Freezer Meal Dont's

Thursday night I reminded myself once again how much I hate cooking on week nights, I work 8-5 so to come home and prepare a meal, by the time it is prepared, enjoyed, and cleaned up, I am left with litttle me or husband/pup time as I always try to be in my bed by 9:30.

So on that night I found 6 meals (I would make 2 of each) that could easily be frozen and served later, several were recipes I use often with a few newbies, I planned to do my shopping at Aldi, and say screw "antibiotic free, nitrate free, or organic" for one shopping trip to save the money. Around 3 on Friday I realized I didn't have a quarter and worse I didn't have my canvas bags! Around 4 I got a headache that made me feel dizzy and nauseous  So I went home and crawled in bed... those pre-made meals would have been really handy that night! We ate a cheap frozen pizza. :P

When I woke up Saturday I realized I did not want to spend my entire weekend grocery shopping and cooking, so my "don't" was I tried to make myself not only do too much but also do something I really didn't want to do to begin with!

I salvaged my idea to cook ahead slightly. Thursday at lunch I bought crescent rolls in a tube on my lunch break and hot dogs. It worked out perfectly that the hot dogs come in a pack of 8 and the HyVee rolls come with 8! 2 tubes of rolls and 1 pack of hot dogs made 2 super easy and way better than frozen pigs in a blanket (I even got my nitrate free hot dogs!) We will eat 1 batch tonight and am freezing the second batch individually and will toss them in a bag together once they are frozen. 

Pigs in a blanket! Yes in a bowl... don't ask.

My second meal, is one of out favorites. I almost always have most of the ingredients for tuna casserole, I usually don't have the cheese but I made mac and cheese the other night so I lucked out. My tuna casserole recipe is:

1/2 box pasta (bowtie or rotini)

1 can cream of mushroom soup + 1/2 can milk (even my rice milk works)

1 big can tuna or 2 little cans

about 2 cups of cheese (any kind, I used monterray jack/colby and some cheddar)

It fits perfectly in a 11/2 quart casserole dish, feeds both of us with left overs!

I usually like to freeze my casseroles in casserole dishes, but the throw away kind are going against my efforts to be green since you can only use them once, maybe twice if you are careful. So I opted to freeze it in a gallon ziplock, though this still doesn't solve my "green" issue it is cheaper and saves room in my freezer... and to be quite honest I will wash the ziplock and use it again because I am THAT weird. I went ahead and froze an extra cup of cheese in a baggie as well for topping since I don't always have shredded cheese on hand and taped it to the casserole.

I will take it out the night before then stir it up before putting in a casserole dish, topping with cheese and then cook! TA DA! Would love to hear what other wives do for meals to help them keep their sanity!