Freezer Cooking

School starts this week. Today is my last day of freedom. I say that like I'm not at school right now getting things ready. My room is ready but that's only a small part of what it takes to get ready for a new year. Today's task is to get student binders all together and get my computers and promethean board set up. Over the weekend, I tried to get my home ready for the beginning of school. Friday I spent some time prepping food so we can eat during the craziness of school. In the past, I have just grabbed something to eat or eating cereal with the craziness of school. But now that I'm married, I'm thinking my husband would like to eat a real dinner and truthfully so would I. As teachers, we seem to forget about ourselves as soon as school starts. Saturday I spent some time cleaning so we would have a nice clean house to come home to. I also spent some time scheduling some blog posts so I don't forget about my blog.
Anyway, it took me about an hour or so to prep 4 meals and 2 servings of Italian flavored hamburger meat and clean up the mess. So I essentially have 6 meals in the freezer ready to be put in the crockpot in the morning and eaten when I get home. I had seen some pins on pinterest about the idea of freezer cooking. I did a search and then followed the pins to some great blogs. Ring around the Rosies was the blog I found the best information from. Here is the link to her first post on freezer cooking. She has about 4 different posts with a variety of recipes including some toddler friendly ones. I chose 4 of her recipes that I thought sounded good and went from freezer to crockpot. Her recipes make 2 meals but I halved them. I wanted to make sure I liked the recipe before making 2 of them.

• Teriayaki Chicken(I changed it to sweet and sour chicken)
• Sausage and Peppers
• Newleywed Beef Tips
• Cilantro Lime Chicken
• Italian Ground beef

I made a list of the ingredients I would need and got them from the store.

Then I wrote the name of the recipe and directions for the crockpot on a freezer baggie.

Then I chopped all my veggies. I basically followed the recipes she had on her website. On the Teriayaki Chicken, I added red bell pepper and used my homemade sweet and sour recipe as opposed to store bought Teriayki sauce. The sweet and sour recipe is really easy.
Here are the ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of pineapple juice (I buy a 6 pack of the small cans of pineapple juice and use 1 can.)
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/4 cup of white vinegar
• 1/4 cup of soy sauce
• 1 tbsp cornstarch mixed with water. 

Mix these things in a saucepan and cook over medium high heat. It will bubble and thicken and you know it's done. I use this with stirfried veggies and rice. I also put it on a pork tenderloin and cook it in the oven. It's yummy.
I added the meat last to the baggies and then they were ready to go.

The hamburger meat I used about 2 and half pounds of ground meat with onion and carrots. I cooked it up and then split it between 2 baggies. It's ready for spaghetti or lasagna. Anyway, I'm excited to have some dinners ready to go as the busyness of school is about to hit. My goal is to try to do this twice a month. Hopefully I'll adapt some of my own recipes to crockpot freezer meals. I'd love to hear how you prepare for the upcoming school year. I'm linking up with Inside this Book with her Sunday Suppers linky party. Be sure to link up some of your easy recipes.

Be sure to link up with your Sunday Suppers.
Last thing I want to leave you with is a picture of my sweet niece Sophie. She turned 2 on Friday the 10th. I missed my Monday with Sophie this week big time.