The next two weeks in menu planning will be a little different. My husband and I are preparing for a big move in only two weeks! Therefore, we started this week's menu by first pulling everything out of the freezer. We then tried to come up with as many meals using that source as we could. We certainly want to try to minimize how many frozen foods we're having to haul 14 hours away with us. (Btw, if anyone has done this, I'd love to know how in the world you kept your frozen foods frozen during a long move. Picking up replacement ice every few hours while in a big moving truck sounds like the drive will be much longer than just 14 hours. Suggestions? Thanks!)
Even if we weren't moving, utilizing what's stored in the freezer is a great way to maintain the food budget and have homemade without making everything from scratch every time it's needed. I typically don't cook or put up a meal with the sole purpose of keeping it in the freezer. Instead, I will take whatever ingredients we have leftover at the end of the week and put that in the freezer. For instance, the frozen meal components we'll be using this week include: taco filling, enchilada sauce, pizza sauce, cheese, ham and spinach calzone filling, chicken "just add noodles" soup, pesto and more. All of these are foods that I made homemade but in too large of portions to eat at one time. Utilizing the freezer stock was the predominant strategy we used this week in approaching menu planning.
Just to recap last week's menu, there were many recipes that are now on our "keeper" list. These include: chicken noodle soup, avocado egg salad sandwiches, jambalaya (definitely use sausage and not bacon), eggplant pomodoro, meatloaf, shephards pie, Greek diner salad (we just served over salad greens)
This Week's Menu:
Breakfasts
-oatmeal, muffins, eggs, cereal etc.
-oatmeal, muffins, eggs, cereal etc.
The normal breakfasts are made and a portion frozen, and again, we're trying to limit to that sort of thing right now. So, we're doing quick and simple breakfasts. We also purchased a box of cereal. To have made granola, I would've needed to restock several of my seeds and nuts, and I didn't want to have to purchase and pack more foods. haha.
Lunch
Lunch
- Pesto chicken, zipper cream peas, orzo
- Louisana fish with okra & corn (I'm using tilapia and adding tomato to the okra and corn side)
- Veggie Stew
- Spaghetti, brussels sprouts
Dinner
-{breakfast for dinner} cheddar cauliflower quiche (We didn't get to this one last week)
- Chicken enchiladas, green salad
- Ham and Spinach Calzones
-Tacos with guacamole
Snacks
-fruit (bananas, apples)
-olives, cheese slices
-yogurt
-veggies (carrots, celery)
-Snacks for upcoming trips visiting friends and family (homemade fruit and oat bars, homemade chocolate mint cookies (like Thin Mints..I hope! haha), fruit, chips/crackers etc.
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You asked about keeping things frozen for long distances. When I was a growing up our family went to Northern Minnesota on vacation every summer...15 1/2 hours away from our home in Missouri. While my mother and I would sight-see, my dad would fish. His goal every year was to take home the limit, thus supplying us with a year's worth of fish. After cleaning it, he would take the daily catch to the lady that ran the resort that we stayed at, and, after wrapping it in meal-sized portions in freezer-wrap, she would allow him to freeze it in one of the huge freezers she kept on the premises just for that purpose. At the end of vacation, Mom and Dad would wrap the pile of frozen fish in three big wool blankets. The whole pile would stay frozen til we got home and a lot of times, as we would get closer to home, it was really hot. It worked for them. It might work for you, too. Have a great move! :)
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