My First Time Batch Freezer Cooking

In December we bought a chest freezer. I have wanted one as long as I have been married, but we didn't have room for one in our old condo.

I've loved having a little extra space to store food, but haven't really gotten into batch freezer cooking yet. I've doubled meals here and there, but no making a bunch of food in one day and having it ready for many meals in the future.

Thankfully, my friend Anne gave me just the kick in the pants I needed.

Anne is a Wildtree consultant and she offered to send me a box of seasonings to make 10 freezer meals, just like she does in her freezer meal workshops (If you live in the Milwaukee. Wis. area you should totally have her do a workshop for you and some friends!).

From Anne: Wildtree thinks that food should be natural, nutritious, delicious, and easy to prepare – all at the same time. Wildtree products enable you to create spectacular, great tasting dishes with just three or four ingredients. All products are all natural; that means they are FREE from MSG, chemical dyes, additives, and preservatives. In addition to home tasting parties, we offer freezer meal workshops! These are a practical solution for just about anyone.

I invited my friend Katie over to join me for our own mini freezer workshop.  We figured that our kids (she has a little girl named Hannah that is a bit younger than Adeline) could play on the deck off the kitchen while we chopped and assembled meals. Wildtree said it would take about an hour, but we figured it would take closer to 90 minutes because of the kids and because we are so chatty when we are together.

Well it took more than 2 hours, but it wasn't because we were chatty.

1. We got the kids settled outside to play and it started raining, so they had to come in and were not happy about it.
2. Matthew and I had noticed that the light switch seemed to be going bad in the kitchen, so we had taken off the switch plate earlier that day. Just after we started chopping food, we noticed the switch was sparking. (Of course, Matthew wasn't home.) I called our electrician in a panic and he said to turn off the breaker, assured me the house wasn't going to burn down and that he would be over in the morning.
3. I had to find the breaker. I couldn't find it. So we finally gave up, left the light off, prayed the sparks would stop (they did) and worked on prep.
4. Hannah then didn't want to watch Caillou (smart girl). Instead she wanted Katie to hold her. So I prepped for both of us. 🙂
5. It stopped raining, so the kids wanted to go outside, which then lead to them being hungry, wanting other toys, etc.

Story of motherhood, huh?! 🙂

Despite all the craziness that happened during our freezer cooking session we had a blast with the Wildtree products and recipes.

Everything was clearly outlined and most of the recipes were ones I had not eaten before.

Nevermind that by the time we finished, it was almost dark in the kitchen thanks to the electricity having to be turned off.

Katie and I were so proud of our prepped meals and our first time batch freezer cooking. We actually decided to start regularly getting together to do batch freezer cooking, so you'll probably start to see more of her here on The Mom Creative. YAY! I love her SO much and you will too. (True story: Katie is married to the brother of my high school boyfriend. Crazy, right? Something only God could do.)

Thanks to Anne for sending the Wildtree products and for inspiring me to do more freezer cooking.

Do you have any recipes to recommend? Be sure to leave them in the comments.

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