Freezer to Crock pot Meals

My freezer is full of meals:

(And apparently it’s hard to take pictures of the inside of a freezer)

I have tried several times in the past to prepare meals ahead of time. I have tried Once a month cooking, I have tried once a week cooking, nothing has worked for us.

So when I told Harrison, “I found a new plan for freezer meals,” his immediate response was “No.”

And I don’t blame him really. I’ve wasted a lot of time, effort, money and….well food, so I understood his skepticism.

But this was really different. Freezer to crock pot meals. That’s right, meals that you prepare ahead of time and then cook all day in the crock pot.

This thing has been doing a lot of work lately!

And it has been a HUGE SUCCESS!

The difference was due to a couple of main things:

First, the meals are REALLY easy to prepare. All I had to do was chop a couple of vegetables, maybe open a can or two, add the meat and put everything in a ziplock bag. I also could have prepared all the meals at once, but I made it easy on myself by prepping a couple at a time, so it wasn’t a huge time commitment. And I was able to do this at night after we had eaten dinner, versus having to cook dinner when I walked in the door after work.

Second, because I’m a picky eater (which is why we ended up wasting food in the past), this time I made sure to only pick recipes that I was VERY confident we would eat and enjoy. And that was easy to do since I was just choosing and preparing individual meals and not an entire month or week plan of meals.

And third, I mean who doesn’t love to stick a meal in the crock pot and have it completely ready to go when you walk in the door. Other freezer meals needed to be put in the oven (or at the very least, microwaved) right before eating. There was literally nothing for me to do when I got home from work but pull out plates.

Below are the recipes I used, although there are many others available around the web and especially on Pinterest. These each make two meals – of course depending on the number of people in your family. This worked out really well for us because some of the meals were enough for both of us to have dinner and one of us to take the leftovers for lunch. So I picked out five recipes, which made 10 meals to cook and some extra lunches, so probably 15 meals all together with very little prep.

Cilantro Lime Chicken

I also loved that none of these recipes had a “cream of something” in them, and they all included vegetables.

This was perfect for a working, pregnant wife like me, and I would definitely recommend it for anybody wanting to make meal preparation easy!

Can’t wait for our dinner tonight!