We’re trying something a bit different this week.
In preparation for the arrival of Baby Bee, I’m trying something new to us. It’s something all over Pinterest and the internet, but we’ve never done it. This week I’m going to prepare freezer meals that can then be thawed, thrown in either a casserole dish or the slow cooker and cooked. I’m hoping we’ll find some real winners in the meals we’re going to try, that we’ll save time prepping these meals all at once, and that we’ll save a bit of cash this way too.
The meals I’m going to prep for this week are:
Mu Shu Pork (freezable and slow cooker) – hearth and home
Pepper Steak (freezable and slow cooker) – six-cents.com
Man Pleasing Chicken (freezable, then bake in the oven) – witty in the city
Salsa Chicken (freezable and slow cooker) – six-cents.com
Slow Cooker Tater Tot Casserole (freezable and slow cooker) – side tracked sarah
Here’s how I did this.
I checked out each of these recipes and made a super grocery list so that I’d have enough to double each of these recipes. That way we’ll have a meal for this week, and one for the freezer for later. This is how we’ll save on a lot of prep time. It’s more efficient if you can use recipes that share a lot of the same vegetables.
Mu Shu Pork – http://hearthandholm.blogspot.ca/search/label/Freezer%20Meals
Slow Cooker Tater Tot Casserole –
Based on these recipes, here is the grocery list I compiled (this is enough for double of each recipe). I organized the list by areas of the grocery store:
4 lbs pork roast
6 lbs chicken thighs
2 lbs ground beef
3 pounds round steak
9 carrots
3 onions
4 garlic cloves
1 green pepper
1 red pepper
1/2 shredded Napa cabbage
1 bunch green onions
½ bottle hoisin sauce
2 T. grated Ginger
1/2 cup flour
2 16oz cans of Italian style tomatoes
2 15oz cans of black beans
2 cans cr. Mushroom soup
2 cans of diced tomatoes and green chilies
1 can Bamboo shoots
2 tbsp beef bouillon
4 tsp of Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp of steak seasoning
2 tbsp of steak sauce
1 cup dijon mustard
1/2 cup Maple syrup
2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
dried rosemary
1 family size frozen bag of corn
2 bags frozen chopped green beans
2 32oz bags tater tots
1 jar of salsa
1 packet of taco seasoning
4 cups of cheddar cheese
1/2 c. milk
We didn’t need to buy all of these things, since a lot of them we had in our pantry already. Tomorrow I plan on putting all of these recipes together and freezing half of them for future use. The others we’ll be trying out this week. Expect some follow-up posts this week with our results and some photos of the meals we enjoyed. I’m also really going to try to break down the cost of each of these meals.
Here is the total of what we put in our grocery cart this week (we spent about $208):
chicken thighs – huge family pack
pork roast
round steak
carrots
a pack of 6 sweet peppers
napa cabbage
2 cans of Italian style tomatoes
2 cans of black beans
can of diced tomatoes
2 cans of green chilies
1 can baby corn
steak seasoning – Costco-sized
dijon mustard
frozen corn – giant Costco bag
frozen chopped green beans
2 bags tater tots
salsa
shredded cheese – giant double pack from Costco
butter
nectarines
bananas
mushrooms
toilet paper – Costco-sized
kitchen bags – Costco-sized
crumbled bacon – giant Costco bag
5 lbs lemons
goat cheese
Coke
potato chips
goldfish crackers
If this will help us prepare a couple of weeks worth of meals, that’s not too bad. We’ll see how this experiment goes.
