I don't spend a certain day freezer cooking, I look at what I have, what I want to cook that week for dinner, then make sure that I am able to extend the use of those things to become precooked meals for the freezer, plus making sure that Jeff has a variety of things for his packed breakfast and lunch and healthy, easy things for the daycare kiddos and myself during the day.
Starting with Pot Roast, potatoes, carrots, onions and celery, I just put it all in a stock pot with water, garlic, pepper, and some random seaonings depending on my mood and whats on hand and stick it in the oven, then at the end I mix up a roux to thicken the juices into a gravy . So, we had it for dinner that night, and I packed it for Jeff's lunch the next day...but, it was soooo tender that I noticed it wasn't gonna make it as a meat, veggie and gravy leftover to freeze. So, change of plans, it will now become a topping for egg noodles. There was enough to freeze 3 containers.
Starting with Pot Roast, potatoes, carrots, onions and celery, I just put it all in a stock pot with water, garlic, pepper, and some random seaonings depending on my mood and whats on hand and stick it in the oven, then at the end I mix up a roux to thicken the juices into a gravy . So, we had it for dinner that night, and I packed it for Jeff's lunch the next day...but, it was soooo tender that I noticed it wasn't gonna make it as a meat, veggie and gravy leftover to freeze. So, change of plans, it will now become a topping for egg noodles. There was enough to freeze 3 containers.
Then I thawed a 10 lb. bag of Chicken leg quarters. I baked 4 leg quarters, which made 3 dinners and one lunch. I boiled the rest. After cooling a bit, I strained all of the stock, and got all of the good meat off of the bones and seperated into 2 freezer baggies and marked one for Chicken and dumplings, one for Chicken Pot Pie. I put the chicken stock, bones, skin, etc. into a crockpot and added the bag I have in fridge veggie drawer where I keep the ends, pieces, etc. of all fresh veggies I use for other things, sprinkled in some poultry seasoning, pepper, and garlic powder and put on low overnight. The next day I was able to strain and put the chicken broth into two plastic containers to freeze.
Oh, and when I made our big breakfasts last weekend, I made extra pancake batter, and cooked an extra 15 pancakes to freeze for the week.
After thawing 3 & 1/2 lbs of ground beef, I made 1 meatloaf...which 3 of us had for dinner, and it made 2 lunches. Plus later in the week we had swiss burgers with sauteed mushrooms and onions for 3 of us and 2 more lunches.
I also made a pot of pinto and great white beans, using the pork bone, meat and fat I had frozen from a previous cooking & freezing project. We had it that night for 3 of us, and I made 2 lunches, plus 2 containers frozen. The pan of cornbread I made, I used a small container of the pork drippings I had frozen in place of oil in the recipe. Jeff said he loved it! YAY!
And the things I have done this weekend so far, I took a pound of ground pork sausage and made 2 sausage patties, and then crumbled the rest, cooked it up, removed the patties and half of the pieces...made sausage gravy with what was left in pan, then made biscuits, sunny side up eggs, fried potatoes and added the two patties for our breakfast...the other half of the fried sausage pieces are going to be layered into pancake muffins (will post about it after I do it) and had enough sausage gravy to prepare 2 breakfasts for Jeff's work week, and one for me and daycare kiddos. The leftover fried potatoes will be added to Sundays breakfast.
Many more potato recipes and freezing to come as Food Lion has their 5 lb. bags for 99 cents and we, so far, have bought 30 lbs.
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