. And unsweetened coconut. It turned our awesome. For me this recipe made 6 mini loaves and one large loaf.

11. Greek Yogurt Strawberry banana bread I used my homemade crockpot yogurt. For me this recipe made 6 mini loaves and 3 muffins (Liana and I ate the muffins right away!)

So there you have it. 16 meals (two of which went right to our table), 16 breakfast burritos, 12 mini loaves of bread, plus 1 large one. All totaling under $140. That's about $6 a meal (counting 2 burritos as one meal). And that doesn't include the bread. Not too shabby!

I have other stuff in my freezer too. Lots of pumpkin and persimmon puree, frozen veggies and fruit leftover from this summer. And LOTS of ground flax seed and yeast! Can't have enough of that. lol. I did wear shoes while at the store, but took them off while cooking!

The end result:

My happy freezer
I only have one more project to go and I am all ready for this baby. I am waiting on some organic bamboo fabric to come in the mail and then I will be re purposing Liana's cloth diaper liners for the new kid. Organization and preparation make this barefoot and pregnant girl a happy camper!