I wanted to get several crock pot freezer meals prepared before the baby arrived so even when I'm out of commission for a while or just too tired to fix anything we will have well balanced healthy meal options instead of Chicken Express or cereal! Sara had gotten a new crockpot for Christmas and I know she gets home late from work sometimes so I figured she'd like to do it too! Together we made over 120 meals in about 4 or 5 hours including grocery shopping!!
I'll include the meals I did at the bottom of the blog if anyone wants some good ideas.
After getting home from HEB we organized our groceries and starting cooking the meat and veggies so they would have time to cool before bagging.
Some of my goodies!
Part of Sara's stash!
Pounds of ground meat (fortunately for me I had just ground about 26 pounds of venison and had it in the freezer so that helped my cost factor) and veggies!
We labeled what freezer bags we needed, both with the name of the recipe and cooking instructions. If Gunnar is the one who ends up getting any of these ready he would have no clue! HA!
We chopped A LOT of veggies!!
We ran out of counter space so we had to let some of them cool in the spare bedroom on the floor!
Pork Roast (I think…this was Sara's) YUM!
Sara made some kind of italian sausage recipe with celery and I don't remember what else but it looked GOOD! I'm going to have to try that one next time!
Starting the bagging process. I did four different recipes each three times totaling twelve meal bags. Two chicken recipes and two ground meat recipes so I bagged all the ground meat recipes at the same time and all the chicken recipes at the same time.
All done and ready for the freezer. We both double bagged the meals. Not sure if that is necessary or not but we did it anyway.
We only spilled one can of enchilada sauce, broke one plate, spilled a little chili into the dish water, and dirtied 138 dishes!! But over all it was very worth it (I hope)! Together we made 20 bags, totaling over 120 meals. We figured that we could eat each meal at least three times making each bag at least 6 meals multiplied by 20 and you have 120! It'll probably be more than that because one of Sara's recipes was A LOT and she will probably get 8 or 10 meals out of those bags. I think I figured it out to be $1.54 per meal for my meals and that was with buying organic produce and chicken (it did help that I already had my own ground meat). That also included buying several spices I was out of that I normally wouldn't have counted into the total price. I'm not sure what Sara's ended up being per meal or if we even figured it out.
The recipes I used were:
1-2 lbs. ground meat - browned with garlic salt, onion powder, salt, and pepper
2 cans diced tomatoes
2 cans pinto beans (sometimes I use ranch style beans instead)
1 onion - chopped and sautéed with garlic salt, onion pepper, salt, and pepper
1 green bell pepper - chopped and sautéed with garlic salt, onion powder, salt, and pepper
1-2 cloves of garlic - smashed
1-2 tablespoons chili powder
Cook on low 3-8 hours. May need to add water and/or chili powder. This chili is very simple and that's why I like it. No nonsense, easy to throw together, and great on the taste buds! (I never put in enough chili powder and have to add more at the end. I always think "THIS time I'll put enough!" Then it looks like I put way too much so I stop then have to add more at the end because actually it wasn't enough haha)
1-2 lbs. ground meat - browned with garlic salt, onion powder, salt, and pepper
1 small onion - chopped and sautéed with garlic salt, onion powder, salt, and pepper
1 green bell pepper - chopped and sautéed with garlic salt, onion powder, salt, and pepper
1 can black beans - drained and rinsed
1 can corn - drained
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can chicken broth
1 packet taco seasoning
1 packet ranch
Cook on low 3-8 hours. Sautéing the veggies is not necessary but I think it adds more flavor and makes the whole dish tastier.
- Cream Cheese Chicken Chili (say that 5 times fast!)
2 chicken breasts - still frozen
1 can rotel tomatoes
1 can corn kernels - do not drain
1 can black beans - drained and rinsed
1 pkg. Ranch dressing mix
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 8-oz pkg. cream cheese
Cook on low 6-8 hours until chicken is done. Shred chicken before serving. Can add water or chicken broth if you need more liquid. I sometimes add chopped and sautéed onion and peppers too. Serve with cilantro, avocado, chips and salsa or whatever else suits your fancy ;)
Here's the link to the
recipe. I found it on pinterest and have made it several times! Simple and yummy!
One more thing to note is that I make and use my own chicken broth so that adds to the health and flavor of the recipes and is actually more cost effective, even when I use organic chicken, because I get the broth plus the chicken.
