Freezer Crock Pot Meals

I love freezer bulk cooking. I usually spend two days when doing this. One day is spent preparing a master shopping list, shopping, and doing any food prep (chopping meats and veggies). The second day is spent cooking, assembling, and freezing the meals, and then cleaning up all the dishes used. Two days worth of work usually turned into 8-10 meals stored in the freezer. Pull them out the night before to defrost and cook the next day for 30-45 minutes. 4-6 weeks worth of food that's easy to prepare at night....That's the best!

UNTIL NOW!

I stumbled upon this blog on Pinterest that talked about freezer crock pot meals. I perused the different recipes, chose what I thought Peanut my family would eat, and then waited until payday to go shopping.

Payday hit on Friday and I'm sitting here on a Sunday. I spent one hour shopping and then...... Wait for it...... 1 hour and 15 minutes assembling 8 different meals!!! I still have to clean up, but that's only a few measuring cups, measuring spoons, a cutting board, and a knife. THAT'S IT!!! I'm figuring we can get 3 or 4 meals out of each bag of food, so I spent 1 hour and 15 minutes for 24-32 meals.

I spent roughly $175 in the grocery store on items for these meals (I had a lot of the spices and food staples at home already). It would have been $210 if I hadn't lucked up and found chicken breast packages buy one, get one free at Kroger. So, paying $175 and stretching out each bag to 4 meals, each serving is $4.86. Not too shabby!

Here are the steps I took to get my meals ready (I'm sure you could have your food assembled even faster if you had help!)....

Step 1- Gather your supplies and ingredients.

Seriously....this is all you need food prep-wise. Measuring cups, measuring spoons, a cutting board, and a knife or two.

Step 2- Label gallon sized freezer bags with name of recipe and cooking instructions.

Step 3- Divide up meat into bags.

Most of the meat used. I forgot to take the picture before I opened and distributed the London Broil roast and the chuck roast. Good thing chicken was buy one, get one free this week!

Everybody is in their new homes!

 Step 4- Add ingredients common to most bags and cross of on main recipe list as you go along. After this step, I worked with two meals at a time while the rest sat in the refrigerator.

 Step 5- Step back and admire your work.

Step 6- Freeze!

All of the meals can go straight from freezer to slow cooker with no defrosting (you can defrost overnight if you want), and cooks on low 6-8 hours. Easy peasy! If you use crock pot liners, the only things you'll have to wash are the dishes you eat off of!

Below are the recipes I chose (several of them are similar, and very heavy on the chicken- I kept 4 year old Peanut in mind when I chose these).

Hawaiian Chicken

Beef Burritos

Chicken Fajitas

Dijon Chicken

Italian Chicken

Honey Pineapple Chicken

Taco Roast

Honey Chicken

Now, after assembling these meals and blogging about this process, I need to point out that I haven't actually tasted any of these yet. The blogger who posted these recipes said they are really good, and the ingredients are things that I like, so fingers crossed. I'll update this entry after we have eaten these meals. Let me know if you make any of these and how they turned out if I haven't updated yet!