Freezer Meals for November

Have you noticed how outrageous prices are at the grocery store recently? I was honestly stunned the last time I went to the store and came out with one reusable bag full of groceries that cost well over $50. When the kids were living at home, I used to regularly cook once a month. Some people call it Freezer Cooking, others call it Investment Cooking, some call it Once a Month Cooking. I call it a huge time and money saver. Because I buy groceries in bulk, I can get a slightly better price. And since I know that we have ready made meals waiting for us in the freezer, we are less likely to pick up fast food or "pick up a quick something" at the grocery store. (Quick, yes. Cheap, no.)

I recently invested a day in cooking. I went grocery shopping the night before and spent $70 in ingredients. At the end of the day, I had 9 meals in the freezer, one in the fridge,  plus a pot of soup on the stove. Half of the soup went into freezer containers to round out the meal count to 11. 12 if you count the soup.

My $70 in groceries for 12 meals comes out to $5.83 cents per meal. I haven't averaged that out per serving, but a little less than $6 to feed the two of us a healthy meal is a bargain. When the kids were still living at home, each of these meals would have fed us once - for one meal. Now that it's just the two of us, some of these meals will feed us for a couple of days either becoming dinner another night or taken to work as lunch for the next day. 

Here's how it all went down:

I began my day by mixing up a meatloaf. I absolutely love meatloaf, but the husband hates to mix it up. I used the recipe from Quaker Oatmeal. After I mixed it together, I put it in a loaf pan, double wrapped it and stuck it in the freezer.

Next up was Chicken and Brown Rice Casserole. I made 3 of three of these meals. I chopped the veggies, and while they were getting their first go round in the freezer I continued chopping the veggies for the Asian Chicken Lettuce Wraps and the soup for dinner. I love the Chicken Brown Rice mix. The chicken doesn't get cooked yet. It is frozen while marinating in a vinaigrette. It's an easy recipe to pull together.

The Asian Lettuce Wraps involved browning vegetables and ground chicken. I made 4 packages of the lettuce wrap mix. I "cleverly" planned things out well enough that I was able to eat what didn't fill into the bags as my lunch.  

I cut everything for a Harvest Sheet Pan bake. I put this into a container so that I could pull it out on Monday night, toss everything in a pan and bake it for 20 minutes. Since I pre-cut everything,and not all of the ingredients freeze well. I didn't want to wait too terribly long to cook it.

Dinner was a White Bean Kale soup. We ate half for dinner that night and then we froze the rest for another night's dinner. The total time it took to shop and assemble all of this was around 6 hours. 1 hour shopping and 5 prepping.  It was totally worth every minute to have 11 nights of meals ahead of me that I no longer need to think about. (12 nights if you count the day that I cooked everything)

While the soup was cooking I glanced through the kitchen and realized that I had all of the ingredients on hand for a batch of oatmeal cookies! I'm not a fan of raisins but I love mixed dried berries.  I used those in place of the raisins. Let me tell you, they were amazing.  I have to admit - I found a little bit of dairy free ice cream in the fridge and so I took one for the team. I made a few ice cream sandwiches.  It's tough, I tell you. Consider it a public service I perform - testing new and unique ways of combing cookies and ice cream. (This would also explain why I am having trouble losing those last 2 pounds...)

Please note that I eat Gluten and Dairy Free. I used gluten and dairy free versions of every ingredient in the recipes. For the cookies, I used a digital scale to weigh the gluten free flour. I find that I get much better results with a digital scale.

If you're curious to see the recipes I used:

Meatloaf:https://www.quakeroats.com/cooking-and-recipes/classic-meatloaf

Chicken and Wild Rice Bake: https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-chicken-and-wild-rice-bake-216431

Asian Lettuce Wraps: https://thrivinghomeblog.com/asian-lettuce-wraps/ 

30 Minute White Bean Kale Soup: https://midwestfoodieblog.com/white-bean-kale-soup/

Harvest Sheet Pan Bake: https://www.maryswholelife.com/whole30-harvest-sheet-pan-dinner/

Oatmeal Cookies: https://www.quakeroats.com/cooking-and-recipes/vanishing-oatmeal-raisin-cookies