Freezer Meals

I've lately gotten into the craze of making freezer meals.  This is a great way to stretch your dollar and to save time!  This way you will have meals on hand for those days you just don't feel like making dinner, saving you money by not eating out.

There are different ways to go about this:

1. When you make a meal, double it and freeze the extra.  This is by far the easiest, requiring little extra effort.
2. Join or form a freezer dinner group exchange.  Each person makes one meal for however many families are in the group and you exchange.  Nice for new recipes.
3. Have a big cooking day about one day a month, preparing several meals at once.  This works well when you have certain meal themes, such as chicken recipes.  You can stock up on chicken when it's on sale and then prepare several dishes at once.  This also saves money by consolidating cooking your chicken all at the same time, rather than on each day you are having chicken.

Some tips: 

• Freeze most meals in Ziploc freezer bags.  By laying them flat on a cookie sheet in the freezer, you can stack them easily, conserving space.
• Buy extra casserole dishes at garage sales, thrift stores, etc. so all your casserole dishes won't be tied up in the freezer.
• Use adhesive labels to attach to each dish, listing contents, date made, and directions for reheating.
• Keep a paper near the freezer to list the available meals and their dates.  Be sure to cross the meal off once you use it.

Thanks to all my friends who have taught me how to do freezer meals!!