{Freezer cooking} 12 meals = $64

I keep coming across freezer meals on Pinterest so I thought I'd give it a try. I hate making a grocery list and menu each week. It takes so long because I try to revolve our menu around sales. I thought I'd try to do 5 meals. I used this site for recipes. I went to ALDI for all my veggies and canned items. I then went to Bi-lo and got my meats and other items ALDI didn't have. Instead of buying boneless skinless chicken breasts, I bought (3) 4lb packs of chicken quarters. They were on sale for $1.09/lb (versus $4.99/lb for breasts) Plus I knew I could make some yummy homemade broth. I also bought (3) 1.5 lb packs of ground chuck at $3.79/lb. At both stores I spent less than $64!

From the site, I made the ziti, chicken spaghetti, beef enchiladas, chicken/black bean chili and  BBQ chicken.

I came home, threw 2 packs of chicken in a big stock pot of water with some onions, carrots, celery and parsley. I also browned all 3 packs of the ground chuck. While that was cooking, we ate and gave Madi a bath and put her to bed. Then we chopped all the veggies, cooked 2 things of pasta(spaghetti and ziti) I then started putting the enchiladas together. Before I filled the zipper bags, I wrote on them what was in the bag and the reheating instructions. I got 14 enchiladas and divided them up in 3 bags for 3 meals. I then took out the chicken to cool enough to handle to pull apart. Pulled them apart and made the other meals. Make sure to write your instructions on your bags before hand so you know how to reheat. Some things you have to thaw, some things can be cooked frozen.

Total time it took to make 12 meals was about 3 hours. I also got about 20 cups of homemade chicken stock and I made my own Cream of Mushroom soup! I rarely by packaged foods-have you ever looked at the sodium content? It's outrageous! So anything I can reasonbly make from scratch, I'm all for it! So far I have has an enchilada from lunch and we had the ziti for supper tonight and both were good!The only picture I have is from Instagram and it was just of the ingredients before hand.