Tasty Tuesday

Today let's talk convenience.  We're all busy and we don't have a lot of time to make dinner each night.  But with a little prep work, for 1-2 hours 1 day a week, you can have your meals taken care of and you control what your family is eating, rather than relying on fast food.

Here are some basics for doing Freezer Meals...

1)Make a list of recipes. Below are Crock Pot recipes
2) Then, make an ingredient list and go shopping (don’t forget your freezer bags).
3)To start, gather all of the ingredients you need
4) Then, chop all of the veggies first. Dice all of your onions, carrots, peppers, and mince your garlic.
5) Label your bags with the directions and
6) THEN add your meats (I trimmed my chicken breasts and cut in half to have a total of 4 pieces of chicken strips per bag).
7) Add your veggies.
8)Add your other ingredients.
9) Let out air, seal bag, and lay flat!
10) Freeze & Rejoice!
Pull the bags out of the freezer the night before you want to use them so they’re thawed when they go in the crock pot! And again, rejoice that you don’t have another huge mess to clean up!
Each recipe will give you TWO gallon size bags. Each bag is enough to feed a family of 3 (two adults and a child) at least one dinner, and at least two lunches, but possibly more.

Here are a couple of recipes to try...if you have any good ones, send them my way!!  I'll add more to this list as the winter months continue on!
Teriyaki Chicken


Ingredients:
-Medium to Large bag of carrots
-Red Onion cut into large chunks
-2 large cans of pineapple (undrained)
-4 garlic cloves
-4 chicken breasts
-1 cup Teriyaki sauce
Split between 2 bags, seal, mix, lay flat and freeze

Directions for Bags:
Add additional 1/4 cup sauce to crock pot.  Cook on low 6-7 hours.  Serve with brown rice

Sausage & Peppers
-6 Italian sausages (you can use chicken sausage too!)
-2 green peppers
-1 red pepper
-1 large onion
-4 cloves garlic, minced
-2 cans Italian diced tomatoes
-2 TBS Italian seasoning

Split between 2 bags, seal, mix, lay flat and freeze

Directions for Bags:
Add drizzle of olive oil, cook on low 6 hours, serve over hot whole wheat noodles or fresh french bread with a little mozzarella cheese