Freezer Cooking Day (Part 2)

In case you missed it, here is Freezer Cooking Day (Part 1).

I had such a great freezer cooking day with Donna from Hey Donna.  We got started around 11:00 AM and I finally sat down to relax at 5:00 PM.  It was definitely a long day, but we made so much food!

Here is all of the food that I now have in my freezer:

• plain browned ground beef – 4 lbs.
• taco meat – 4 lbs
• pizza dough – 4 pizza’s worth
• honey mustard chicken – 2 meals, plus 1 extra batch of sauce
• italian marinated chicken breasts – 8 chicken breasts
• baked spaghetti – 2 meals
• curried lentils – 2 meals
• zuppa toscana (an Olive Garden soup!) – 3 meals
• black beans – 4 cans worth
• banana cream bread – 6 mini loaves & 9 muffins
• peanut butter granola – 2 quart size bags

Things with Grace went so well.  Towards the end of the day she was about ready to shove Donna out the door, but overall she did a great job.

This was the second time that Donna & I did a big freezer cooking day.  Last time we followed a menu created by Once A Month Mom, who specializes in once a month freezer cooking.  I would highly recommend Once A Month Mom to anyone who is interested in freezer cooking!  I loved doing it that way, but I enjoyed creating my own menu this time.

This time around Donna and I made recipes we had tried before and knew we would love.  We also focused on “meal starters.” Making things like taco meat and pizza dough were faster than doing complete meals and will still save us kitchen time in the future.

In total I have 11 meals, which will probably give us some leftovers for lunches since we are a small family.  I also have 13 meal starters (pizza dough, taco meat & hamburger meat).  My total cost was $80.12 for the ingredients we didn’t already have on hand.  That means I paid just…

$3.34 per meal/starter! Plus that doesn’t include the:

• 4 cans worth of black beans (which I’ll probably add to the taco meat)
• 2 bags of granola
• 6 mini loaves & 9 muffins of banana bread
• All the ingredients that we had left over because we ran out of time to double some of our recipes.  We split the leftovers and I ended up with bananas, sour cream, oats, onions, bouillon powder, shredded cheese, freezer bags and flour!

Next week I’ll share 10 Tips for a Successful Freezer Cooking Day! I also have had requests for some of the recipes that we made, so I’ll be posting those over the next couple of weeks.  Don’t forget to subscribe to Hey Donna  so you don’t miss out on any of her fun posts about our freezer cooking day.

In the mean time, check out our posts from last years cooking day:

• Once A Month Cooking: The Calm Before the Storm
• Once a Month Cooking: The Big Day
• Once A Month Cooking with Rebekah (Donna’s post & video of the day!)