Here is my freezer after the weekend! It is so nice to open it up and see all that food ready to go! Here is the breakdown of what we cooked and what we bought to make it happen.
We ended up with:
-8 Lasagna
-4Baked Spaghetti
-6 Man Pleasing Chicken
-1 Citrus Herb Chicken thighs
- 4 Herb Dijon Flattened Chickens (marinade)-see previous post for recipe.
-8 Chicken Cordon Blue casseroles
-4 Mississippi Roasts (ready for the crockpot)
- approx 140 Italian Meatballs
- approx 100 Porcupine Meatballs
- 3 Meatloaves (ready too cook)
- 10 Chicken Parmesan Meals
- 2 large ziplock bags of Chicken Toddler Bites
-6 ziplock bags of pre-sliced/cubed chicken breasts
-8 Shepherd's Pie
- 7 ziplock bags of Taco Beef
- 6 ziplock bags of BBQ Pulled Pork
The recipes are a combination of ones I found online and my own made up ones. I've linked to the ones I used from online.
For groceries I bought 40lbs of lean ground beef, 2lbs of mild Italian sausage, 2 cases of free range chicken breasts, 2 pork roasts, 4 inside round beef roasts, 4 whole free range chickens with backbones removed and flattened, 2 warehouse packages of chicken thighs, 2 rotisserie chickens. The meat cost around $425 and was mostly purchased from a local butcher.
I bought minimal other things quite honestly. 10 lbs of potatoes, 4 green peppers, a bag of onions, bag of garlic, 3lbs of carrots, head of celery, a couple lemons and a diced herb mix. Canned goods were a large can of crushed tomatoes from Costco, a couple bottles of Dijon mustard, 2 bottles of BBQ sauce, some canned whole tomatoes, a bottle of maple syrup, lasagna and spaghetti noodles, 4 boxes of stuffing mix, a bag of frozen peas, bag of frozen corn. We used a whole large bag of shredded mozzarella from Costco, a small brick of Swiss cheese, a brick of cheddar cheese and 2 bags of Parmesan cheese. I have an extensive amount of Epicure spices so that was what we used for seasonings. We bought and used 2 lbs of butter, 4 packages each of Hidden Valley Ranch and Au Jus mix as well as a bottle of Pepperoncini peppers. Those were all portioned into ziplock bags to go with the inside round roasts for the crockpot. We just put the spice mixes into one ziplock, the butter and peppers into another and placed both sealed bags inside the larger freezer bag with the roast. It will make that crockpot meal super easy and fast!
I'm sure I'm missing things in my list...I had made many lists and a wrote out plan to try to get all the groceries that we needed in the right amounts. We ended up only having to make two small grocery runs to grab things we either ran out of or forgot.
We worked at it on Saturday from around 10am till 10pm and Sunday from 11-2pm. Saturday wouldn't have been so long but the mea didn't arrive until almost 12:30 so we didn't get started 'cooking' right away. We got all the prep work done however so it kind of worked out. The next time we do it I will get the meat the day before and have it for first thing...that definitely slowed us down.
Anyhow, it was a great success, if you want more details leave me a message and I'll do my best! For now, here are the pictures!
The meat has arrived and Trudy's beautiful kitchen is getting a work out! I made a huge mess!
Crockpot station! We actually had 3 crockpots going, one with the pork roasts and the other 2 with the pasta mea sauce.
Trudy hard at work prepping something!
The world's largest pack of lean ground beef! Don't believe me? Checkout this next picture!
20lbs of beef! Almost the size of me!
My portion of the meals! Spread out over 10 feet of counter!
My zip locked portions and pans of lasagna and baked spaghetti! The meatballs and all the chicken recipes weren't in this photos as we finished them up on Sunday.
Next Freezer cooking day? A weekend in May or early June, just depends on how fast we go through these meals. The plan for that weekend is less casserole type meals and more summer menu type ones. Ie. shish kabobs, marinated food for the grill etc. so I need to start compiling some recipes and ideas for that one!
Again, huge success and made easy with three extra sets of hands. I have to give a shout out to Randy and Wes,our hubbies who helped out as well. Randy mixed all the ground beef for me and him and Wes rolled all the meatballs. Randy also shredded the pulled pork and made the grocery runs for us. They both made one quick trip to Starbucks to get us a cool drink at one point as well! So the team work most definitely made this easier. Thankfully everyone is right on board with it and grateful for the food in the freezer just as much as me!
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