Today’s the day! If you’ve been following along you’ve planned your day (or afternoon) to get some meals put ahead for your family. So here are some things to keep in mind:
1. 1. Start with a clean kitchen! Have all your pans, bowls and containers ready to go. There’s nothing worse than to get started and realize the pan you need is in the refrigerator with plastic wrap over last night’s leftovers.
2. 2.Have multiple things going at once. Are you doing dishes that required browned ground beef or sausage? Start the cooking while you start something else. Are you doing a crock pot recipe like pulled pork? Put that in right away so by the end of your cooking time it’s done. Do you need water boiling for rice or pasta? Start that. You get the idea. We want to work smarter not harder.
3. 3.Be sure and have your containers for packaging ready. Plastic freezer bags have come a long way. I use those for most things. For lasagna’s and layered things I do like to do them in Tupperware containers upside down so I can just flip them on top of my 9X13 and let it fall in. This works much better than foil pans which are hard to cover airtight and are also expensive.
For the bags I use 1 gallon freezer bags for most things and sometimes quart size for things like sloppy Joe filling or cheese to put on top before cooking. When you put these bags in the freezer, lay them flat and they will freeze 1-2 inches high. You’d be amazed at home many you can fit in your freezer (even if you don’t have a deep freeze!)
Take a permanent marker and write right on the bag the contents and the date. You may want to include brief cooking instructions as well. If you are using Tupperware containers use a freezer label. This will make it easy for you to call home and ask your husband or teen to put dinner on!
4. 4. Put anything you will need with the recipe with it. For instance if you’re making chimichunga filling you’d put that in a one quart freezer bag. I would put right with it another freezer bag with your flour tortillas. If you don’t when you go to have it you might be out of tortilla’s. Same thing with toppings. For instance, I make a ham and potato casserole which is topped with cheese and crushed corn flakes. I put both the cheese and corn flakes in sandwich bags and then together into a 1 qt. freezer bag to go right with the 1 gallon bag of ham and potatoes.
5. 5.Last tip is to make a list of everything you’ve made and have stored in the freezer. You can assign what day you’ll each which or not, that’s up to you. We just cross them off as we pull them out so we know what’s left. I leave the list on the side of the fridge. I will often make notes as well as to how we liked it or if I needed to make more next time etc…
So now your freezer is full and it’s time to RELAX! No more cooking for awhile (2 week, 30 days whatever you decided!) This is the best part. Right now you may not even be sure if this was worth it but give it a week of no time in the kitchen and you’ll be more sure it’s worth it!
So take a break. I’ll take a break to but watch in a few weeks for recipes and detailed shopping lists to give you inspiration to plan your next cooking day! | 
