Daily mass at 7:00am followed by breakfast.
Work at 8:00am
Lunch at 12:00pm
Studying for graduate school at 12:30pm or staying and working all afternoon.
Going home for a short dinner break at 5:00pm before going back to work
Back to work at 6:00pm
Get home from work at 9:30pm
Study for graduate school a little more and go to sleep around 11:00pm or 12:00am.
Wake up at 5:30am and do it all again.
My days off are generally Friday and Saturday and I usually sleep in a little, do some school work, quilt, clean house, do laundry, and catch up with some friends.
Pretty much every moment of my day is planned out and because of that cooking has sort of fallen to the back burner. It was much easier to grab some Taco Bell on the way home from work for my short dinner break than it was to make a whole meal and have to deal with the clean-up too. It became a pretty easy and expensive habit to have, but you can only eat so many bean burritos (or enter other fast food option here) before you are totally sick of them.
One afternoon I was scrolling through Pinterest looking for recipes I had never made before for our Wednesday Night Dinners (that's a post for another time) and I came across this idea of frozen crock-pot meals. WHAT?!? So I kept reading and searching and here is what I found. There are tons of people who come up with a list of meals they would like to make, do all the prep work, freeze them, and enjoy. This makes eating better super easy because in the morning all you do is pull out a frozen meal, toss it in your crock-pot on low, and come home to a delicious dinner all ready to go!
I sent a quick text to my friend Jess and asked if she would be interested in getting together that weekend to prep a bunch of meals and share the items we would make. She was on board because she loves crock-potting as much as I do! So we got together yesterday and spent three hours (from the moment we started shopping until we were totally finished) making 18 crock-pot meals. It was FABULOUS!
We have never tried the recipes that we made (we may have tried things similar, but not these specific ones) so as I pull these out of the freezer and use them I will be adding more posts about what I liked and what I would change for next time. Here's the thing though, each meal will give us an average of 4 servings and each serving averaged out to be $1.33/serving. We did have some of the items at my house, but we ended up buying most of the things on the list. Below is a list of the bags we made and recipes for each.
For ALL of our recipes we mixed directly into two gallon freezer bags to cut down on dirty dishes (I hate washing dishes). Note that these recipes are for both bags, so you would split them in half if you are prepping for 4 servings each bag. *NOTE: if you are cooking for a family and would like leftovers you shouldn't split each recipe in half like we did, you should bag each recipe in one bag*
ENJOY!!!
Recipe 1--CHILI:
2 Lbs Ground Beef
1 can hot chili bens
2 cans tomato sauce (small)
2 cans tomato paste
1 green pepper chopped up
1 T garlic powder
2 tsp salt/pepper/sugar/red chili powder
Brown the ground beef, drain, and cool (this was the very first thing we did when we got home so it would be ready for our recipes when we needed to mix the bags). Cook on high 3-4 hours or low 6-8 hours.
Recipe 2--CHEESY GARLIC CHICKEN
2 large chicken breasts
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cheddar cheese soup
2 tsp garlic powder
2 T butter
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
Cook on high 3-4 hours or low 6-8 hours.
Recipe 3--Tater Tod Casserole
2 lbs ground beef
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1lb string beans (fresh or frozen)
1 can cream of potato soup
8 oz velveeta cheese (could also use shredded cheese)
21 oz bag of tater tots.
Cook on high 2-3 hours or on low 4-6 hours
Recipe 4--CHICKEN FAJITAS
2 large chicken breasts
2 green peppers
1 cup chicken brother
2 taco seasoning packets (or 8 T if you use the seasoning in the big container)
2 tsp red chili powder
2 tsp salt
Cook on high 3-4 hours or low 6-8 hours
Recipe 5--WHITE CHICKEN CHILI
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
4 cups chicken stock (one container)
2 cans white beans (drained)
1 can chopped green chile (we used roughly 5 frozen hatch green chiles)
4 tsp red chili powder
2 tsp salt/pepper
Cook on low 4-6 hours.
Recipe 6--LOADED BAKED POTATO SOUP
10-12 red potatoes (you could also use 5-6 russet potatoes)
1 container bacon bits (you could also use a pack of bacon, but be sure to cook it first)
2/3 c butter
2/3 c flour
3 cups chicken broth
1 c water
3 cups milk
Remainder of velveeta cheese
1 c sour cream
1 tsp salt/pepper
Cook on high 3-4 hours or low 6-8 hours.
Recipe 7--BUFFALO CHICKEN SANDWICHES
2 large chicken breasts
1 bottle of hot sauce
Cook on low 4-6 hours. Shred chicken. Serve on a bun with garnish and ranch or blue cheese.
Recipe 8-- GOLDEN CHICKEN AND NOODLES
2 Large boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 can broccoli cheese soup
1 c milk
1tsp salt/pepper
Extra Wide Egg Noodles (cooked on day of serving)
Cook for 6-8 hours on low.
Recipe 9--TEX MEX CHICKEN
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
4 T taco seasoning (or one packet)
4 T flour
1 green pepper
1 red pepper
1 can corn
1 1/2 cups salsa
Cook on high 3-4 hours or low 6-8 hours.
Shopping list:
Gallon size freezer bags
12 Chicken Breasts
4 lbs Ground Beef
1 container sour cream
milk
1 box of unsalted butter
bacon bits
1 box chicken stock
1 box chicken broth
2 cans tomato sauce
2 cans tomato paste
1 can hot chili beans
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 can cheddar cheese soup
2 cans white beans
1 can cream of potato soup
1 can broccoli cheese soup
1 can corn
1 bag extra wide egg noodles
1 box of velveeta (the larger box)
1 bottle hot sauce
3 packets of taco seasoning
1 bag frozen tater tots
1 lb string beans
4 green peppers
1 red pepper
Amanda! This is awesome. I need to get a stand alone freezer so I can do this too. When I get home from work I want DINNER DONE STAT not have to worry about what to make!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the ideas!