I love freezer cooking, but lately, it hasn’t been the best fit for our family. (Argh! Can you believe I said that?) I love, love, love freezer cooking, but maybe for this season of our lives, it’s not working.
Big Freezer Cooking Session Problems
In recent months, I’ve run into some difficulties with freezer cooking:
Blows the Budget
First, I tend to have a big freezer cooking session like I did in January, and that costs a lot of money and tends to wreck that month’s grocery budget.
Meal Boredom
Second, my kids are getting tired of the meals in our freezer cooking rotation, so in a sense I’m wasting money. Even though the meals are in the freezer, I have to take a few months off from cooking them up because the kids are bored with our choices. That means there is food in the freezer, but I have to wait some time to use it.
Too Busy
Third, about three nights a week, we’re so busy and get home so late that unless the freezer meal is a slow cooker recipe, I really don’t have time to cook up pasta to add to a pre-made meal.
What is a mom to do?
Honestly, I’ve been struggling with Weight Watchers (not losing weight, but thanks to Weight Watchers, not gaining any weight like I did in the summer and fall, so I guess that is progress).
When I had my tooth pulled and had some down time, I started watching some people on YouTube, many of whom do weekend food prep so they have everything ready to eat during the week. A light bulb went off. Maybe that is the secret I’ve been missing!
This past weekend, I took some time on Sunday and had a small weekend meal prep. I made Turkey Burgers, Chalupa Salad (for dinner Monday night), and sloppy joes (one for the freezer and one for dinner on Wednesday night).
It was a small start, but I think this weekend meal prep may work. This upcoming weekend, I plan to have another weekend cooking prep.
Do you take time on the weekend to prep a few meals, or do you cook on the fly each night? Or do you having freezer cooking sessions? If you do all three, which do you prefer?
My family gets tired of eating leftovers also, so I try to avoid making too much of one meal. The biggest thing I do to save time is to precook a lot of the meats we need for the week. For example, shredded chicken, grilled chicken, cooked ground beef, and bacon/sausage are items that I make sure I have in my freezer/fridge at all times. It just makes meal prep so easy if the meat is already cooked, so I love it.
I agree. I’m going to start trying to prep more meat in advance.
So easy and so helpful. I grill a few chicken breasts which can be sliced into salads, burritos, tacos… cook and season and a few pounds of ground beef and freezer in family portion sized bags. Pull out a bag in the morning to defrost – tacos for dinner. Or just plain ground beef that you can later transform. Make a big salad (leave out the wet things like cucumbers) and you’ll have salad for a few days. So many healthy possibities with a little weekend prep. Good luck!
Thanks. I hope to do it every weekend, adding more as I go along.
Hey there thanks for the article. My wife and I try to grill up some chicken and hamburger on weekends so we dont have to spend hours cooking at night. With the chicken it is easy to throw together a salad with some cut up chicken breast on top, this makes a quick lunch or evening dinner when we are exhausted from work. Thanks for the great article.