Don't Panic! Dinner's in the Freezer!

As we all stumble through life and we each come across something that really rocks our world, I feel it's our duty to share it with others (see Aveda post below). Here's another one-my new favorite cookbook- Don't Panic! Dinner's in the Freezer! My sis-in-law asked for a freezer meal cookbook for Christmas and after searching on Amazon, this one had the highest rating. After I bought it, I because very interested in it as well and bought a copy for myself. While my mom was here, she made a few of the recipes and they are fantastic! And the best part about them- there is not a single casserole in the whole dang cookbook.

After having Will and realizing that making dinner takes pretty much all day since you only have 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there, I decided I would make a few more of these recipes to keep in the freezer. Then day of, defrost and heat on the stove or throw in the oven. And all you really do on the cooking day is assemble all the ingredients and put in a ziploc bag in the freezer (super easy). This week there was a huge sale on chicken and round sirloin at the grocery store and I definitely took advantage of them. I pretty much made dinner for the whole next month in about 2 hours. Recipes include: Beef Stroganoff, Lemon Honey Glazed Chicken, Spinach Manicotti, Apricot Glazed Chicken, Hawaiian Chicken, Italian Meatballs, your mouth watering yet? I made a ton of different things and in only 2 hours!

Reason's why I love this:

1. It's so easy! Just pull it out of the freezer and presto! there's a good tasting dinner.

2. It's so affordable. I just buy the meat that's on sale, make a few meals with it, then the next week when another meat is on sale, I use that to make a few recipes and you can see how you can collect quite a wide range of meals in a short amount of time.

3. It's healthy. Home cooked meals are always more healthy and these recipes are all pretty healthy anyway.

4. It's so easy to cook dinner for a friend who's in a pinch. You can even pull it out of the freezer and write down cooking instructions and hand it over.

I don't cook one of the freezer meals every night, but probably 4 nights a weeks and it is so wonderful because I get the best of both worlds- easy preparation and tons of flavor.