Hey everyone, hope your having a great start to your week. We had a busy weekend of attending the Southern Christmas Show with my girls and this morning is dragging just a tad:) Last week we did our once a month freezer cooking. I have decided to never go back to regular food making ways.This is so much easier for our family. I love the ease of just pulling out the breakfast, lunch, and dinner that we need the night before and its all finished. No guessing what to eat, and searching for the ingredients, it is finished and done! A great time saver for a mom with a lot of mouths to feed! Plus it saves me a lot of money$$$$$ Time and money are two important things to have a lot of when you have lots of little ones to feed!
You can watch the video here, or scroll down to see what we made.
This month we made the following:
Breakfast
Bagel–cream cheese-salami (to have once per week 3 weeks)
Bagel/egg/bacon sandwiches–(to have once per week 4 weeks)
English muffin/ham/egg-(to have once per week 4 weeks)
French toast--(to have once per week 4 weeks)
Breakfast burritos (to have once per week 4 weeks)
Oatmeal-steel cut oats make with frozen diced apples, brown sugar, maple flavoring (once per week 4 weeks)
banana-chocolate–waffles or pancakes to make once bananas are ready (once per week 4 weeks)
make pumpkin muffins when needed
yogurt smoothies–(have three times per week for 4 weeks)
toad in a hole –when needed
one breakfast casserole—to save for special morning
Lunch
peanut butter sandwiches once per week. I labeled them because two of the children like peanut butter and jelly, once likes peanut butter and honey, and one likes just peanut butter. I made 30 of these sandwiches (2 for Autumn, 2 for Jentzen, 1 for Madelyn, and 1 for Stephen. The other three children at home would have leftovers that day or make something on a tortilla.
Grill cheese sandwiches–we made 40 of these. Enough to have them once a week for the month.
I also rolled up some chicken/bacon/ranch mixture into tortillas and will either bake them or just serve them cold depending upon whether we will be home or not. Enough to do once per week.
I then used up some lunchmeat and and made tortilla/lunchmeat/cheese wraps. Froze those and we will have those once a week as well.
The lunch that we will make once a week will be: Mexican grill cheese, and lentil and rice casserole.
I have canned chicken on hand and would make some chicken salad on crackers or tortillas if we need it. Usually we have plenty of leftovers to have if we need a fill in.
This month I made a couple of bags of soup. This will be good to heat up on the weekends when everyone is home and we need something quick when people eat at different times.
I made the soup condensed—which means I didn’t add that much liquid to it and I will put it in the crockpot and add more water or milk when we are going to eat it.
I made a bag of potato soup, sausage potato soup, and 2 garlicky chicken soup (left out the noodles but I wrote on the bag of noodles in the pantry that they were to be used for soup)
Dinners
3 pans of million dollar casserole
2 chicken parmesan–over spaghetti
1 pinto beans/taco meat on flattened biscuits
1 philly cheesesteak sloppy joe
2 bags of chinese lo mein (noodles cook separately)
2 fried rice–I used leftover shredded beef and bacon for my meat
1 shish kabobs–chicken and beef
1 chicken cordon bleu--this month I layered it in the pan instead of rolling up the chicken
2 chicken broccoli cheesy rice casserole
I also purchased a whole chicken and we will bake that and make cheesy rice with it.
I will also do hamburger beef stroganoff . I just labeled any ingredients that I needed that would be in the pantry so they don’t get eaten:)
We will also do Thanksgiving. I purchased a turkey and a ham. We will do all the sides that go with it including: mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, corn, pear jello, baked beans, macaroni salad, angel eggs, sweet potatoes, mac/cheese, and rolls. Plus desserts–pumpkin pie, apple pie, chocolate pie and I bought materials to make harvest snack mix. I bought materials to make pink party punch to drink as well.
I didn’t plan on much baking this month because I knew we would have plenty of treats. We have already made some popcorn balls. Our homeschool group made some along with cards and gave them to our community workers as a thank you. So the kids and I made extras for home. I also make up a big batch of homemade hot cocoa mix to sip on while we have cool nights. I purchased a big box of bananas and the children snack on that all day. I also was able to buy two bushels of apples!!! I live in apple country and have not been able to find them inexpensively–well I did the other night by accident. So I bought two bushels and put them in the refrigerator. We eat those for snacks.
I also purchased some canned diced tomatoes and while I was chopping up ingredients I made little bags of pureed onions, green pepper, and garlic. This will make homemade salsa for a snack. I got bags of tortilla chips at a discount store this month so it will work.
I will also make Tammy’s bean dip for a snack to use the chips with.
I have plenty of garbanzo beans on hand and will do homemade hummus too.
I also have bags of carrots and will slice those up to munch on. Along with celery and peanut butter.
For myself I made more oriental chicken salad to eat on lettuce leaves…my favorite. I will also do some lara choco balls to eat when I don’t have time.
Here is a printable of what we made
I usually budget $1000 for food and then $200 for household supplies. Last month I spent $800 in food and $200 for supplies, this month I spent $870 in food and $200 in supplies. The reason being a tad more was because of Thanksgiving. The turkey and ham were $50 plus all the ingredients to make extra. I will have to make one run to the store to get more: milk, box of rolls from Sams, sour cream, elbow macaroni–I forgot a box, 4 canned biscuits because I added flatbread tacos to our list, and cucumbers for our macaroni salad. Everything else should last us well for the month. I figured another $20 and we will be all set.
There will be plenty of meals for the month and then some. I made over 35 dinner meals and I have plenty of breakfast and lunch meals as well. We will eat good this month with tasty meals. Plus we didn’t spend as much as I normally would—not bad for feeding 11 people all month long.
If meals stress you out, consider doing this once per month—you will save money plus have lots of extra time……….hmmmmm what to do with extra time:) Be blessed and have a wonderful day!
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