I have a few friends that have started getting together  once a month  and do a little freezer cooking. Some of us are stay at home moms and some are  working moms. Our goal at this point is not to be cooking most of our month’s meals in one day like some people do but we do want to have a few fast easy meals for the days we don’t have much time or creativity. We meet on Friday nights and don’t start till around 6 so we aim to be done by 9, and at this point our goal is to only spend $50 a month each (this month’s menu was $43 a person). We meals to feed at least 4, we all have small families and small children.

We have the cooking night at my house and since I don’t work outside of the home (other than a few hours a week for my husband, so I do all the prep work). Before the actual cooking night here is a list of things I do.

Everyone brings something from this list to keep cost down: olive oil, freezer bags, foil, butter, salt, pepper, garlic.

• Week before
  • Get final head count on who is coming and if anyone has any requests.
• Week of
  • Make menu
  • Make grocery lists
  • Do grocery shopping
    • I usually go to Sam’s Club, Aldi, and Kroger
• Day before
  • Begin prep work (thawing meat, soak beans etc)
• Day of
  • Shred cheese
  • Make pizza dough
  • Cook hamburger, sausage, bacon
  • Cook beans
  • Pull out any special tools, pans, etc that will need to be pulled out.

This month we made the following recipes.

• Quesadillas — I cooked a roast Like this (prior to cooking night) and we did some cheese for the kids.
• Dirty Rice (rice and beans cooked prior to cooking night)
• Sausage and Cheese Waffles (sausage cooked prior to cooking night)
• House Seasoning in the pint jars in the picture above and also had some in zipper bags.
• Salsa Chicken — this was a repeat from month one that was requested again (all uncooked ingredients placed in a freezer bag, can be cooked in crock pot or in oven).
• Freezer Pizzas  (meat cooked and have dough rising before evening,  make and frozen whole) this was also a repeat from month 1 but since we had sausage, cheese, and hamburger already it made for a cheap extra meal, we each made 2 large (or more smaller ones).
• Garlic Basil Chicken — Prior to cooking night I cut chicken breast into strips, then we place all  ingredients in a freezer bag, to cook needs to be thawed then grilled, baked, or cooked in a pan on the stove.
• Meatloaf Patties — made into hamburger patties and cooked on roasting pans and placed in freezer bags once cooled. to heat thaw and microwave or just warm up in the oven.
• Hash brown Cakes — this was a new recipe and I enjoyed but it took a while to cook them.

Here you can check our our first month’s cooking night!

• Month 1