Freezer Meals / Small Preparation Meals For Family Emergencies

With little Kaleb's birth last month, as with any birth, your world gets turned upside down.  Sleep schedules are destroyed, anyone with the slightest sniffle is quarantined and you hole up in the house for the first few weeks.

And when it comes to eating, well, your kitchen is usually an afterthought.  We lucked out and had family and friends help by bringing dinners by, but that lasted for about a week.  After that, you have to find a way to feed the family with very limited time and a mental state that barely allows you to read the numbers on the stove dials.

To cover those nights, it's best to prepare ahead of time so you don't have to call out for delivery every night.  Freezing meals work the best.  Especially if you portion them out perfectly.  But there's also a number of meals that can take just a few minutes of prep that will pay off later on.. 

So here are my favorite recipes from the blog that you can either prepare and freeze ahead of time, or assemble in 10 minutes or less and let cook all day long.

Freezer Meals / Small Preparation Meals For Family Emergencies

Enchiladas - Freezable item - 60-80 minutes baking time - You'll assemble the enchiladas beforehand just as you would normally, but you'll prepare them in disposable tin foil pans. Tin foil cookware will become your best friend in the next few weeks. The 8x8 pans are the perfect portions for 2-4 people (4 flour tortilla enchiladas or 6 corn tortilla enchiladas) and when you're done with them, toss them in the recycling bin. Use paper plates and then there are no dishes to do. Oh, and if you like the Spanish Rice, make a batch of it at the same time.  That's freezable as well.

Beef Roast - 10 minutes to assemble, 9-24 hours to cook -  A whole roast?  Isn't that a Sunday meal?  Yes, it's a big meal, but you can put everything together in a few minutes and let it simmer in the crock pot all day.  Just add all the cans of liquid and dry soup, stir until combined, and put the fully frozen roast in the crock pot.  Set it on Low and let it cook.  Should take about 5 minutes.  When there's three hours left in the cooking, pour in 1 pound of baby carrots and 4-5 potatoes that have been sliced into 1 inch cubes.  They'll cook to soft perfection by the time you're ready to eat.  You get a complete and filling meal with very little work.  And you can hold onto the leftovers for another night, or make into sandwiches.

Italian Meatballs with Marinara - Freezable item, whatever cooking time you want - Best thing to do is bake up a batch or two of these, allow them to cool and toss them into freezer bags. Now there are a number of low-effort ways to warm them up when needed. You can nuke them, along with a bottle of marinara sauce (used out of necessity) for a very quick and dirty meal. Or if you have 5 minutes of prep time available, grab a stock pot, add the ingredients for the quick and easy marinara, dump the frozen meatballs into the sauce and let it simmer over medium low heat for a couple hours. An even easier way is to do the same in a crock pot. Add the marinara and meatballs in and cook on low for 3-4 hours. When you're ready to eat, load them up in hoagies or use it to cover some noodles.

Calzones - Freezable item, 20 minute baking time - The recipe is for Barbecue Chicken Calzones, but you can stuff them with whatever you want.  Go with some quick and easy marinara, and ingredients you love and a bunch of mozzarella cheese.  You'll prepare your calzones days ahead of time, just as the recipe describes.  But instead of cooking for the full time, cook for 8-10 minutes and remove from the oven.  Allow them to cool completely and add to freezer ziploc bags.  When you are ready to comsume them, bring them out of the freezer and allow them to thaw for three hours.  Then pop them into the oven for 10-15 minutes to complete the process.  Nuke some marinara and use it for dipping.

Stuffed Shells - Freezable item. 60-70 minute baking time.  This recipe makes a LOT of shells, almost three meals worth for a family of 3-4.  So if you're planning of freezing it, I suggest changing it up a bit.  Maybe stuff a dozen or so with portabello mushrooms, pepperoni and cheese, like the recipe says.  Then maybe brown up some Italian sausage and insert a generous portion into the shells along with the cheese mixture.  And then if you want to go the vegetarian route, you could mix 1/2 cup of chopped spinach, 1/2 cup diced mushrooms and and 1/4 diced peppers into the remaining cheese and cram it into the remaining shells.  That way the recipe won't be redundant and boring if you eat it three nights in a row.

Beef Vegetable Soup - 10 minutes to assemble, 9 hours to cook - Very similar to the Roast process. You will need to cube a few potatoes and slice up your onions, but after that, it's a matter of dumping everything into the cooking vessel. You'll add all of the cans of liquid into the crock pot, pour in precut stew meat, small sliced frozen carrots, the other prepared veggies and spices, and then cook on low all day long.  The house will smell awesome.  Also, there's enough to feed everyone and maybe have a bowl or two of leftovers for another dinner or lunch.

Tamales - Freezable item, short cooking time - This has the longest pre-preparation time, but probably the best return.  Once you've created the large batch of tamales, steam them and then toss them in the freezer ziplocs and wait...  When you're ready to consume them later, nuke them wrapped in a moist paper towel for about 3-4 minutes.  And you're done!  If you want some sides, make a batch of Spanish rice beforehand, freeze it, and then nuke it as well.  Microwave a bowl of refried or black beans out of a can for 2 minutes and you'll have a complete Mexican Meal in 8 minutes and a clean stove!

Lasagna - Freezable item, 60-80 minutes baking time - You'll be able to create 2 8x8 pans of lasagna from the recipe.  I'd recommend increasing the sauce to the following:
6 14 ounce cans of crushed tomatoes
3 1/2 tablespoons dried basil
4 cloves of garlic, minced
That way you have some additional sauce to keep them moist.  Build your lasagnas in the extremely efficient 8x8 tin foil pans so there's no cleanup.  Cover them in foil and cook them covered for the first 60 minutes, then remove it for the last bit of cooking.

So build up your freezer reserves in preparation for a big day... or just have a few things ready to go on those nights you absolutely don't want to cook.