Prepared Meals

I've been very interested in making freezer meals or as some call it, once a month cooking. The idea is you prepare meals and freeze them so that when you want to use them you just pop them in the oven. While I'd like to do this more often, I've also found some of the recipes are not really any more time saving than preparing it the night I need it. For instance, some recipes are basically just marinading meat prior to freezing it, but I find with the quick marinades now available I can do that just fine in the same day I want to make that meal.

I realize that the above makes me sound a bit negative on the idea of freezer meals, but really I am trying a few. I've done lasagna in the past, and plan to make one to freeze before Sean gets here. A recent favorite of mine has been stuffed shells. I'll admit, I never made them until recently, and I have no idea why it took me so long to decide to cook them. They are so easy to make, delicious, and totally freeze really well. I just make a double batch cook half that night and freeze the rest for another time. I highly suggest you look into this.

The other freezer meal that has worked well for me is muffins. Previously I had frozen my blueberry muffins, and just recently I froze banana bread-blueberry muffins. When I decide to have the muffins, I take them out of the freezer the night before, let them defrost, and then in the morning Ryan and I have yummy muffins.

I've tried a couple other recipes that were okay, but nothing to really write about. I'll definitely post again about this if I find some other ideas that work well.