Our 4th of July was rainy. It was the type of day you just have zero desire to go outside and mainly would like to crawl up on the couch with a good book or a decent movie. For me, it was the perfect day to jump back into the world of my deep freezer.
Right before H was born, I did a marathon of freezer meal prep and had meals for a good while after he arrived. This was an excellent decision and saved us from eating frozen pizza every night of the week (not that my sweet hubby would have complained!). Then I went back to work and life got crazy and my deep freezer was neglected.
When I saw the weather forecast for the weekend was rain and more rain, I decided to spend the day cooking. Freezer cooking ALWAYS takes longer than I remember and it is always exhausting, but the sense of accomplishment afterwards is amazing. I think you could get by with a regular freezer, but trust me, a deep freezer is soo nice. The meals keep longer and I can cook more without having to play a game of Jenga every time I try to get things out of my regular freezer.
Sometimes it can be hard to find decent sounding freezer meals unless you want to eat something Mexican flavored for every meal (which I do not) and since its summer, using a crock pot is just not as appealing so I included below most of the meals I made ahead in case you need some inspiration. Pinterest is amazing for this too! (which is where all these meals came from!)
1. Honey Mustard Chicken-this isn’t a crock pot meal and I actually made and prepped this one for dinner this week. I think it might hold up in the freezer, but I just figured I would keep it out so I had dinner for this week already done.
2. Lamb Burgers– this was my score of the week. I have been searching for ground lamb and finally found it. I prepped lamb burgers to have and the rest of the toppings sound amazing.
3. Slow Cooker Sweet Potato and Chicken Korma– I love Indian flavors and decided after making this, I was going to look for more Indian food to add to our diet. It’s one of the things I miss the most about living overseas. There is nothing like fresh Naan. This isn’t a make it and go to work recipe so I plan to cook it some the weekend.
4. Real Food Sloppy Joes-these take me back to my days as a camp counselor. I love sloppy joes and this recipe passes my healthy eating test.
5. Zucchini Meatloaf– this is on my to-do list for this week since I actually forgot about it. I bought the ingredients and then failed to transfer it to my freezer meals list. I am not a meatloaf fan normally, but this is my favorite. It is so moist and I promise, you can’t taste the zucchini at all.
6. Slow Cooker Quinoa Enchilada Bake– I am trying to eat more Quinoa, but I haven’t figured out how to cook it. However, adding it in to other recipes is easy and this one is really good. You can add chicken or beef and it’s super good! Also, I omitted the Pinto beans just because I knew I was going to add meat and didn’t want that many beans in it.
Those are a few to get you started. I made a couple of other meals, but I don’t have links to those. You can check out the rest of my Pinterest board here. If you are a busy mom, I highly recommend freezer cooking and becoming best friends with your crock-pot.
