freezing fanatic

So, let's take a moment for me to be completely honest here. I rarely ever cook for this adorable little family of mine anymore. It's a shame because I actually really enjoy cooking and my two great guys deserve some home cooked goodness more than just once a week (and that's on a good week). And let's not underestimate the amount of money one can spend when eating out 5 or 6 nights a week...it's a bummer. Our life is just so hectic and our schedules are so unpredictable (ie. my husband came home from work this morning at 7 am...after starting work YESTERDAY morning at 7am). I've been feeling really convicted (and incredibly guilty, if we're being completely honest here) about the money we've spent on eating out and the fact that I cannot control the ingredients/quality of the ingredients that I'm feeding my growing boy and super hardworking husband.

So I've searched for solutions to help get healthy meals on this table of ours. And I pretty much hit the jackpot. This website has a menu plan of meals that can all be prepared in one day and frozen. I did the January menu and have loved it so far. There are a few things I wouldn't make again (aka...fritters of any kind. Too much work and I don't really think they freeze well.) but the majority of the recipes are great. My mother-in-law and I cooked together one day (it took about 7 hours total) and made the gluten/dairy free menu. She can't have gluten and we don't do dairy...so the gluten and dairy free menu was perfect for us. win win. And while it's a long day in the kitchen to prepare the meals, it literally makes up for it in a big way when you can get a meal of balsamic chicken and roasted vegetables on the table by simply thawing, baking and serving. Amazing. We each ended up with about 30 pre-prepared meals. Oh and...we only spent about $100 each. It'd probably be less than that if we didn't have to buy some specialty flours.
This is our garage freezer:
our inside one is packed to the brim, I'd show a picture of it but it's SO full and unorganized it's kind of embarassing.

Anyway, after our day of meal prep, I was still in the freezing mood so I made another batch of breakfast burritos, this recipe I found on the same meal prep website (but subbed the marinara sauce for a sloppy joe recipe from my Deceptively Delicious cookbook so we get an extra serving of veggies with our lunch) AND made about 12 servings of this yummy cabbage soup:


So basically, I'm a pretty big fan of my freezers these days and my boys are loving having home cooked meals again. Life is good.