Leftovers and freezer cooking...

We actually ate them this week! It was amazing. We seriously have been so bad lately about eating out and letting leftovers go bad in our refrigerator. I think being pregnant may have a little something to do with that, but it's really no excuse. Cooking isn't that hard. This last week was different, though. We had leftover taco soup, thanksgiving food leftover from our Smithschobeysgiving this past Saturday, pumpkin bread, and cornbread. We finished the majority of the leftovers last night and now we have just a few Rosa's tortillas and some butternut squash left.

I also cleaned out our entire refrigerator and freezer and ended up buying stuff to freeze/store for crock pot meals later. Monday I had invited my family over for dinner and decided to make chili and cornbread. I looked in my pantry and realized I had 3 chili seasoning packets ... so I wrote out the ingredients needed to make all 3 of the full meals* on my grocery list. While I was looking at my seasoning packets in my pantry, I found 3 spaghetti sauce seasoning packets, and a chicken noodle soup seasoning packet. So since I'm interested in freezing meals for once Conner is here, I decided to go ahead and buy all the ingredients needed to make all of these meals. The majority of what I bought were canned veggies/beans, meat, and a few fresh veggies. The most expensive things were the meat, but even those weren't too bad. I ended up spending $58 to complete 8 full meals*. I think that's pretty darn good. Of course, there will be things I need to get at the store when we actually make these meals and plan to eat them (like side salads, or crackers {I forgot a couple of the nonperishable things}), but nothing major.

So I got home and immediately got to work chopping up the fresh veggies and separating out the meats to put in gallon freezer bags for each meal. I ended up with enough ingredients for 2 chicken noodle soups, so I'll need to pick up another seasoning packet at some point. I have 7 meals* in my freezer ready for us to make. This makes me so happy and relieved.

Tomorrow I have planned a "Freezer Cooking Day" and will be making double recipes of my lasagna and chicken spaghetti casseroles. So at the end of the day tomorrow, we'll have 11 meals* in our freezer. I can't wait to have that checked off my list of things to do.


*When I say "meals," I really mean recipes. Since it'll just be me and Jason and, at some points my mom, there will be plenty of leftovers to get us through at least a couple of nights a week if not a whole week. :)