Soooo last week happened.  We try to stay politically neutral here on CTWM, so all I’ll say is that I have been eating all my feelings.  Thank goodness for the stress-saving deliciousness of meal prep!  (And that. Is how. You pivot.)

For the third and final installment of my meal prep series, I had originally planned on sharing general tips and tricks and answering some of the many questions I have gotten over the past few weeks.  The main concern my fellow moms seem to have is how to fit all this into a busy schedule.  I will say that I have a bit of an advantage, as I am not spending my entire weekend in a hockey rink or on a soccer field.  But, like all of us, I am busy, and all it takes is a birthday party or an unfinished work report to throw off my entire weekend.

As it turns out, my tips and tricks all seem to come back to one thing… my secret weapon… my freezer.

I have to be honest – until recently, the freezer had a negative connotation for me.  I associated frozen food with either tasteless, freezer-burnt nastiness or salty, cheesy, delicious junk food.  Neither of which I want to be feeding my family with any regularity.  But after reading so much on the internet about what a life saver frozen food can be, I decided to give it another chance.  The idea of having a meal ready for me at any time was just too enticing.

So there are a few different methods I have tried.  One is the freeze-as-you-go method, which basically just entails storing and freezing any leftovers from the week.  For example, bean burritos are one of my favorite things to make on a weeknight, so I’ll double the batch and freeze all the extras.  Or even if I make a soup and end up with an extra portion or two, I’ll put that aside to freeze.  It’s a truly awesome feeling when you have one of those WE HAVE NOTHING TO EAT moments and finding a serving of something delicious.

The other method that I have tried is what I will refer to as the freezer bonanza method.  Instead of doing a little extra every time you cook, you set aside a few hours JUST to make a bunch of freezer meals.  Recently I was surfing the web looking for slow cooker recipes, and I found this AMAZING AND MAGICAL website that gives you ten slow cooker meals that you assemble ahead of time and store in the freezer.  They even provide you with a grocery shopping list!  On the morning you are ready to make one of the meals, you literally just take it out of the freezer and dump it into the slow cooker.  Did you know this is a thing?  Seriously, look it up on Pinterest.  I am so ashamed of myself for missing out on this for so long.

Here’s the website where I found the slow cooker freezer meals.  We have had many of them already, and they are really good!

Here is a resource that talks about good foods for freezing.

Here is a site with some general food freezing tips.