Eating Good Food Shouldn't Eat Up All Your Free Time!!!

I love to eat, I love good food, and I really enjoy making good food. However, I hate that it usually means that I spend at least an hour sometimes two hours making dinner nightly plus several extra hours on the weekends making breakfasts and lunches for the week. I felt like I was losing all my evenings and half my weekend to preparing food, not even eating it but preparing it. Late November I decided something had to change because I missed having my evenings being filled with fun things, my weekends being just for adventures, and being an adult not feeling so, well...boring. I decided I was going to go back to feeding my freezer but with more purpose.

I have always made double batches of soup and feed half of it to my freezer so I have it for later use for workday lunches. When I lived alone I would even freeze some of my leftovers from time to time to consume on an evening I didn't have time to cook but only did that every so often. December was going to be my month, my month to reclaim my free time and it went swimmingly. I spent a couple hours sifting through my favorite recipes and Pinterest for new recipes to find ones that I could make in the crockpot, make double or triple of and freeze the extras, and recipes that were delicious but quick.

While I still made some of my time consuming favorite recipes I reserved those for the 2 nights a week I scheduled in for longer cooking nights. The rest of the week were meals to feed us and the freezer, pulled from the freezer, a crockpot meal, and an occasional quick meal recipe. It. Was. Awesome! I had more time, I felt like I was always served a complete, healthy, and tasty meal, and I didn't feel like I was taking the easy way out.  December and January felt so much easier with January feeling even easier than December since I already had meals in the freezer.

By far my favorite meals we made were ones I could make in the crockpot AND freeze some of it. In the crockpot with extra to freeze I made Swedish Meatballs, Bolognese sauce, Meatballs with Marinara sauce, Chicken Enchilada Pasta, Chicken Fajita Soup, Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice Soup, and Black Bean and Salsa Soup. When I made Hippy Loaf (vegetarian meatloaf),  Sweet Potato Black Bean Burgers, and Chicken Tikka Masala I made extra and froze them. In the crockpot I made Chicken Parmesan and it was alright but not a favorite, Smothered Chicken (I felt the same way as the Chicken Parm), Santa Fe Chicken (yum!), and Honey Mustard and Herb Chicken (so delicious!)

I linked three of the recipes for now and will post the other recipes soon. :)