Batch Cooking, Take One...

I realized not too long ago that staying ahead of my kids when it comes to meals is key.  Dinner is especially important.  My kids, like most, hit the witching hour about the same time that I need to get dinner started.  They need my full attention and I can't give it when I'm stirring a pot or frying up bacon.  I've been making dinners during nap time for a while, and this worked really well when all of the boys napped.  Now, with Stone doing his school work during the little boys' naptime, I needed a way to still have dinner ready to go without taking up nap time.  I needed a plan.

I've followed Life As Mom for a while and have drooled over her Freezer Cooking section.  She cooks a month's worth of meals over the span of two days.  Amazing!  I want to do that, but I'm a bit overwhelmed, so I thought I'd start small... for the next few months, Heath's in charge of the boys on Sunday afternoons after church until dinner time.  I'll use that time to cook as much as I can for the week and we'll see how it goes.  If it works, we'll continue, if not, we'll come up with something else.  If this week was any indication, we'll be sticking to the plan!

 

After about five hours in the kitchen, my freezer is stocked and my meals are planned out for the week.  I made several things in double, so that we could eat them later into this month or next, so the work I did will extend well after this week.  If I keep this up, we can have an eat from the freezer week every so often to clear it out and I won't need to do any cooking that week.

When we first started our adoption process, I worked at our neighborhood Super Suppers in the evenings to help us save towards expenses.  I learned a lot about things that freeze well and assembly line cooking while I was there, so this has been a nice revisit to that.  A huge bonus to batch cooking is that the kitchen really only needs to be cleaned once, so you're really cutting down on time.  If I made each of these things individually, on the night that they were needed, I would guestimate it taking me closer to 15 hours between the cooking and clean-up.  That's about 10 hours saved and my family is still eating non-processed, whole made foods!

My freezer is now stocked with:

Chicken pot pie (2)

Chicken broth (I often cook chicken in batches in the crockpot to use in casserole and soup recipes.  I always freeze the stock)

Chili (2)

Pizza crust

Mashed sweet potatoes (3 cups) (I often throw a cup into my pancakes and other baked goods, so this is a big help to have on-hand)

Chicken tacos

Meatballs (3) These are made plain so that I can add different sauces

Goulash

Flax and Whole Wheat Pancake mix (3) (These are actually in the pantry, but I thought you'd be interested)

Red beans and rice (3)

Potato Leek Soup (2)

Tomato Soup (2)

Beef and Rice stuffed peppers (2)

Creamy Chicken Lasagna

Muffins (3 weeks worth, frozen in week's batches)

Easy Cheesy Chicken Casserole (2)

The ones with (#) after them are the amount of meals we can eat off of them.  For example, there are two nights worth of Easy Cheesy Chicken Casserole.  

This weeks menu is:
Monday:   Meatballs
Tuesday: Chicken Lasagna
Wednesday: Mac and Cheese - Heath and I will eat at the church, so we're just feeding the kids
Thursday: Chicken Tacos
Friday: Left-overs
Saturday: Grilled Cheese and Soup
Sunday: Stuffed peppers

It's so nice to know that everything is prepared so that I can focus on my boys.  So nice!