My frugal tip for today is to always take the time to freezer cook & bake. It can be as little as 3 hours once every other week or even once a month. When you first begin start small, be realistic and think about what type of meals would save you time. When I had the four children time was precious, eating out was expensive and unnecessary but I was tired and busy. Even being single afterwards, I would often just think it was easier to get a quick take out, but even when you are buying for one or two, it still costs money to eat out. Here are some tips for beginning freezer cooking and baking.
1. Start by setting yourself a slot of 3 hours and put it on the calendar. If it’s there you won’t agree to meeting up with friends that afternoon, or schedule other things.
2. The week you cook make sure include any ingredients you will need in your weekly shop. Think careful about what type of meals would be of most benefit.
3. Make sure you have storage equipment and simple containers of different sizes and room in your freezer!
4. Involve your kids! This is such a great educational activity in measuring, recording, printing, timing and working on your fine motor skills! Make sure everyone has clean hands, aprons and the little ones who can’t participate are busy & in eye-sight (playdoh & colouring is great, as is playing with Tupperware!)
5. Set a goal of making 8 meals (2 meals for each week) and making two baked goods for snacks or breakfasts. If you think about it, that is only making four different recipes. Most can cook at the same time. For starting I would recommend making two lasagna, a big bowl of soup with at least 3 meals worth, muffins and bread (banana or sultana, orange & bran works well). Then work yourself up, now typically I would make two or three soups, chili, lasagna x 2, bolognaise sauce, curry, chicken strips (when eating meat. heh!), potato & kale bake, muffins x 24, cookies, breads, smoothies, pesto and apple sauce. Generally now, one cooking & baking session a month gets me about 20 main meals, 10 breakfasts and another 10+ meals to donate to a women’s shelter or people in need.
6. Do your dishes as you go! This means at the end of the cooking time, your kitchen is clean and you can pat yourself on the back and say “job well done”!
7. Label what you’ve made with a date, ingredients, size of entrée.
8. Mark on the calendar what days you are going to have your meals and what to have them with (with lasagna I always serve a salad and a green veg like green beans or peas, with soup I always serve rolls & a salad), or mark 1/2 of the days and leave the rest for “I am so exhausted I feel sick” days [that's always been my strategy 
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9. Schedule your next freezer cooking day and reflect on what went well and what could have been better.
10. Enjoy the fruits of your labor; save money and time!
If you would like to read about one of my Baking Day’s and what meals I made, then see this post!
This is such a good way to save money. I’m lazy and don’t do it enough, you’ve just inspired me to do it this weekend. Thanks!
I need to make the time to do this, it seems so much healthier and cheaper. I will go through some of your frugal recipes and schedule a time in September. I’m a little nervous already!
This is such a good idea. We’ve been doing this for years and now we cook a huge batch of something every couple of weeks; chilli, bolognaise, curry of different sorts, casseroles, lentil stew; mostly in the slow cooker. About once a fortnight we make enough for six or eight meals for two, maybe preparing the veg one evening and browning the meat and onions and slinging it all in the slow cooker to cook all day. We do this fairly consistently so that we always have stuff ready for a quick meal, and as we always pack everything with veg, it’s not the end of the world if we don’t cook any other veg or make a salad.
Would you mind coming here and guiding me in this process? I really need to stock up my freezer, and this is a wonderful idea!
Great ideas, just wish I had a freezer. Ah well, one day I’ll re-join the 21st century, freezer-wise!!
So much harder in the UK tho isn’t it re space? Mine was 1 shelf! lol
You’ll be happy to know I have made a date with myself next weekend to put this into action!
This would be a good idea if my freezer was larger than two shoeboxes or not currently very full! But it won’t always be full, so I’ll start looking out for recipes that freeze well. Did you find that anything in particular does not freeze well?
I avoid things with cream. Things that do freeze well are curries, dahl, soup etc.
I totally agree about UK freezer space: ours is tiny and hardly fits anything!
Another great thing about doing your own baking is knowing exactly what’s gone into your muffin or banana loaf: no horrible additives and preservatives, unlike commercially-produced stuff.
I know, so different. But once I had two small shelves (which is nothing like the two “small” shelves here – which are huge!) I was able to do some good freezing!
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