Crock Pot Cold Day!

So school was canceled again this week.  I spent Monday pretty much snuggling Bennett, and then Missy and I had the idea to make some freezer crockpot meals on Tuesday.  Some of my friends have had crockpot parties, where you go and someone walks you through making some meals to freeze.  It always sounds great, but I've never gone because it's a little expensive.  So we decided to try it ourselves!

On Monday afternoon Missy came over and we scoured the internet for tasty and easy crockpot freezer meals.  We decided on six, based on sounding yummy, variety of meats, and ease of ingredients (mostly spices/sauce ingredients that one of us owned already).  We decided to do pork carnitas, beef stroganoff, chicken tortilla soup, honey bourbon chicken, chicken teriyaki, and sausage and beans.  We made a grocery list and bundled up Bennett and went to the grocery store.  Our total grocery bill each was about $65.  Our downfall was that we planned our meals based on ease/taste, but didn't take into account what was on sale at the grocery store.  Luckily, chicken was totally on sale, pork roast and sausage were a little bit on sale, and the beef was really the only thing that we didn't get a great deal on.  Next time we would take meat sales into account when planning!

So then on Tuesday, Missy came over just as I was putting Bennett down for his morning nap.  We knew we probably wouldn't get everything finished during his nap, but we hoped to get a good chunk. It ended up taking us from about 9:15-12:15 to prep and package all the meals, including kitchen clean up and dishes.  Bennett slept until about 10:45, so we had a rough hour or so of keeping him happy (translation: LOTS of toys, puffs, and utensils all over the kitchen floor).  One thing that cost us some time was that somehow we'd forgotten to buy teriyaki sauce and ended up having to make our own.  It turned out delicious but took about 20 minutes.

We each ended up with 11 crockpot meals to freeze (so approximately $6 per meal)!  We doubled every recipe to account for two of us, then halved each into our bags so we'd each get 2 of each meal - this means we probably won't have many leftovers for lunch the day after eating a meal, but also less waste, because a lot of times Brad and I can't eat all of our leftovers and end up throwing some away after a few days...For a family of 3 or 4, you probably would want to freeze the entire amount instead of halving them.

Anyway, it was hard work, but fun, and hopefully I'll be thankful to have meals on those nights when I'm exhausted or busy at work.  I'll update with how each one turns out after we eat them!