Being a mama that works outside of the home full time, I often struggle with the energy or time to make meals for our family. Eating at home together as much as possible as a family is something that I really strive for. Though we are really busy, something I try to make possible as much as possible is not getting food to go, but eating “slow meals” at home. In order to do this though I have to be well prepared AND use my crock-pot!
One of my favorite things to do a couple of times a year is spend a little extra on my groceries, preferably when chicken is on sale, and prepare some freezer meals that I can put in the crock pot at a later date. I will admit, it can be some work up front, but those couple of hours (including grocery shopping), really is worth it when you just grab a meal out of your freezer to put in your crock-pot and ta da! Dinner is served. I literally high five myself when it’s been a crazy week, I open the freezer, and it’s like the angels are singing to me, telling me everything is going to be okay! The family will in fact NOT go hungry tonight.
The one thing that I actually can’t stand, is a freezer meal, or crock-pot meal that needs a ton of prep cooking done first. Nope. That is NOT helpful. How is that helpful? I might as well have just cooked it night of! Luckily when I was pregnant with my middle child, I found an amazing Blogger that saved my life and proved that you can put together freezer meals without having to pre cook the ingredients needed! The blog is called Family Freezer and you can find it by clicking here.
I decided in order to get myself ready for the school year, I would do a meal prep push one Saturday morning. I swear to you, the actual preparation of the nine meals I put together took me an hour. Yes, you read that correctly. I prepared nine meals for my freezer and it took me an hour. Now this fall when we have a crazy week, or maybe I just want to sit on my floor and enjoy my children, I can pull the freezer meal out of the freezer the night before, put it in my fridge and then dump the contents of the Ziploc bag into my crock-pot the next morning. That’s it folks. Dinner is served.
I wanted to share with you the recipes I just pulled together for my fall meals.
*Please note for some of these recipes they call for pork or beef and we switched them up to be chicken because we don’t eat a lot of either.
- Slow Cooker Cranberry Pot Roast*
- Ginger Peach Chicken
- Slow Cooker Party Pork (we did use Boston Butt for this one. How could we not!)
- Crockpot Salsa Verde Chicken
- Slow Cooker Beef Roast and Carrots*
Here are a few more that I have yet to make, but on my list to do next round!
- Eggplant Rollatini
- Apple crisp (This will need to be made after my #last90daychallenge where I gave up sweets!
- Sweet and Sour BBQ Chicken
- Cool Ranch Shredded Chicken Tacos
My family loves a couple of them so much that I made two of each of them to put in the freezer.
Listen, I promise you, even if you think I am crazy, do yourself a favor and try it once. Check out the Family Freezer blog and find a couple of recipes you think sound good to you and put the items on your grocery list. Take an hour, it’s just one hour, and prep the meals for your freezer. You will thank yourself when you are stressed for time and don’t have a meal planned. You will be so grateful you had them available when you needed them most. It might be a maternity leave, it might be a busy summer with camps, vacations, or it might be a busy start of the school year getting back at it with your kiddos and sports. I promise, you WILL high five yourself when you pull one of these meals out of your freezer.
Let me know if the comments below if you have given this a chance and put some meals in your freezer! I’d love to hear from you.