Cheerful Frugality Packs The Freezer
We did it!
One long day of shopping/chopping + 6 hours in the kitchen = a very full freezer
You can see the Once A Month Mom meal plan here. We prepared 15 recipes (x 4) for a cost of about $125 per family.
Is it possible to squeeze all this food in a standard refrigerator freezer? Yes!
While the experience is fresh in my mind, here are storage strategies for OAMC in a top-only freezer:
Use standardized pans. Even though I own a variety of casserole dishes, we bought 8 x 8 and loaf size pans (some foil, some metal). This enables us to stack without losing space.
Use gallon Ziploc bags. Lay flat when freezing so that the contents can be stacked on their sides like envelopes.
Use individual portions, flash frozen. The egg muffins, ham pockets, and fruit cups are all stored in bags.
If you have time, use a combination of square pans and freezer bags. Slip the frozen foods from the casserole dish into a gallon bag.
The biggest challenge in a small refrigerator freezer is air flow. I chilled all the pans first, using a cooler with ice as my cooking partner's refrigerator filled. At home, I froze the contents in 2 different shifts. The Ziploc bags I placed flat on the freezer bottom remained liquid on one side, so I stacked cookie cooling racks on the shelf to make the most of vertical space.
I may not schedule a mega-cook again soon, but now I know I can do it again without purchasing a freezer first.
That puts a lot of foil pans between my dinner table and the McDonald's drive-thru, and I'm awfully cheerful about that.
For more freezer cooking resources, visit Once A Month Mom. You can read my sweet partner-in-cooking's account here. For photos of my packed-to-the-gills freezer, swing by Like Merchant Ships later today.
7 Responses to “Cheerful Frugality Packs The Freezer”
May 11th, 2009 at 8:42 am
I am big time impressed:) This month has been so crazy that I can’t even count the number of times I’ve wished for dinner in the freezer! How did the babies cope?
May 11th, 2009 at 8:42 am
so this food isn’t just for lazy days, you aren’t going to cook (dinner anyways) for another month?
May 11th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I’m a big fan of bulk cooking, myself; as I normally just cook for one, I’m apt to make a four-person meal, put two portions in the freezer, and eat one that night. The second gets eaten sometime during the week when I don’t feel like cooking.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
If you live in a climate where the winter is cold, I’ve found that it’s easier to manage OAMC then. What I’ll do in the winter months is make extra-large batches of meals that freeze well. Once they’re in their freezer containers, I set them outside in the cold. On a 10-degree day, it doesn’t take long to freeze them if they’re spread out along my patio rail. Saves energy, and avoids the food safety risk of warming up the refrigerator or freezer. Also, it’s nice to have the extra heat from the cooking in the house when it’s cold.
May 12th, 2009 at 5:59 am
The tips are absolutely great ways to store bulk of foods in the freezer. Makes it frugal to save money, time and energy.
May 14th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I’m a big fan of bulk cooking, although the furthest I’ve ever gone is to cook a week’s worth of food, with two batches for each meal, so that in fact at the end I had two weeks of food. I’m looking forward to reading more about your process!
May 17th, 2009 at 7:50 am
I haven’t done this in a long time! Good for you Meredith! It’s great to be able to just pull out a meal from the freezer when you’re too tired to cook. Also making one extra when you’re cooking works well too. For example, if you’re making lasagna make one extra to freeze.
Manuela
Leave a Comment