House of Chic and Penoche

What did you do over the weekend? Besides waiting for my internet to be fixed, I spent a day making 25 freezer meals! Yes, it's that time again. Twice a year I take a day and make as many freezer meals as I possibly can! HERE is the last springs post, but I will give you some quick tips again . First and Formost, these are all made from scratch recipes and delicious! You can also make them low-cal and low-fat too, by substituting the low-fat equal , like for sour cream, cream cheese, soups, and turkey burger. Also, you can use whole grains pastas.

STEPS

Purchase Book Above! This book has all the recipes and ALL the how-tos!

But some general rules: Most everything will freeze except mashed potatoes AND when doing pasta, cook it 2 min less then it says on the box because it will continue to absorb moisture in the freeze and thaw process.

2- PICK RECIPES. The book is broken down into different cooking methods: Crock Pot, Oven, Stove Top and Assemble.

So pick 2-3 crock pot meals, 2-3 oven, 2-3 stove top and 7-10 Assemble ( assemble means any recipe that doesn't need cooking but just assembled in a pan and placed in the freezer, ie: manicotti)

Also, some of the recipes make double. So they count as 2 meals.

3- MAKE GROCERY LIST

4- PREPARATION IS THE KEY!

The more you can get done the day before the better. ie, Thaw meats, Chop Veggies, Make Labels, Sort canned goods according to recipe so if for some reason you forgot something you can make one last min. run to the store.

5- DAY OF- Have some one watch your kids! You must not be disturb (most of the time)

Your meals making goes as follows: Start with Crock pots, then oven, then stove top, then assembles.

6- I've said it before and I'll say it again, Diet Coke!

Here is my freezer after. Some meals can be stored in freezer bags and then placed in dishes or pots for warming. Most of the ones from the Assemble section you do in foil pans so you can just pop them from the freezer to the oven.

Here are a few of what I made

Crock Pot - Pulled Pork (sooo good!)

Beef Stroganoff (just the sauce, cook noodles later)

Cream Cheese Chicken

Stove top- Italian Chili

Chicken and Ham roll ups

Green Chili Chicken soup (a family favorite)

Oven- Cranberry Chicken (looked good, can't wait to eat it)

Teriyaki Chicken (sooo good too!)

Assemble- 5 Cheese Manacotti (a personal fav)

Bird Nest Pie (also one of my favs)

Taco Pie (my husbands fav)

Chicken Tortilla Casserole (the ultimate family fav!)

(pardon the spelling)

I love doing this. It's great for those days I don't have time to cook or don't want to make a big mess in my kitchen.