Freezer Friday ~ Freezer Meals

I've been wanting to try making freezer meals.  You know, where you spend your whole weekend making meals and putting them in your freezer so that you don't have to cook during the week?  But I can't see myself spending a whole weekend in the kitchen doing that.  I do spend quite a bit of time in the kitchen on Sundays, making things out of pumpkin this time of year, but I can't imagine spending two days with my hands covered in chicken.  But I love the idea of having main dishes in the freezer, ready to take out the night before to thaw, and then throw in the crockpot, on the grill or in the oven.  In preparation, I bought two cookbooks ~

Don't Panic, Dinner is in the Freezer and Fix, Freeze, Feast

Both books have good looking recipes.  Neither book have pictures, which I think every cookbook should have.  Fix, Freeze, Feast's recipes are based on buying meat at warehouse stores (Sams, Costco, BJ), but I didn't have any trouble adapting for the amount of meat I had.

This week Publix had pork spareribs and pork chops on sale, and even better Albertsons had a B1G2 free coupon for pork chops to pair with the pork chop sale!  So yesterday I set out to do a modified version of a Super Freezer Cooking Weekend.  I had one hour between dropping Natalie off at school and needing to leave for a playdate.  Yes, ONE hour (plus a little change).  I had 4 pounds of pork spareribs and 6 pounds of pork chops.  I made six main dishes in one hour, and had everything put away except one skillet that needed to be hand washed.  I made two of each meal ~ Balsamic-Basil Pork Chops, An's Pork Chops, and BBQ Spareribs. 

The spareribs required browning the ribs and cooking as sauce, and can be cooked in the crockpot.  No precooking was required for the other two recipes, just put the meat in zipper bags and pour the sauce over, and can be cooked on the grill or in the oven.  Very easy. 

The average cost per meal was $4.22.  Much cheaper than fast food on nights we are busy or going to a restaurant because I don't feel like cooking. 

My idea of implementing the freezer cooking method would be to grab meat when it's on sale and then spend an hour or so every week (every other, whatever).