Planning Your Freezer Cooking Shopping Session

Here is part 2 of my Kitchen Tip Tuesday (sorry to break them up, but it was too long a post otherwise!) and my Works for Me Wednesday (as this works great for me when I want to plan a freezer cooking session!) (While you are visiting, be sure to check out my contest!)

When planning your freezer cooking session it is important to remember 3 things:

1. Don't cook more than you can store! Be certain you know how everything will fit in your freezer!

2. If you are doing this to save money and time be mindful of selecting recipes that are either inexpensive, or call for ingredients on hand or on sale.

3. The preparation steps are the same no matter how much cooking you are planning on doing!


Preparation Step 1: Selecting your recipes!

When selecting your recipes you want to keep in mind that your family may not like eatting the same thing each Monday night for two months, which can happen if you make to much of something! However, I do make a number of meals if I know they will keep in the freezer for a couple months. You just have to use your own best judgment on this one!

I try to select recipes that have common ingredients and preparation as I showed in the Kitchen Day - Tortilla Soup and Enchiladas (How To) example. If you are doing a Once A Month Cooking day it is obviously impossible to do all the meals like this, but try to pair up each recipe with at least one other one that has commonalities!

While freezer cooking is great because it lets you buy certain things in bulk like meat and cheese, if you don't select your meals carefully you can end up sending more because so little was on sale! When I am planning a bigger cooking day I try to pick recipes where I have a lot of the ingredients already on hand (having picked them up on sales), or that call for ingredients on sale now! If I really need to stock up the freezer I will start my preparation a couple weeks a head of time so I can be watching the sales and spreading the cost over a couple weeks of grocery/household budget. However, this point is one of the main reasons I have settled into My Usual Method of cooking a bit each week, so I can really take advantage of sales and therefore make our grocery/household budget go further!

Once you have selected your recipes, make a list of them (including cookbook name and page number) grouping the like recipes together.

Making you grocery lists

If I am just doing an extra meal for the freezer I just use my usual grocery preparation time for this, but if I am doing two or more recipes in one day, or more, I use this method.

Take 5 sheets of paper (I like to use scrap paper for this) and label them:

1. Meat
2. Dairy
3. Vegetables
4. Canned Goods
5. Other

Go through each recipe and write each ingredient under its appropriate catagory. At this point do not worry if you have it in house! Be sure to include how much you need. For canned goods be sure to write 2 x 14oz cans, or whatever it is because some recipes will call for the 56 oz cans, or maybe you can save by buying the bigger cans, etc. Less room for error this way! When writing down the meat be thorough as well. Often for chicken breasts I end up with a certain number of pounds I need plus a certain number of individual half breasts.

Once you are done your complete lists, total everything up as much as you can, and then start subtracting from your lists what you have on hand.

Now you are ready to make your grocery list however you usually like to make it! (I like to do it with fliers, coupons and coffee at hand, but that is just me!)

Step 3: The Shopping Trip

Please remember that you may be buying more than 1 cart's worth of food if you are doing a freezer cooking session for the entire month. So get all your canned goods and non-perishables first, then get the perishables! Especially in the summer heat. If you have to make a couple stops, take coolers with you!

If at all possible I like to try to roll in my regular weekly shopping with this, or my monthly Costco run. Less trips save me time, and often money.

If you are doing a large cooking session, make sure you have a place to stash all these groceries - I usually shop one day and start cooking the next so that it all goes in the freezer!

There, now you are all done shopping! Next up, planning your prep work!

Next up in the series, apparently in no particular order:
- Planning your shopping, prep and cooking
- Storing your meals revisited and revised
- Keeping track of what is in your freezer and what is the oldest
- Freezer lunch stash complete with ideas
- Freezer breakfast stash complete with ideas
- Recipes I used in my marathon cook that have not yet been posted
- What little I know about having a group of friends who share freezer meals
- Books and resources I love
- Answers to questions you post for me or email to me (email button is in my profile).


Previously in the series:
Introduction to the series
Why Freezer Meals?
My Usual Method
Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Pesto Butter and Chicken Cordon Blue
Chicken Enchiladas
Kitchen Day - Tortilla Soup and Enchiladas (How To)
Blessing of Freezer Meals
Lazy Lasagna - A Freezer Meal
Sauce for Freezer Meatballs
Pineapple Tuna Cracker Snack
Freezer Cooking with Limited Space
Orange Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry
Orange-Apricot Glazed Pork Chops
Converting your Casserole Recipes to Freezer Recipes
Converting your Meat Recipes to Freezer Meals
Triple Chocolate Cookies
Bacon-Macaroni Bake
Once A Month Freezer Cooking Simply Explained