The best idea ever!

A few days ago I undertook a huge project that I was really excited about. Through Pinterest I found a link to Mamaandbabylove.blogspot.com. Stephanie (the blogger) does once a month cooking and it’s aaaamazing! I've heard of this idea before and even have a few acquaintances that do this. But I just never got around to it until now. Basically, you make and freeze a months’ worth of meals at one time so there is no daily preparation for dinner, just pop it in the crockpot in the morning or oven and voila! This is an amazing idea for so many reasons. The biggest one being that I'm a huge procrastinator! I usually go grocery shopping and buy all the fresh ingredients for yummy & healthy meals but then I get so busy during the day and put off cooking. All of a sudden it's 6pm and I haven't even defrosted the meat! I end up throwing mac & cheese on a plate (and maybe I'll toss a salad together) and call it a meal. I don't want to think about how much money I've wasted letting food go bad. So I knew this would be a perfect idea for my family. I didn't want soup every night, so I found recipes that could be eaten over noodles or rice such as chicken cacciatore, curry chicken & the spicy jumbo shrimp (which I toned down because my kids aren't fans of spicy). I used a few recipes I found on Stephanie's site and scoured the internet for the rest. I ended up spending about 5 hours and $300. 5 hours is freaking ridiculous if you ask me! BUT it was my own fault... I decided for whatever reason to start my cooking at midnight and was delirious by the time I finished. I did not use my time wisely! I made one recipe at a time. Next time I will take inventory of all my recipes, chop all of the veggies and all of the raw meat and then just measure everything out into the freezer bags, then add whatever spices & liquids called for. So everything is done at once. I read that the process should usually take about 3 hours. That is much more do-able than 5! Here is the end result:

There's 27 meals in my freezer and three meals were in my fridge... It was hard work, but I'm so excited that my family will be eating great, healthy meals at a regular time each evening! I also use the crockpot bags so I just remove it after dinner. No cleanup! So far we've eaten white chicken chili and the spicy jumbo shrimp. Both meals were delicious and as easy as I expected. Tomorrow night we'll be having the ricotta, spinach & mushroom stuffed shells. Those will be cooked in the oven, so I'm hoping all goes as well as planned! I'll let you know if it doesn't work ;)