Frozen

Way back in 2015, during our sojourn in Illinois, I wrote about making freezer meals. Some of the meals were great, some were okay, some weren't wonderful. I considered it an interesting experience, but didn't think much more about it until this school year. This year we have dance two nights each week, right during the time I would normally make dinner. I decided I wanted to try freezer meals again, but I approached them differently.

This time, instead of setting aside a day to make several distinct meals, I slowly built up my collection by making giant batches of one thing and freezing the excess. Sometimes this meant cooking an entire family size package of ground beef and turning it all into taco meat or stroganoff sauce and freezing meal-sized portions. Sometimes it meant building three pans of enchiladas and baking one for dinner while I froze the other two for the future. And sometimes it meant I bagged leftovers from a meal and stuck them right into the freezer instead of hoping someone would eat them out of the fridge before they needed to be tossed.

I quickly banked many freezer meals. As we used them, I would set aside one of Topher's naptimes and do another giant batch of something or other. Doing this once a week for a few weeks in a row has been helpful in replenishing our supply.

This method of freezer meals has been just right for us. I make meals we already love, so I'm not wasting time or money on food that will be eaten grudgingly, if at all. I can throw a meal in the slow cooker on our dance days and know that we don't have to come home to a dinner of cereal and milk. And I've discovered that it's helped on non-dance days as well. If I haven't made dinner during naptime (which is generally the goal), I can pull one of the partially prepared meals out and have it put together quickly, while still supervising the troops. That's code for not leaving Topher alone with Sophie for any period of time.

Freezer meals have been a game changer.