FREEZER MEALS ROCK!

What do you get when you give 2 coupon savvy moms $90 each and 6 hours of cooking time?

16+ meals, that's what!  Less than $6 per meal for a family of three.  That is just plain AWESOME! (Sorry for the yelling, I got excited)

I saw a video from Do It On a Dime on YouTube about Freezer Cooking, and was totally excited to try this out.  I instantly knew I had to do this with a friend, not only to divide shopping and cooking tasks between the both of us, but also to have a buddy and just make it more fun.  Once I told my friend Erin about it, she was totally in.

We met one day to choose which meals to make, and divide the grocery list, plan a strategy and chat, of course.

The total grocery bill for the both of us, was $180 which we split in half.  I do have to say that we are coupon savvy and we each spent as little as possible on our groceries.  We also had a bunch of carrots and potatoes leftover which I plan to use making a potato egg salad.  I will post this recipe later.

Kathryn from Do It On a Dime explains this beautifully, so I will just complement her instructions with some pictures and some tweaking here and there that worked best for my friend Erin and I.

We started chopping away, following Kathryn's prep list.  I will make my own list using hers as a template just because it is easier for me to also know what meal uses which ingredient.  I also like to chop things differently according to the meal they will go in, so for me chopped can be divided into three types of chopping.

As we were making the meals, a couple of meals came to mind.  The chicken from the broth was shredded (using a Vitamix or Ninja just put one breast at a time and pulse), and one breast was added to the broth (after taking out the amount needed for the recipes), and the other three were put into warm chicken salad bags (so that is one more meal or a different meal to use up your pulled chicken).  1 1/2 pulled chicken breast per bag.  We also had a lot of celery and carrots so we decided to make a carrot soup bag as well and use up some of the leftover bulk ingredients we got, including onions.

It took us more than 2 hours but we doubled the ingredients, and we were looking after two toddlers, mind you.  We also spent the first 30 minutes labeling our freezer bags, we also had lunch, and cut our own chicken in half (if your butcher does it for you, that's an extra half hour right there) 

The result?  All these meals:

4 Teriyaki Chicken
4 Lazy Day Stew
4 Savory Chicken
2 Chicken Salad + 2 Carrot Soup
4 Sweet & Tangy Meatballs
4 Sausage & Peppers (that I serve over pasta or on hollowed out, garlic crusty bread)
8 Browned Ground Chuck – 4 Italian Style & 4 Mexican Style
2 Shredded Chicken Soup.  Just add noodles.

Leftover ingredients:
* A lot of carrots
* 8 red potatoes
we also had some leftover wine, spices and a few others.