Freezer Cooking: Learning Curve

Overall I still enjoy the benefits of freezer cooking. One drawback is the repeats. Next time I would love to make 30 meals in a day or two but my freezer won't hold that much. We are looking into deep freezer options to make that a possibility in the near future. My husband is very on board with this, he wants to do some meals for the next time as well! We've also talked about buying bulk amounts of meat (initial investment) to save money. So until I have the deep freezer I think I will just make more variety of meals and less amount. Rather than having 18 meals (but 9 recipes) I am going to try 18 meals with 15 recipes. I'll try to use the same base for some but changing it up. For example, if I cook up a couple pounds ground beef with Mexican/taco seasonings I can use half for tacos and half for burritos and change what veggies I add to give some variety. So still about the same amount of work but two different meals. If that makes sense.

New meals we've tried this week:

Chicken Pot Pie - Everyone liked this. I'll be doing more of these but with different veggies to change it up some.

Other things I've learned to do better next time:

• Read the day of cooking directions when you take it out to thaw or the morning you plan to cook. Otherwise it's 5:00 and you realize your pot pie needs to cook for an hour fifteen and cool another ten. That may not work with your evening plans or regular dinner time.
• Make notes of side dishes you plan for each meal on your meal list - wherever you keep it. There were a few nights I didn't think of dinner until it was time to heat up the meal and then it was too late to do a side dish. If it was noted on my list it would have been on my mind at some point during the day to start rice 20 min before or start chopping veggie at ___ o'clock.
• While you're making notes go ahead and make note of cooking time - this will save you the step of remembering to look it up & actually looking it up. Or am I the only one that really takes two steps for something like that? hmm Anyway, just make a note and all of your information is in one place.
• If free print outs you find don't work for you then create your own - or keep it simple and use a regular sheet of notepad paper listing the meal, side dish & cooking time. If you have more than one of a certain meal in the freezer also note how many you have {simple tally works great} and you can check them off as they are used.

If you start freezer cooking please let me know & share what you learn along the way!