First we got married six days after graduating from college and were thrown into grown up living, married life, first time real jobs and keeping up a home. At first we were basically just surviving, eating fast food, take out, with an occasional frozen meal thrown in. We both enjoyed cooking, however it was time consuming, we both hated dishes and expensive to decide to make a recipe and then buy everything that you needed for that recipe. When we discovered that you could buy frozen fulled prepped meals (both of our moms are mostly homemade from scratch) in the store. This our bridge to homemade cooking. We were able to get into the routine of figuring out what to eat and then have the patience to cook it ourselves. We found ourselves cooking at home more often because it was zero prep, quick, not very many dishes to clean (however we still felt sluggish and uck a lot). Once we started doing this, we began branching out and making more meals from home. This slow progression from fast food to homemade brings us to today (we find when we are eating a lot of organic food, fruits and vegetables and eliminating preservatives and chemicals we have so much more energy and overall feel better).
There is nothing more convenient than pulling out a frozen meal that is prepped and cook it up in minutes. However most frozen meals are so full of chemicals, preservatives, and other not so good for you things. The other night at work another nurse was showing me a Lean Cuisine frozen meal that said it was preservative free. When I asked what was in it, on the ingredient list, she couldn't pronounce most of the huge list of ingredients. For this reason I was so excited when I saw a friend's blog about freezer dinners that I had to get the book right away. When you make it yourself, you know what the ingredients actually are. Due to my recent purchase of many pounds of meat and a weekend off, I have spent my entire weekend creating freezer meals and now I have about 70 options for frozen meals in my freezer. That will last us a long time!
Now this is how a working mom has homemade meals for her family without relying on chemicals and preservatives. I may not be able to provide a fresh homemade meal every night for my family, but I can make sure we have healthy options in the freezer.
Look at all I have made this weekend! I had to create an inventory document because I don't know how else to know what we have buried in that bottomless hole of a deep freezer. If anyone has an organization system for their deep freeze please let me know!
It took a lot of pots to make all of the soups, which is why it took so many days.
Munchkie's Daddy had made this tomato sauce a little while back, but I took inventory of it this weekend.
Spaghetti squash to go with the tomato sauce. I have no idea how well this freezes, I guess we'll find out.
Chicken with Peanut Sauce frozen in rolls with a ziploc bag of peanut sauce in the middle. I have plans to make a stir fry with some frozen peppers and onions and serve over rice with that peanut sauce.
Dijon Pork Loin Roast, we had to cut it up into portions for our family. I think this will be served with some mashed cauliflower and salad.
Orange Teriyaki Chicken. Going to be another stir fry.
Lentil Soup, a family recipe that took me a long time to try, but is now a winter staple.
Sausage, Kale and Bean Soup which is very yummy!
Chicken and Rice Soup, hopefully this is good, I didn't have a recipe, just kind of threw stuff into a pot.
Creamy (Creamless) Zucchini and Potato Soup which I haven't tried yet, but hopefully is good!
My full freezers make me very happy!
No comments:
Post a Comment