After about four hours of work, here’s what my sister and I had to show for our efforts:

FishMama’s Lasagna x 4

Brown Bag Burritos x 2

Cheeseburger Meatloaf x 3

Chicken and Red Bean Burritos (recipe from The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook)

Lemon Chicken x 3 (recipe from The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook)

White Bean and Chicken Chili (recipe from Eat Well, Save Big Cookbook)

Taco Meat

Make Ahead Butterhorns x 2

Blueberry Pancakes

Chopped onions

2 bags of cooked brown rice

1 bag of cooked Great Northern beans

All totaled, the above should make enough for about 25 dinners for our family–plus some breakfasts and lots of Butterhorns! I sent 8 of the meals home with my sister as a thank you for all her help.

The rest of the meals should last us almost an entire month since we eat an average of 16-20 home-cooked dinners per month. (We go out to eat once a week and usually have dinner at our parents’ homes 1-2 times per week, plus we also eat leftovers or a really simple dinner of sandwiches or cereal a few times a month, too!)

It feels so nice to have the freezer all stocked up again!

Did you have a chance to do any baking or cooking this week? If so, post about it on your blog and leave your link below to your direct blo g post. I’d love it especially if you could share pictures and recipes so we can get ideas for our next Freezer Cooking Day! And I’m guessing many others would be inspired as well.

Freezer Cooking Day: The Final Tally is a post from: Money Saving Mom

While the thought of making up casseroles and freezing them might not be appealing to your family, there are many ways that you can use your freezer to speed up cooking preparations. Here’s one example:

I really do not enjoy chopping up onions (does anyone?), but I do love how they taste in recipes, so I’ve found that my best options are to buy bags of frozen already-chopped onions at the store (which I have done when I’ve found a good sale on them!) or to chop them in bulk and freeze them. I usually opt for the latter since it just seems fresher to me, for some reason.

I did a big batch of onions on Freezer Cooking Day and thought I’d share what works for me:

1) Cut off the ends, peel, and cut in fourths.

2) Stick in the food processor and chop. If you don’t have a food processor, you can also use a blender, though it will chop the onion pretty fine.

3) Measure 1/2 cup of chopped onions into small sandwich baggies and then stick these into a freezer bag (as shown above). Freeze.

You can then just pull out a bag of chopped onions and use them in recipes whenever they call for chopped onion. Doing them in bulk like this saves a lot of time and effort–and tears! However, if I had followed the advice from Meal Planning Mommies here, I wouldn’t have had to worry about the tears!

How I Freeze Onions is a post from: Money Saving Mom

These are pretty much hands-down the most-delicious dinner rolls you’ll ever eat. And best of all? You can make up a batch or a double-batch ahead of time and then just pull out, thaw, and bake as many as you need for dinner. This is one of our family’s very favorite recipes and these are served at least a few times per month at our family gatherings.

Make-Ahead Butterhorns (makes 32 rolls)
2 Tablespoons dry yeast, heaping
1/3 cup warm water (110-115 degrees)
9 cups flour, divided (you can use any mixture of white or whole-wheat flour you’d like)
2 cups warm milk (110-115 degrees)
1 cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar (we substituted sucanat)
6 eggs
2 teaspoons salt
3-4 Tablespoons butter, melted

In a large mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Add 4 cups flour, milk, butter, sugar, eggs and salt. Beat 2 minutes or until smooth.

Add enough remaining flour to form a soft dough. Turn onto floured board and knead lightly. (Or, knead in mixer until sides of bowl are clean, then knead two more minutes.)

Place in a greased bowl, turning dough once to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled (1-3 hours).

Punch dough down and divide into four equal parts. Roll each part into a 12-inch circle and brush with melted butter.

Cut each circle into 8 pie-shaped wedges.

Roll up each wedge for wide edge to tip of dough and pinch to seal. Place rolls, top down, on baking sheets and freeze. When frozen, place in freezer bags and keep frozen until needed.

To bake: Take out as many frozen rolls as you’ll need and place them on a greased baking sheet. Thaw for five hours or until doubled in size. Bake at 375 degrees until lightly browned. Brush with melted butter as soon as they come out of the oven. Remove and serve immediately or cool on wire racks.

Make-Ahead Butterhorns Recipe is a post from: Money Saving Mom

Gretchen added spices and onions to the already-browned ground beef for Taco Meat and then she took on that task of making all the Butterhorn rolls (a rather tedious task that I was completely happy having her volunteer for!).

While she was busy with that, I put together four pans of FishMama’s Lasagna, the marinade for the lemon chicken (I took this recipe times three and divided frozen chicken breasts into three bags and poured a third of the marinade into each), and the White Bean and Chicken Chili.

Whew! What a great feeling to be done–and it was only 1:15 p.m.! I’m so very, very glad my sister said she’d help. Without her, I would still be back on the second recipe, I’m pretty sure. But instead, in four hours, we whipped out 25 dinners plus 64 Butterhorns and a batch of Blueberry Pancakes! Plus, we had leftover cooked brown rice and beans to freeze and chopped onions, too.

Our little kitchen “helper” (ahem, he enjoyed pulling out all the contents from under the kitchen sink!)

And the girls–with make-up on! (Auntie Gretchen had fun playing “beauty shop” with them while she was here!)

Stay tuned tomorrow for the final picture of everything we made ready to go in the freezer. I’ll post a link-up post at 12 p.m. CST for you to come and share your Freezer Cooking Day accomplishments, too. I can’t wait to see what you made!

Freezer Cooking Day: Taco Meat, Lasagna, Lemon Chicken, and White Bean Chili is a post from: Money Saving Mom

Someone had left a tip on a recent Freezer Cooking Day suggesting that I try baking the chicken instead of boiling it. I’m not sure who left that tip, but it’s a good one. I just stuck the frozen chicken breasts straight onto a baking sheet and cooked them at 350 degrees for around 45 minutes, turning them once while they were cooking (not exactly sure on how long I ended up cooking them because I just checked them every 10 minutes or so to see if they were done).

Wow! The chicken breasts came out so much more tender and juicy than they do when I boil them. Plus, it freed up some stove-top space, too! So a big thanks to whomever suggested that (I couldn’t seem to find the original comment to specifically thank the individual!).

After the Cheeseburger Meatloaf was in the oven and the Blueberry Pancakes were cooking, we moved on to the burritos. Gretchen made the Brown Bag Burritos and I made the Chicken and Red Bean Burrito recipe. We love Brown Bag Burritos–especially the guys in our family. I’m so thankful to Amy for sharing this winner recipe. We doubled it and should have enough burritos to keep our husbands happy for the next few weeks!

I wasn’t thrilled with how the Chicken and Red Bean Burritos turned out and ended up adding some salt to the recipe as I thought the filling seemed a little bland. That seemed to do the trick.

Next up: Taco Meat, Lasagna, Lemon Chicken, & White Bean Chili

Freezer Cooking Day: Oven-Baked Chicken and Burritos coming out our ears! is a post from: Money Saving Mom

Cheeseburger Meatloaf

1 lb. ground beef
1 cup (4 oz.) shredded sharp cheddar cheese
3/4 cup uncooked regular oats
1/2 cup milk
2 Tbsp. minced onion
1 large egg
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 dry mustard
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 cup chili sauce (I substituted barbecue sauce instead)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine first 11 ingredients in a large bowl; stir just until blended. Shape mixture into a loaf, and place in an ungreased 8×4-inch loafpan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Pour chili sauce over meat loaf, and bake 15-30 more minutes or until meat is no longer pink in center. Let stand for 10 minutes. Drain and cut into 8 slices.

To freeze: If you used meat that had not yet been frozen, you can freeze this uncooked. When you’re ready to eat, thaw, and follow the instructions above for cooking.

If your meat had already been frozen, bake without chili sauce on top. Freeze. When you’re ready to eat, thaw meatloaf. Pour chili sauce on top and heat in oven until hot.

Recipe adapted from Busy Moms Weeknight Favorites

Cheeseburger Meatloaf Recipe is a post from: Money Saving Mom

How’s the Freezer Cooking Day going at your house? My sister Gretchen, came to help me and we began our cooking around 9:15 a.m.

(After I made out my plan, I started panicking a little because I wasn’t sure how I could pull off making 25 meals in five hours with three little children underfoot. So I “bribed” my sister to come by telling her I’d send some of the food home with her so she wouldn’t have to cook as much in March! I’m sure she would have come without the bribe–because she’s nice like that–but I’m sure the bribe didn’t hurt anything!)

I got started on the Prep Work list while Gretchen started in on making the Butterhorns since those are a little more time-intensive.

We decided to double the Butterhorn recipe, which probably wasn’t the best idea seeing as it made a massive amount of dough and was a little hard to knead and work with. But she managed to pull it off.

While the dough was rising, Gretchen finished mixing up the Blueberry Pancakes. I already had the dry ingredients mixed up for her, so she just had to add in the wet ingredients. I told her to let me know how many eggs the recipe took since we were running short on eggs and I wanted to make sure we had enough to go around. That’s when we both realized the recipe didn’t list eggs as one of the ingredients (Do you see eggs listed here? Are we going blind?)

I finished up all the Prep Work and then got ready to make the Cheeseburger Meatloaf. Only there was one big problem: we realized that my two big bowls were up on top of the refrigerator with dough rising in them. So there was nothing for me to mix up the meatloaf in. Oops. I guess that I’m not really set up for this two-people-working-in-the-kitchen thing. Maybe I should look for some more big bowls the next time I’m at the thrift store?

Since I couldn’t sit around and wait for the dough to finish rising, I finally opted to mix up the meatloaf in a 9×13 pan. It worked, albeit not quite as great as a bowl would.

Next up: Brown-Bag Burritos and Chicken and Red Bean Burritos

Freezer Cooking Day: Prep Work, Blueberry Pancakes, and oops, we ran out of bowls! is a post from: Money Saving Mom

I’m so excited about Freezer Cooking Day! I’m ready to fill up our getting-close-to-empty freezer again!

To start things off, here’s a picture of all the groceries we bought for Freezer Cooking Day. All totaled, we spent $64.61. It seems a little high but considering about $20 of that was spent on meat and $12 on tortillas, I’m happy with it. And I felt even better when I realized that all of that coupled with the food we already have on hand should make about 25 dinners for our family.

However, next time around, I’m going to try and do a better job of buying more groceries ahead of time because I hated paying full price for a few of these items that I know I can often get for pennies on the dollar if I plan ahead. I haven’t done a good enough job recently of following my own advice to Buy Ahead, I guess!

I’ll be back later with an update on our progress.

Freezer Cooking Day: Grocery Shopping is a post from: Money Saving Mom

Are you ready for another Freezer Cooking Day? Since I only did a smaller Freezer Cooking Day last time around, our freezer is especially empty right now. So I’m very excited to get it filled up again!

Here’s the Master List of recipes I plan to make:

–FishMama’s Lasagna

–Blueberry Pancakes

–Brown Bag Burritos

–Cheeseburger Meatloaf (recipe from Busy Moms Weeknight Favoritescookbook)

–Chicken and Red Bean Burritos (recipe from The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook)

–Lemon Chicken (recipe from The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook)

–White Bean and Chicken Chili (recipe from Eat Well, Save Big Cookbook)

–Taco Meat

–Make Ahead Butterhorns

I found some extra recipe inspiration from a few new cookbooks I’ve received in the mail recently. But not all the recipes are completely new to us, in fact, the Make-Ahead Butterhorns are one of our family’s favorite rolls ever. The recipe is a little time-consuming, but SO worth it. I’ll share it on Monday along with pictures and details on how our cooking day goes. And don’t forget to come back on Tuesday to link-up your post(s) about your cooking accomplishments.

If you’re new to Freezer Cooking, be sure to check out my post on How to Plan a Freezer Cooking Day and FishMama’s post on Making Freezer Cooking Work for You.

Are you participating in March Freezer Cooking Days? If so, post about your cooking plan on your blog and then come back here and leave your direct link below so we can all be inspired! Please note: links which do not link directly to your freezer cooking post or which do not contain your freezer cooking plan will be deleted.

My Freezer Cooking Master Plan (and come link up yours, too!) is a post from: Money Saving Mom

Guest Post by Jessica from LifeAsMom

Freezer cooking has been touted as a great way to save money, time, and energy. Also known as Once-A-Month Cooking (OAMC), it offers the home cook a respite from daily kitchen tasks as the freezer is stocked with an assortment of pre-made frozen meals. Since freezer cooking involves one large grocery shopping trip, often buying items in bulk at a reduced rate and then cooking the meals all at one time, this method of meal planning can produce great savings in the pocket book and on the schedule.

Typically when people think of frozen meals, images of stacks and stacks of casseroles come to mind. But, what if you don’t like casseroles? Or what about that small freezer of yours? Thirty meals are not going to fit. Maybe you just like having some flexibility at dinnertime and don’t want to commit to a 30-day meal plan. You might think that freezer cooking’s just not for you.

Au contraire!

You can still reap the benefits of bulk buying and bulk cooking without having to eat Lentil Sausage Surprise for the next month or having to buy a deep freeze. You can have your freezer meals and be creative, too.

Freezer cooking is ultimately making your own convenience foods, tailored to your family’s budget, size, and tastes.

You can easily adapt the standard “OAMC” methods to your own preferences. Think about the meals you regularly prepare and then consider how to make part of that meal ahead of time.

Prepare “dinner kits” for easy to assemble meals such as tacos, burritos, or pizza. Cook and season the meat. Portion the cheese. Cook and season dry beans. Cook up a pot of rice. You can even mix up the pizza dough. Package each of these components in meal-size portions and place all the bags for a certain meal in a larger bag. Be sure to include tortillas. Label and freeze. The work is practically done for you come dinner time. You can easily make kits for sloppy joes, hamburgers, or chili dogs. Just prepare all the components and stash them in the freezer.

If you’re pressed for space in the freezer, you may not have room to bundle each component. Instead, store the items in the best space-saving way and keep track of what you have.

Love to cook outside? Is your family a bunch of meat eaters? No problem. Trim your cuts of meat, season or marinade and seal in a ziptop bag. Label and freeze. On the day of serving, dump the roast in the crockpot, arrange the chicken in a baking pan, or throw the steaks on the grill. Your dinner prep is half done! Add a side dish and a vegetable and you’re good to go.

Assemble baking mixes for pancakes, muffins, scones, biscuits, brownies, or quick breads. Label a ziptop bag with the recipe name, list the wet ingredients to add later as well as the baking instructions. Measure out the “dry” team into the bag, seal it, and store in the pantry for later use. You’re halfway to homebaked goodies which will be tastier and less expensive than store bought mixes.

Freezer cooking is very adaptable to however you like to feed your family. With a little creative thinking, you can most definitely make freezer cooking work for you. Ready to get started? Check out this step-by-step freezer cooking tutorial.

What is the biggest challenge for you in making freezer cooking serve you best at dinnertime?

– Jessica Fisher, also known as FishMama, regularly feeds her freezer so that she can feed the hungry masses who call her “Mom.” She posts daily about life’s joys and challenges at LifeasMOM and shares delicious ways to act your wage at Good Cheap Eats.

Make Freezer Cooking Work for You Even if You Don’t Like Casseroles is a post from: Money Saving Mom

Planning is key in pulling off a successful Freezer Cooking Day. Believe me, I’ve tried winging it before and it just doesn’t work. Many of you have asked questions on how I actually go about planning a Freezer Cooking Day so I thought it’d be fun to share a little peek into my planning process this time around:

1) Shop The Cupboards

I always start my planning by opening up my cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer. I’m always amazed at how much inspiration I find just from the ingredients I already have on hand.

Jot down a list of ingredients you already have to work with and possible recipe ideas as you go along. If you have an odd assortment of ingredients and are stumped for ideas, check out the Ingredient Search feature on AllRecipes.com.

To give you an example, I went through my cupboards and freezer this morning and found the above ingredients: canned tomatoes, whole-wheat pasta, and cream cheese. I immediately remembered FishMama’s lasagna and added that to my list.

2) Consult The Sales Fliers

If your cupboards don’t produce enough ideas or recipe fodder to work with, the next step is to consult the sales fliers. I often combine both the ideas from my cupboards and what is on sale to make up my Master List of Recipes.

3) Make A Master List and Grocery List

Take the recipe ideas you jotted down and narrow them down to 4-10 different final choices (or more, if you want to be a SuperWoman like FishMama!). Shoot for some variety in the main dishes you choose (I doubt you want to eat three weeks of nothing but chicken casserole!) and keep in mind how much time each will take. I usually try to pick a few simple meals and a few more time-intensive dishes.

Once you have your Master List of Recipes, read through each recipe and note what you’ll need to buy at the store. Since you’ll likely need duplicates of many items, you can just write onions and then in make a mark next to them as you go through the recipes for how many onions you’ll actually need. Like this:

Onions – I I I I (this means I’ll need to buy 4 onions)

Cheddar Cheese – I I I I I I I (this means I’ll need to make sure and have enough to shred seven cups of Cheddar cheese)

And so forth…

If your list starts to get really messy and you’re afraid you might not be able to decipher it when you’re shopping, re-write it on a clean sheet of paper once you’re finished with the rough draft.

Match up any coupons to items you’ll be buying and put these in an envelope along with your final Grocery List.

4) Make a Freezer Cooking Day Prep List

Once your grocery list is completed, go through your recipes and quickly write down what things you need to prep in bulk next to the recipe. These would be things like shredding cheese, chopping onions, browning ground beef, cooking and chopping chicken, and so forth.

For instance, if I were doubling the lasagna recipe, I would write it like this:

Lasagna x 2 — recipe on LifeAsMom.com

Brown 2 pounds of ground beef, Grate 24 ounces of mozzarella cheese

I might have three other recipes which also take browned ground beef and four which take mozzarella cheese. So once I’ve written the prep work next to each recipe, I can make a Master Prep List which combines all the prep work for all the recipes together.

My Prep List for next week’s Freezer Cooking Day.

I recommend then also making a final Master Plan which includes the order of events for your Freezer Cooking Day. First, you’ll do all the items on your Master Prep List and then you’ll actually put together all the meals. You’ll save a lot of time and effort by doing all the prep work first. And when you get to the actual putting together of recipes, you’ll just fly through them.

My Master Plan for next week’s Freezer Cooking Day.

I always try to put the most time-intensive recipes first and the easiest recipes at the end. That way, if I’m starting to drag halfway through the cooking, I know that I’ve saved the easiest for last and it gives me renewed energy!

So there you have a simple explanation of how I plan a Freezer Cooking Day. My planning method might not work for you at all, but hopefully it will give those of you who are completely new to cooking in bulk some inspiration and ideas to get started.

Free Downloadable Freezer Cooking Day Planning Worksheets

Just for fun, I asked Joy to put together some free downloadable Freezer Cooking Planning Sheets which you are welcome to use, if you find them helpful. I’ve always used a simple notebook in the past, but I’m excited to finally have something a little snazzier to use.

A) Freezer Cooking Day Ingredient Planner

This simple worksheet has space for you to jot down ingredients you have on hand, recipe ideas, and ingredients you need to buy. Download the Freezer Cooking Day Ingredient Planner here.

B) Freezer Cooking Day Master List

This worksheet is a place for you to write down your final list of recipes, where they are located (cookbook, website link, etc.), and all of the prep work each recipe requires. Download the Freezer Cooking Day Master List Planning Sheet here.

C) Freezer Cooking Day Prep List

Once you’ve decided on your recipes, made your shopping list, and jotted down all the prep work each recipe requires, you can create your final list, the Freezer Cooking Day Prep List. This is where you’ll put the planned order of events for your Freezer Cooking Day. Check things off as you go and be encouraged by your progress and accomplishments! Download the Freezer Cooking Day Prep List here.

I’ll post my Freezer Cooking Day Master List and Prep List later on today along with a link-up for you to share yours, as well. I’m excited to get our very bare freezer filled up again! For more ideas on how to pull off a Freezer Cooking Day, be sure to stop by and read FishMama’s post called Freezer Cooking Basics.

How I Plan My Freezer Cooking Day + Free Planning Worksheets! is a post from: Money Saving Mom

I’m excited! So many of you have asked for me to do a step-by-step tutorial on how to cut your grocery budget. Now that the blog transition is done and I have more time for writing, I’m tackling a big project during the month of March: 31 Days To a Better Grocery Budget.

This series will give 31 tips and ideas for how you can significantly cut your grocery bill without sacrificing quality or quantity. Some of the ideas might be ones you’re already doing, but I hope everyone is able to pick up a few new things to further maximize the mileage of your money at the grocery store.

And March 1-2, 2010 (that’s Monday and Tuesday of next week–believe it or not!), I’ll be hosting another Freezer Cooking Day marathon right here, with FishMama’s help. If you’d like to join in, we’ll have a link-up on Friday (February 26, 2010) for you to share your plan and recipes.

I’ll be sharing details tomorrow on how I make up my Freezer Cooking Day plan on a budget and how you can, too. I plan to share a play-by-play of my cooking day on Monday and then finish up with a Freezer Cooking Day Accomplishments link-up on Tuesday.

If you’re planning to join us, be sure to sign up on our Facebook Event Page and follow along with the Twitter hashtag #oamc. If you’re new around here and wondering what Freezer Cooking is all about, you can check out some of my previous Freezer Cooking Day posts here.

Coming in March: Freezer Cooking and 31 Days to a Better Grocery Budget is a post from: Money Saving Mom

I have a big confession to make: I sort of flaked on you on the whole Freezer Cooking thing.

I have a whole lot of excuse cards I could whip out: my 8-month-old is cutting 4 teeth (bless his heart!); I’ve been battling a infection in my mouth which got really bad this weekend and was almost debilitating (I’m on the mend now–thanks to a great doctor!–but ouch!); and this whole switching servers and changing from Typepad to WordPress has been a bear (Gratefully, I have some amazing tech people working me on it–like FiveJs!–or my site would be permanently broken and maimed!).

I had visions of all these delicious meals I was going to make, wonderful pictures I was going to take, and well-crafted blog posts I was going to write, but it just didn’t happen.

Instead, you’ll just have to suffice for no picture and a small list of what I was able to get done over the past three days:

3 meal’s worth of Barbecued Beef

5 Chicken and Dressing casseroles (This is a new recipe and I reworked the recipe so majorly because the original wasn’t turning out as I’d hoped so I’m not even sure how to replicate. I wasn’t too impressed with the final result, but my husband LOVED it. I was happy about that considering he has to eat it four more times!)

2 bags of cooked chopped chicken (Having the meat already cooked and chopped makes preparing Homemade Pizza a complete snap. I can have it in the oven in 15 minutes or less!)

4 meal’s worth of Marinated Chicken

So all totaled, we have enough for 14 dinners–which is actually not too bad considering I only cooked for about 2 1/2 hours total! And I have the ingredients on hand to make about 8 other main dishes for this month (I was supposed to make some Cheeseburger Meatloaves and homemade Macaroni and Cheese but I never got around to it!), so I think that’ll probably last us the whole month through!

And next month around, I hope to do a much better job of cooking and blogging about it.

Have you entered the Freezer Cooking Day giveaways yet? If not, they end tonight and you’ll definitely want to put your name in the hat to win one of three great items to help you in the kitchen! Head over to LifeasMOM to enter.

——————————-

Did you have a chance to do any baking or cooking this week? If so, post about it on your blog and leave your link below to your direct blog post. I’d love it especially if you could share pictures and recipes so we can get ideas for our next Freezer Cooking Day! And I’m guessing many others would be inspired as well.

Freezer Cooking Day: You mean I was actually supposed to cook something?! is a post from: Money Saving Mom

Are you ready to fill up your freezer again? I know I am!

Ours is looking pretty sparse after a month of Eating From the Pantry! I’ll be sharing my Freezer Cooking Day play-by-play on Monday (complete with recipes, pictures, and real-time results), but here’s my Master List:

–Macaroni and Cheese x 4
–Cheeseburger Meatloaf x 3
–Anytime Chicken and Dressing x 3
–Shredded Barbecued Beef x 3

And that’s it! Yes, I’m keeping it super simple this time. My husband, son, and I are going to Nashville for the Blissdom Conference and the Savvy Blogging Dinner next week, so there’s lots to do in preparation for that. Plus, I wanted to try a smaller-scale Freezer Cooking Day to see how that worked for our family.

All of the recipes are new-to-us, so I’ll be posting them after I make them. Here’s my planned order of cooking:

1) Boil noodles; boil and chop chicken

2) Start beef in the crock pot

3) Mix together meatloaves and freeze

4) Put together Anytime Chicken and Dressing and freeze

5) Make up pans of Macaroni and Cheese

6) Shred beef and freeze

7) Clean up the kitchen and enjoy some nights off from cooking!

Are you participating in February’s Freezer Cooking Days? If so, post about your cooking plan on your blog and then come back here and leave your direct link below so we can all be inspired!

Freezer Cooking Day: My Plan (and come link up yours, too!) is a post from: Money Saving Mom

Okay, so I just have to say that my new plan of action to do the cooking in one day, have the girls spend the day with Grandma, and keep my list on the simpler side, made a big difference. I'm tired tonight, but nowhere near wiped out like I was last time around. And best of all? My house is pretty clean and the cooking is D-O-N-E!

I started at 10:15 a.m. this morning and but for a few breaks to nurse Silas, worked straight through the day until around 6:45 p.m. tonight. And I got everything but one item crossed off my list!

Here's the fruit of my efforts:

Breakfasts:

–Pumpkin Pancakes x 3
–Muffin Mixes x 3 (for gifts, breakfasts, and dinners)

Main Dishes:

–Tuna Noodle Casserole x 2 (used leftover Thanksgiving turkey instead of tuna–it turned out looking very yummy!)
–Broccoli, Ham, and Cheese Casserole x 4 (I just made up this recipe so I don't have a link for you. I used leftover Thanksgiving ham.)
–Marinated Chicken x 4 (Pour Italian dressing over frozen chicken tenders and freeze. You can add in extra seasonings or sliced onions or peppers if you like. When ready to cook, you can throw it in the crockpot on low for 6 hours or bake it in the oven for 30 to 45 minutes. We like to serve this over brown rice. It's so simple and delicious! This is such an easy recipe that it really doesn't have to be made ahead, I just find there are days when it is nice to just dump a bag into the crockpot and go. Maybe I'm the only one who has those kinds of days?!)
–Barbecue Chicken x 2 (Similar to the above "recipe" just pour a bottle of barbecue sauce and some water over frozen chicken breasts and stick in a bag and freeze. You can add in extra seasonings and/or chopped onions if you like. When
ready to cook, you can throw it in the crockpot on low for 6 hours or
bake it in the oven for 30 to 45 minutes. If you make this in the crockpot, the chicken will just fall apart after it's cooked and can be served on buns for BBQ Chicken Sandwiches. My husband especially likes this!)
–Stromboli x 4

Snacks/Desserts:

Brown Sugar Biscuit Twists
Banana Bread
World's Easiest Christmas Candy (Used saltines instead of Cheez-Its. These are seriously good!)
Sugar Cookie Dough*
Hot Cocoa Mix x 6*
Slab Apple Pie x 4 

*Thanks to C&H Sugar for sending me a little gift card to use to buy some of the ingredients to try out these two recipes. I was planning to make them anyway, so I when they wrote and asked if they could send me a gift card to buy some of their sugar, I was more than happy to oblige!

Things I learned from this month's Freezer Cooking Day:

::It works well to do all the cooking in one day. Splitting it up over two days seems to create more work, less productivity, and a much messier house.

::It is much less stressful to have a babysitter–and I get more done, too! I'm definitely going to be going this route for future cooking days. The girls had a great day, Grandma enjoyed getting lots of time with her granddaughters, and I was able to be much more efficient and focused in the kitchen.

::It is helpful to do the more intensive cooking projects first. By the end of the day, I'm running out of steam so it was good I saved the easiest things for last.

::I need to plan more in advance. Yes, I've been planning for this cooking day for a few weeks and buying groceries with it in mind, but it wasn't until a few days before that I sat down and made a list. And it wasn't until last night that I fleshed out my list. I think it would help if I made my game plan farther in advance and had the recipes printed out. Having to keep looking them up in different places just took extra time.

::I could save time by doing more prep work the day before–having the cheese already shredded, etc. would help speed up the cooking day. This is when more advance planning would also be helpful.

All in all, it was a very successful day and judging by how stuffed both of our little freezers are, I doubt I will need to do much of any cooking or baking this month–which will save me a great deal of time and effort and will also save us money since there won't be a temptation to get carryout because dinner's in the freezer!

Thanks again to FishMama and everyone else who joined us in this Freezer Cooking Day. My family thanks you, too.

Now I think I'm going to go fix myself a cup of hot cocoa and put my feet up for awhile!

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Did you have a chance to do any baking or cooking this week?
If so, post about it
on your blog and leave your link below to your direct blog post. I'd
love it especially if you could share pictures and recipes so we can
get ideas for our next Freezer Cooking Day! And I'm guessing many
others would be inspired as well.

Freezer Cooking Day: The final results (and come link up your posts, too!) is a post from: Money Saving Mom