Getting Started

A lot of folks are intrigued by the idea of a freezer full of meals and the ability to pull something out for dinner with a minimal of preparation work and clean up. At the same time, many of these same people are intimidated by the thought of preparing many meals all at one time.

After all if you are stressed out preparing tonight's meal, how much more stressed will you be to prepare 30 meals all at once?

The first key to success is to know your supplies, collect your recipes and then do your shopping. All before you start cooking the first meal.

Step 1: Inventory your freezer. Scary thought, after all what might be lurking in the dark corners. A casserole that you made two of 6 months ago and the realized that your family hated the first one. A package of some unknown cut of beef that you bought on sale and then had no idea how to cook. A box of popsicles with one half melted and refrozen popsicle left. And other unknown items.

Rule #1: If you don't know what it is, toss it. If your family won't eat it, toss it.

If you have many bags of frozen veggies with less than one serving in each, make soup. Or toss them.

Now make a list of what is left in the freezer. And plan your first cooking session around that list.

For example, I cleaned out my freezer 2 weeks ago and found a 6 pound package of ground beef. I bought it on sale and was going to cook that weekend and both of my children were sick so the ground beef was popped in the freezer and promptly forgotten. My solution, I browned the entire package with onion and garlic and then divided into 6 bags and refroze. This gives me a quick start for spaghetti sauce, chili, tacos, sloppy joes or other meals.

Step 2: Collect your recipes. If possible use the meats or other ingredients you found in your freezer. My rule is no more than one new recipe per session. I've found new family favorites in new recipes and found others that we managed to eat once and threw away the leftovers. So if I limit myself to only one new recipe, I know that my family will like all the others.

For a mini-session I'll decide which meat I'll focus on and then select my recipes. If I'm going to do a ground beef mini-session, I'll select 5-6 recipes because my local stores sell ground beef in either 5 or 6 pound packages (depending on the store).

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