This post does not contain any frozen meal recipes for the crock pot! I just wanted to type up our experience with shopping and creating the meals. Once I cook the frozen meals, I’ll type up what I think and the recipe along with it!

I did a lot of searching on recipes. I’m surprised at how many recipes out there are duplicated! Hopefully I picked good ones! I decided to go with 5 recipes and doubled the recipes to make 10 meals. The ones I picked were: Lasanga Soup, Garden Soup (veggies with ground beef), Teriyaki Chicken, Beef Roast, Chicken with Verde Salsa.

I spent about $82 on food for the meals. This doesn’t include the zip lock bags. This makes it a little over $8 for each meal. I guess it’s not that bad? I got all food products from Aldi. I could have lessened how much I spent if I had shopped discounted meats. I have to admit I don’t look for meat on sale because there usually is none. When I lived in the city I remember getting roasts (as an example) for cheap at Food Lion but in the country I have never seen a roast discounted or on sale. 😬 It’s very rare!

I also had bought Teriyaki sauce that I didn’t need, because I had enough ingredients to make the sauce. I think this could have been avoided if I had written the ingredients on a list. Lesson learned!

I bought a lot of chicken broth and I’m wondering if I could cut that back. When cooking meats, the meat releases juices. However, since I’m experimenting I’m going to follow the recipes! I do plan to do perpetual broth in the future. This broth is cooked on the stove top for a whole week or longer. You can take out broth as you need it and replenish with new water.

Since I didn’t have too many recipes, I printed them out, taking them with me. Next time I will be writing the ingredients down on a list to make gathering the items quicker at the store.

When it came time to make the meals, I got out how many ziplock bags I needed, labeled them, and opened them on the counter. Then we spent several minutes gathering up the items needed for the recipes. I think next time we will get more organized on having the items grouped together when bringing them in from the car.

Jacob and I spent about 2 hours prepping the meals, filling the ziplock bags.

We had a mishap while filling the bags. I mixed ingredients, making a sauce, poured it into a bag. The bag flopped over, getting sauce EVERYWHERE. It splattered on the floor, cabinet, chairs, etc. Just everywhere!! 😱 Next time, I will make sure the bags are not near the edge of the counter.

After I packed the meals I would wrote notes on them if something was needed on the day of cooking (like broth) so it would help me to remember to add it.

Add noodle is written on there . Yeah, yeah. My hand writing is awful!

I pressed the air out of the meals, folded the top of the bag over, and placed them into the freezer.

I have started cooking these meals so I will write up another post on them with the recipe, including what I think of it. 🤐

Summary of what I have learned:

  • write down the ingredients on a list
  • organize items so they are easier to find
  • do not have ziplock bag close to the edge of the counter

Thank you for reading! I can’t wait to share all the recipes!