Freezing Food Before Baby

I did this before my last son was born and it was so helpful. Here are some more ideas.

- Meats in marinades or marinades by themselves - great for grilling
- Filling for quesadillas (can be as simple as chicken, cheese and salsa or green chilies)
- Dry mixes for muffins, waffles, pancakes, brownies, etc. - great for quick breakfasts or a special treat
- French Toast sticks - Just found an awesome recipe to make french toast sticks that go from freezer to oven and bake in 20 minutes.
- Single servings of anything you'll enjoy for lunch

A great resource for freezer cooking is onceamonthmom.com. She does her freezer cooking once a month, so her recipes are often quadrupled but the menus are set up in excel and easy to configure for one batch or two. And I would suggest doing the smaller version (8x8) unless you love leftovers for days on end. I find whenever I freeze a larger (9x13) we end up throwing some of it away. But we have a small family 2 adults, 1 preschooler and 1 toddler.

Hope this helps and good luck to you!

Don't just freeze amily-dinner-type stuff; make sure you freeze some things in single-portion sizes, too. Makes things easier for yourself when you're the only adult having lunch and you just can't handle another sandwich. Quart-size freezer bags are great for that - so easy, I use it for most of the things I freeze - just drop it in a bowl of warm water to thaw, or tear off the bag and drop the whole frozen chunk in a saucepan to heat. Plus, with single portions, you can thaw food for as many or few people as you like.

Mostly, we precook and freeze the time-consuming parts of other recipes. We freeze homemade spaghetti sauce by the cupful - my recipe always leaves us with just about one cup of leftovers! Or boil and shred chicken and freeze it in bags by the handful. A couple of frozen portions heated in half a jar of bbq sauce makes a great start to sandwiches; 1 portion thawed but still cold gets added to a salad; stick it in the saucepan with a little water and powdered taco seasoning and you've got tacos for dinner in just a few minutes. Bonus if you freeze a few cups of broth, too, after you've boiled the chicken: add two bags to boiling chicken broth with a little extra water, add noodles or rice and your favorite veggies, and you've got a super quick homemade chicken soup. (Another winter idea, true, but thought it might at least serve as inspiration!)

Don't go too crazy freezing foods... b/c they won't "keep" forever! Just experience speaking, but pork doesn't freeze well- tends to dry out. When my son was born, my mother made "extras" of everything and froze them in the fridge "by items" and I didn't have to cook for 2 months! She cooked a bunch of chicken breasts, meatloaf, pulled pork, veggies, breads, etc so that we could have different combos throughout those first few months.

- Stuffed shells
- Pulled pork (already baked, sauced and pulled)
- Grilled chicken breast (can be used in just about anything!)
- Corn break (great with pulled pork or chili)
- Muffins and breakfast "breads"
- Bacon (cooked in large batches in the oven and frozen) for BLT's, crumbled on salads
- Sheppard's pie (has to defrost overnight OR don't put the potatoes on until you are ready to warm it)

I always per-made chicken 'casserole" cut up cooked chicken, a few cans cream of chicken/celery, add some mixed veggies or broccoli. Then top w/ stuffing, or pie crust. Also did a chicken ziti, cut up peppers(green,red,yellow) and use olive oil, a little butter, and parm, cheese as the "sauce". Beef and brocolli to be served w/ rice/ Lots of store have the seasoning packets, and it freezes well

Hmmm, maybe you could grill chicken breasts, cut it into strips and freeze it so that it's ready for you to toss on salads. That way, you could just buy a Caesar salad mix, add chicken, and toss it for a quick and light meal. You could also do chicken enchiladas. Also, sloppy joe filling using ground turkey for a lighter fill.

Kudos to you on being such a planner! You go girl!

I did that and this is my favorite thing I made. There are lots of other yummy recipes on her website too. :)

http://mealplanningmommies.blogspot.com/2009/03/freezer-w...

Oh, and be careful if you're breastfeeding to not only make tomato based dishes as lots of babies have sensitivities to tomatoes and other acidic foods.

Spagetti sauce in meal-size bags. Can be used for stuffed peppers, pizza, any kind of pasta, a base for chili, or a dip for bruschetta or breadsticks.