Homemaking Hack {#1}:
Big-Batch Freezer Cooking

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It's sometimes hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that I am expecting my fourth baby in November. I have a vivid memory from high school, a time in which I was very focused on myself, where I was observing a family that included four children. I remember thinking, "Oh, wow. They have a million kids. Why would anyone want a million kids?" Oh, if only I could go back in time, slap that girl on her baby-pink backpack, and say, "Guess what, chica! You are going to have a million kids. And you're going to feel so incredibly blessed."

Compared to some families, four children aren't even that many. However, now that I have three labors/deliveries under my belt, I feel qualified enough to state the following: I think that two of the best gifts that can be given to a mama who has just had a baby are:

  • house help (either offering to pay for help [if you can], or offering to change the sheets, do a few loads of laundry, vacuum, mop, you get the idea, right?) and
  • a meal (or two, or three)

And if you really want to bless her, you can add, "And please don't bother with a thank you note. Just take that time to love on your baby."

As soon as Dan and I starting praying for another baby, I began saving all my gift money. I was hoping I would be able to set aside enough to hire a cleaning lady to do a deep-clean about a month before I was due and then to pop in bi-weekly for maintenance... at least for the first three months after the baby was born. (I like to call this time the "Kristin-is-a-sleepless-zombie/milk-volcano-ready-to-erupt-at-any-moment" period.) Although I haven't priced it out yet, I think I might have been successful in saving up enough to hire some help in cleaning, BUT I'm not even sure I'll need to anymore, because of a certain purchase I made on Amazon Prime Day. (It has been a Godsend, and I will do a separate post on it, I promise!)

I feel like I'm okay (hopefully??) in the cleaning department, but that leaves my other big concern: meals. A couple of weeks ago, I resolved to fill my freezer with inexpensive, nutritious, and tasty meals--all of which could be thawed and dumped into the slow-cooker. In 2014, I had enjoyed success by following a freezer-cooking plan from the book Not Your Mother's Make-Ahead & Freeze Cookbook by Jessica Fisher. (I followed the "Poultry and Seafood Plan," and Shane, my picky eater, still asks when I will make the Mahi Mahi with Almond-Lime Butter again.) The particular plan I used made 2 batches of 5 different meals, for a total of 10 meals that served at least 4 people.

This time, I wanted to go BIG. I downloaded Lauren Greutman's Meal Plan #4, Lauren's plan makes 2 batches each of 10 different meals, for a total of 20 meals. I remembered from my first experience of big-batch freezer cooking that the whole process is time-consuming (for a day) and very tiring, but SO worth it when it's done. One of the things I like about Lauren's plan is that it is designed with the idea that all of the ingredients can be purchased at Aldi, which not only makes it relatively inexpensive (she estimates that the ingredients will cost about $165), but also convenient. (I found the convenience aspect to be only partially true. Our particular Aldi does not sell wine, so we had to make a second stop at Festival Foods to pick up that, as well as a few other ingredients we couldn't find at Aldi.)

{materials}

  • a download of Lauren's Greutman's Meal Plan #4
  • pantry ingredients (Lauren lists ingredients that are needed for the meals that are probably already in your pantry. She recommends that you check your pantry to make sure you have them and buy any that you don't have, which may increase or decrease her estimate of the shopping trip costing about $165.)
  • shopping list ingredients from Aldi (She has them broken out by aisle numbers, which would be amazing if they were on point. However, Lauren lives in a different state than us, so the aisle numbers were off.)
  • 20 gallon-size freezer bags (also on the shopping list), plus a couple smaller baggies for sauce
  • {totally optional}: 20 hands-free storage bag holders (These were so, so helpful in the process of making our freezer meals, BUT they are crazy-expensive--to the tune of $5 each, which adds up quickly when you need 20 of them. For days, I hemmed and hawed about whether to purchase them, and I finally did. Dan and I decided that, if we do big-batch freezer cooking enough, they will be worth the investments. HOWEVER, do not feel like you need these. I did my first freezer-cooking session without them and managed just fine.)

{setting up}

It was a whole-family effort. I've been really low on energy this entire pregnancy, so I warned Dan that I would do the best I could, but I would probably be relying on him for a lot of help. He said he was up for it. (I love, love, love my hubby.) We also chose a day in which Conner (age 5) was spending the day at Nana and Papa's house. Shane (age 8) even offered to pitch in by playing with his littlest brother, Logan (age 2), while Dan and I worked. Dan, Shane, Logan and I headed to Aldi (and Festival) and loaded up on our ingredients. Check out all the meat we bought!

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This is JUST the meat from our Aldi shopping trip. We later figured out that we accidentally bought 2 packages too many of chicken thighs, but we'll just roll that over into another freezer meal.

We labelled the bags per Lauren's instructions and inserted them into our bag holders.

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These bag holders were super-helpful, but you don't NEED them.

{the process}

Next, I started chopping vegetables, while Dan measured out and dumped in the spices. When the vegetables and spices were added to the bags, we added the miscellaneous ingredients (such as bread crumbs, orange juice concentrate, rice wine vinegar, etc.), meat, and finally the liquids (BBQ sauce, crushed tomatoes, lemon juice, etc.). Dan and I started putting ingredients into the bags around noon, and we were finished around 5:00 that evening, so the process took us about 5 hours for a two-person effort. When we were finished, the bags looked like this:

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20 filled bags... I can't even describe the peace of mind this gives me!

{the result}

Lauren recommends a few different ways you can remove the air from the bags. I closed the bags as much as I could while still being able to fit a straw inside. I sucked out as much air as I could with the straw, pulled it out, and shut the bag as quickly as I could before the air could get back in. Trust me, this was no easy task for a girl in her third trimester with limited lung capacity. It was also a bit torturous, when I got to the bag that held the red wine. (Oh, that yummy smell!) When they were all sealed up, the result was this mountain of awesomeness:

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The finished product! You may also spy that Godsend I alluded to earlier in this photo. 🙂

{note}

I should mention that there is some preparation required on the day that you serve these meals. For the Chicken Pot Pie, I needed to make a thickening sauce (consisting of butter, flour, and milk) on the stove, which was added to the slow-cooker ingredients. I also needed to bake some canned biscuits to serve as the "crust." I didn't find these tasks to be difficult or terribly time-consuming, but I think it's good to know that these meals are not no-prep the day you serve them.

{meal reviews}

We were meaning to save all the meals for when the baby arrives, but we've had some crazy-busy days and have been dying to try some of these! We tried the first meal, Chicken Pot Pie - Meal #1. I apologize, I did not take any pictures of the finished product, but it was delicious! It was easy, flavorful, comforting, and my whole family loved it. (Well, actually, my picky eater complained a lot about the canned biscuits that accompanied the chicken pot pie filling, but his tastes are so all-over-the-place, that I don't count them much in the actual assessment. He loved the filling though!) My husband gave it a 9 (reserving the right to bump it up to a 10, depending on how the other meals turn out), and Conner declared that it's, "definitely a keeper!" Logan happily gobbled his portion, and I was a happy mama. It fed our family of five, and we had two servings of leftovers.

We also tried the Spicy BBQ Steak - Meal #2. Again, there was some preparation involved the day that we were eating the meal. According to the meal plan, we were to buy five pounds of red potatoes and serve them with the steak, so it did take me a while to prepare the mashed red potatoes. (The good news is that I reserved half of the mashed potatoes and froze them to use for another meal.) As for the steak, I was a little nervous about it being called "spicy," but I didn't think it was spicy at all. My boys, who are very sensitive to heat levels, didn't complain at all about the spiciness. I would say that the steak was very flavorful, but maybe that doesn't make as catchy of a title. 😉 When I took a little bit of steak out of the slow-cooker to test it before serving, Conner and Logan transformed into two baby birds with their mouths wide-open. I gave them each a sample, and they immediately tweeted, "More! More!" Although we think this one paled slightly in comparison to the Chicken Pot Pie, we all really enjoyed this meal, especially Logan, who had three helpings of steak and licked his plate clean each time! I liked eating my steak over the mashed potatoes. I also served it with a green salad, which I think is needed with this one (or a green veggie of some kind).

{final thoughts}

Even if meals 3-10 are a flop (which I highly doubt they will be), the Chicken Pot Pie and Spicy BBQ Steak meals alone are worth the $6.00 it cost to download Lauren's meal plan. If you want to give yourself some serious peace of mind and fill your freezer with wholesome, tasty, and inexpensive meals, I highly recommend giving big-batch freezer cooking a try.

Now I want to hear from you! What do you think are the best gifts a new mama can receive? Have you ever tried freezer cooking? How did it go? Do you have any recommendations for recipes or plans to try?

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5 comments

  • Kristen M Prahl says:

    I love the term "milk volcano". And you totally nailed it on the head when you compared your kids to baby birds tweeting for more pre-dinner samples. I've found if I give my kids samples of a new food before dinner they are more likely to try and like it.

    Reply
    • Kristin says:

      Thanks, Kristen! You know, that's a really good idea. I wonder if making pre-dinner samples a regular part of our routine would help curb the whining from you-know-who at dinnertime!

      Reply