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Today's families are incredibly busy. Between school, work and running to soccer practice, finding the time to put a healthy and inexpensive home-cooked meal on the table seems almost impossible. Most nights, it seems just as easy to run through the drive-through for a kids’ meal.
Not only are most fast food meals unhealthy, but the cost of feeding even a family of four this way can add up quickly. Setting aside just one weekend a month to prepare meals in advance can provide simple meal solutions for weeks.
1. What to Cook?
Finding recipes that work for freezer meals is a fairly simple process. When it comes to freezer meals, there are websites, cookbooks and newsletters devoted to this topic. However, a recipe that has won multiple awards doesn't do you much good if the kids refuse to eat it. The best thing to do is to sit down and write out your family's favorite meals. What will your children eat? Come up with four or five meals that everyone in the family likes or will at least eat when you prepare it.
2. What will Freeze?
Make sure the meals you choose freeze well. Pasta may not freeze well, but your delicious pasta sauce will. In this case, since pasta is fast and simple to make, cook the pasta sauce and freeze, but wait to cook the actual pasta. Most things can be frozen, but items that don't always freeze well include egg-based dishes and dishes with a lot of milk or cream.
3. What to Buy?
Once you have your recipes, decide how many of each item you'd like to cook. A good place to start is with five of each item. After you've had a few cooking sessions, you might want to increase this to 10 of each so you don't have to cook as often. Add up the ingredients you'll need to make five of each dish you've chosen and purchase them in the least expensive way possible. Since you'll be buying in bulk, try discount stores.
4. What to Cook?
Choose the day you'd like to cook and tape the recipes up where you can easily refer to them. See if there are any steps you can combine. For example, if you are making spaghetti sauce with hamburger and also making a hamburger casserole, brown all the ground beef at one time. Once you've cooked all the common ingredients, complete one recipe at a time. Set the dish aside to cool.
5. What Now?
Your final step is packing the meals into containers for easy access. You want to make sure they will not get freezer burn, be easy to identify and stack easily in the freezer. For items like sauces, freezer bags work well. Place the sauce into the bag and place the bags on a flat tray, such as a baking sheet. Freeze flat and then remove from the tray and stack in the freezer one on top of the other. For casseroles, if you have enough casserole dishes, leave them in the dish.
Otherwise, allow to cool completely and remove from the pan. Then, clean the pan and line with plastic wrap or aluminum foil. Place the casserole back into the dish and freeze. Remove from the freezer and the meal will the same size as your pan. You can then simply unwrap and place in the dish when you are ready to use. Be certain everything is labeled with a name, date and directions on how to prepare!
Camille Vanderkamp likes to write about frugality, financial planning & cheap term life insurance.
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