A Weekend of Freezer Cooking

Last week we talked about fitness, and this week it's finances... (On Fridays we're going through the book Oola for Women: Finding Balance in an Unbalanced World on the Hearth and Caravan Facebook Page) It's funny how food fits into both of those! I spent the past two days filling up my freezer with home prepared foods to help save us money as well as keep us from making less healthy choices. The foods in the freezer aren't paleo, vegan, or even gluten free, but they are yummy, filling, and will keep our fingers from dialing the pizza place or the chicken house!

Let me just say... bulk cooking is no joke. I was exhausted by the time I was finished. I also grossly underestimated how long it would take.

That being said.. there are a hundred things to eat in our freezer and that doesn't suck!

We made:
14 mini frozen pizzas
20 buttermilk biscuits
Sausage gravy (frozen into cubes)
20 ish waffles
2 loaves banana bread
24 banana nut muffins
12 peach muffins (still looking for a good peach muffin recipe..the ones I made were mediocre)
6 breakfast burritos (sausage, scrambled eggs, cheese, jalepeno, tater tots)
9 steak and bean burritos
10 southwestern steak calzones
8 philly cheesesteak calzones
8 pepperoni pizza calzones

My top tips for bulk cooking:

--If you have kids, put them to work! My older two kids did an awesome job cooking along side me. They handled the waffles entirely on their own and my older daughter makes some MEAN banana muffins.

--Be prepared for a long day or two. Or split it up and add to the freezer over a month. Cook something new every day to add to it! I am planning to add to the freezer a little bit at a time over the month so I'm not back at square one by next month.

--Also be prepared to feel like everyone in your house is just eating up all the things you are working so hard to cook! Lol! I had to keep sticky fingers out of almost everything! (And didn't do it completely successfully...)

--Set up some rules around the frozen goodies. Are they for every day? Or emergency only? Breakfast for school days or weekends? Whatever makes it easier and best for you, set those rules up and tell your household.. or else you'll find out how many muffins a kid can eat in a 24 hour period. (All of them. A kid can eat all the muffins if left unchecked.)

--Don't make foods you won't eat. There were a ton of recipes on pinterest that I breezed past because I KNEW we wouldn't actually eat them. It sounds like a no brainer, but it's easy to forget when faced with hundreds of recipes!

Have you ever bulk cooked before? Do you keep a stash in the freezer in case of emergency? Share your tips and favorite recipes with me
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