Two weeks ago, I decided to make a lot of freezer crock pot meals ahead of time, for those days when I haven’t had the chance to plan out a meal and do the grocery shopping. There were also a few things I made ahead of time for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. I haven’t cooked all of the recipes and tried them yet, but as I do, I’ll go back and add notes to each one.
Breakfast Burritos
Recipe: Mom on TimeOut
I pretty much followed the recipe exactly, except I cut the recipe in half and used 12 large eggs instead of 12 extra large. I only made half a recipe, just in case we weren’t too thrilled with them (didn’t want to throw so much away). Half a recipe yielded me 16 burritos (medium-sized flour tortillas); one got ate before freezing. Next time, I will make more ham and bacon since we ran short on those 2 items.
Definitely a keeper though! We wrap one in a wet paper towel and microwave on high for 1:45 (from the freezer), and they are perfect! Definitely a quick, easy breakfast if I don’t have time to do anything else – and I can eat it on the go.
Honey Vanilla Parfaits
Recipe/Idea: Mom on Timeout
I got the idea from Mom on Timeout. Here’s what I did. Each jar has 2 oz of vanilla yogurt, then 10 grams of honey, 1 oz of fruit (I did strawberries in some and crushed canned pineapple in some), and then 2 more ounces of yogurt. I then measured 1 ounce of granola into the bags (which is actually a little too much).
These are good, but I’m not sure if they’re worth the fridge space. Being that I am self-employed and don’t have children, it’s probably easier just to have a tub of vanilla yogurt with some cut up fruit in the fridge and make them as I need them.
Pizza Balls
Recipe: here
I like this concept. It makes for a quick and easy lunch when I don’t have anything else, and 3 pizza balls will fill me up. However, I wasn’t fond of the buttermilk biscuit taste. Next time, I will buy 3 tubs of refrigerated pizza dough and divide each one into 10 pieces and proceed accordingly.
Chili
This was my recipe, which I will post here one day. I almost didn’t have enough room in the pot! I made this and put it individual serving freezable containers for quick lunches. However, it’s come in handy for dinner a few times since making it. Each serving portion was 2 cups, and I wound up getting 5 servings.
Freezer Meals
Top left picture: On top of the make-ahead freezer meals, I went ahead and got 2 other meals for the week marinating: grilled salmon and half a recipe of buttermilk roast chicken, 2 recipes I’ve made before.
Top right picture: In my fridge’s freezer compartment, I’ve stashed individual portions of chicken bacon subs wrapped in aluminum foil. Note: before sticking the sub in the oven, unwrap and spray the aluminum foil with cooking spray, and re-wrap. If not, the cheese will ooze out and stick to the aluminum foil. I haven’t tried these yet, but Alex said they taste a little plain. Not sure what to add to it for next time… Also pictured here are some of the breakfast burritos mentioned earlier in my post, and my individual servings of chili.
Bottom left picture: another shot of the breakfast burritos, ready for the freezer
Bottom right picture: I am finally utilizing my tall, stand-up freezer in our basement. Aside from the breakfast burritos in the middle, I have 6 recipes ready to be cooked now:
- Sweet Baby Ray’s Crockpot Chicken – I didn’t make this correctly. My kitchen outlet decided not to work on the day I’d planned to cook this, and I wound up overcooking it because I thought it was still frozen when I finally realized the crockpot wasn’t on. We wound up not eating it.
- Salsa Chicken
- Asian Pork Chops (half a recipe) – These turned out okay. Nothing special, and I could easily mix up the marinade the day before grilling these and not have to worry about freezing them.
- Easy Crockpot Mongolian Beef – I didn’t like this too much, but Alex said it was good. It tastes nothing like what you get in Chinese restaurants. Next time, I will add 1-2 tbsp of cornstarch to the mix so the sauce is thicker.
- Chicken marinating in Italian dressing – I had a pound of chicken leftover, so I mixed the correct portions of oil, vinegar, and water with a packet of Good Season’s Italian dressing mix and used it for my leftover chicken, freezing it as well. This is a quick, easy way to make chicken. I just thawed it the day of, and threw it on the grill!
- Hearty Beef Stew – I didn’t like this at all. It was so plain and bland, but Alex thought it tasted good.
I also made (but they’re not pictured) a double recipe of pineapple chicken salad and some homemade taco seasoning. Needless to say, after 2 days of preparing all of this food, I was exhausted!