Last updated on March 3rd, 2023 at 12:58 pm
Finding out my husband Mike needed surgery was a big deal. And I knew I needed to plan ahead for quick and easy freezer meals for when he came home.
I’m so lucky to have family and friends to help us. By either watching Eme or bringing us food, but I knew I had to prepare too.
Mike was restricted to lifting anything for at least 3 months, so that makes watching a toddler pretty rough. Eme likes using her counter stand (similar one here) while I cook. But it’s hard to keep an eye on a toddler with an impressive ability to grab things.
I knew I had to plan ahead for quick and easy freezer meals. And these were so easy, I did most of them myself!
I made a lot of recipes from Happy Money Saver and they really were as easy as she claimed! Plus a couple others that I added after the fact.
Mike needed a low-fat diet for the first two weeks after he got home, so I added some low-fat soups, like chicken noodle. And I made breakfast burritos which are super easy for either Mike or I to grab whenever. I ate most of them though.
Plan Out Your Meals
Before I started making anything though, I needed to get all of my ingredients together. This process does take a little while, but makes buying what you need so much easier.
In an Excel Doc or Google Sheets, I begin listing all of the ingredients I need by recipe and quantity. I decided to make two of each recipe as well.
Once I go through all of the recipes, I combine the quantities of all the ingredients. So I end up with one big list like 10 onions and 7 cartons of vegetable broth.
Make sure you have all the supplies you need before you get started. You don’t want to be caught without something mid-meal prep!
The Supplies for Quick and Easy Freezer Meals
- Tinfoil – for covering trays and wrapping breakfast burritos
- Freezer Ziploc Bags
- Disposable Tinfoil Oven Trays
- Sharpie – make sure you write on the bag what each recipe is!
- Food processor – this totally isn’t necessary, but this made chopping ingredients a million times easier and faster
- Crockpot Liners – I don’t have the time or energy to be washing many dishes everyday
Using Kroger Pickup, I put everything on my list a month before surgery to see what I could get. With the pandemic, some things are out of stock, so wanted to make sure I got everything I needed.
I made all of my meals on my own, except for the breakfast burritos. They’re really easy, but having my mom and sister around as an assembly line made it go much faster.
Get Prepping!
I started out by going through all the ingredients, and pulling out what I needed. And then labeled each of the bags. It’s WAY easier to label your bags before you put anything in them!
Using my food processor I chopped up a ton of carrots, celery, garlic and onions and put them each in their own bowls to scoop from.
I opened up each bag, and propped them up using bowls for easier filling. You don’t want any bags toppling over!
I didn’t put the broth in my bags to reduce the chance of leakage, but if you do, you can double up your bags too to be safe!
Using my sharpie, I wrote on any broth containers or cans of tomatoes what recipe it needed to be used for. Because I know if I don’t, I’ll end up using it by accident!
We have a stand-up freezer in our garage that we got for baby freezer meals and breast milk (plus various frozen foods for my bae, the air fryer). So we have plenty of room for a lot of easy make-ahead freezer meals.
Make a Plan for Quick and Easy Freezer Meals!
I like to put together a schedule to plan out my meals, so I know where I need to fit in other meals. Like getting takeout, or when someone brings over food.
When you know you’re going to make a meal the next day, make sure you put the bag in the fridge so it can thaw out a little bit.
In the morning, put the contents of the bag in your crockpot, plus any other missing ingredients (veggie broth, tomatoes, etc.), set it and you’re good to go!
I’m always on the lookout for new recipes, so if you have any freezer meals I need to try out, leave them below!
Want to know how I go through the long day in the waiting room when Mike was in surgery? Read my “Ultimate Hospital Waiting Room Survival Kit” post!