It's Been a While...

I can't believe it's been so long since I made a post. I used to be so much better on posting on this... then again, somewhere between busy season at work, being married, taking care of a house, and doing all of the little things in between, I feel like I haven't had time for much recently. That is the reason for this post, in fact. In an effort to be better about prioritizing and being intentional with my time, I have supercharged my weekly meal planning. I've always been a weekly menu maker, mainly to save myself multiple trips to the store, but recently, I've been seeing all these "pins" for freezer meals, and I decided to try my hand at it. For my first effort, I decided to just dip my toes in the water of freezer meals, and instead of making like 40 meals or something crazy, I would just do like 15 meals at one time. This was a perfect weekend to try this since I have an extra day on my side and I was planning on doubling a few recipes to bring meals to my sweet friend who just had a baby. I started with planning which turned into a long grocery list and a fridge full of food, but here's all the meals I have:

1. Poppy seed chicken casserole (2 casseroles)
2. Chicken-broccoli hobos (2 batches)
3. Teriyaki skirt steak (2 meals)
4. Shredded chicken (can be used for salads or tacos - at least two meals)
5. Ground beef with filler (green peppers, celery, carrots) - I bought three pounds which will give me two batches of cowboy soup and enough for spaghetti
6. Twice baked potatoes (about 10 of them)
7. Jalapeno popper stuffed chicken

I will say I think for me, the key is really planning meals that use the same ingredients and making use of what's on sale at your grocery store so you can get the most bang for your buck. For example, I bought big stalks of celery, carrots, and green peppers because those will be used in cooking my shredded chicken, as a filler with my ground beef in spaghetti, in the buffalo chicken salad, and in the cowboy soup. I also bought large packages of chicken because I'll go ahead and cook all of it, shred it, then keep it in the freezer to pull out and add to a salad, potato, etc. In the next few days when I get all of this made I'll post the recipes. Happy MLK day!