Fun, Fellowship & freezer Meals

I’m a homebody.  Actually, I tend to call myself antisocial.  Sure, I like people and I have friends but I really prefer to just be at home with my family.  Friends are nice and I do make an effort.  So when my friend K asked a bunch of us if anyone would want to get together to make a bunch of freezer meals together, I jumped all over it.  Time with friends while getting dinner out of the way sounded like an excellent plan to me!

K did ALL of the planning this time around, so it was easy for me.  I basically just showed up on the appointed day and time.  K however, picked the recipes (and decided that instead of doing 12 we’d do six cause who wants to buy that much chicken at once?!?!?), figured out how much we needed of each item and  went grocery shopping (an overstuffed cart and $500 dollars later at Costco plus a stop at Winco.) Five of us went in on this though only four of us made the meals, as one friend had a kid commitment (we didn’t mind doing the meals for her….her husband is in and out, she has a two month old and five other kids….yup, we can cover it for her!)  So six recipes and 4 ladies.  I was thinking we’d be there a couple of hours, not really thinking it through.  Yeah….


The Man and the kiddos came with me, as the other daddies and kiddos were showing up too, so fellowship for the guys too, which is always a plus!  Just like for the ladies, it can be hard for the guys to get together too.  It was also great for Munchkin, since she’s not around kids as much as she probably should be (my fault, since I’m antisocial!)  The table when we got there was COVERED in food.  It was kinda crazy.



The best was to start is to just start, so we each picked a recipe and got to work.  Since there were five of us, we were making ten bags of each recipes, two for each of us. There were bags everywhere, sounds of chopping veggies and browning meat and lots of laughter.  Kiddos would wander in for a hug and to see what we were doing.  It was a lot of fun to chat and catch up since we don’t always get to see each other. 



Once the four recipes were done, we took a lunch break, which Stevie thoughtfully provided (the kiddos ate earlier and enjoyed mac N cheese and hot dogs.  I think Munchkin ate four hot dogs!!!)  I didn’t even think about lunch so I was glad someone had thought ahead!  I think I thought we’d be done by then but we still had two recipes left.  We decided the best way to get those done was to divide and conquer so that’s what we did.  One was chopping heavy, so three of us worked on that and poor K did the other one by herself.  I did help out a bit while I was waiting for kitchen space to cut pork and the others helped too while they were waiting for me to cut the pork.  Teamwork at it’s finest!



All told, it took us six hours to get six recipes made into ten bags for a total of SIXTY meals.  That six hours included the lunch break, snack break  and cleanup.  Not bad for a days work!  Plus having twelve freezer meals is fantastic.  I’m making our first one tonight, Salsa Chicken, and I can’t wait to try it! In addition to the Salsa Chicken, we went home with Savory Pepper Steak, Bean Soup, Meat Stew, Chicken Tortilla Soup and Sloppy Tamale Pie.   It wasn’t too expensive, coming it at $128 for each family. 

We’re hoping to do this four times a year.  We already have ideas on how to make it better (buy frozen chopped onions for one and to spread out the planning so one person doesn’t do it all) and other friends have already said that they’re in for next time!  I’m already looking forward to it.

Do you make freezer meals?  Have you ever done it with friends?