So as you all know by now, I'm expecting a baby in September. Now I can only guess at how I will feel in September because I've never had a baby before, but I assume that I will be pretty busy and not wanting to deal much with cooking if I can help it. So DH and I have a plan: from now until August we are going to take the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Saturday (or Sunday, depending upon if we have to bake for church) and make 4 more meals worth of whatever we're having for dinner that day, and freeze them in our huge chest freezer until the baby is born. Here's some more info:

- All the meals will be assembled only, unless you need to cook them in a special way (like egg rolls or noodles for lasagna) before freezing. This way we can take it out of the freezer, pop it in the oven, and go.
- We will be buying aluminum disposable pans to store these meals, 1) because we don't have enough baking dishes to devote 48 to the freezer, and 2) we also don't have enough tupperware to devote 48 meals worth to the freezer.
- We will pre-spend money from our food budget in August, September, and October, taking $50 from August and October and $75 from September to give us a budget of $175 to make these meals (completely doable I hope!).

Here's our ideas for the meals. There are 13 2nd+ Saturdays between now and August:

1. Pizza kits
2. Lasagna
3. Egg rolls
4. Chicken cheese broccoli rice casserole
5. Enchilada bake
6. White turkey chili
7. Felafel
8. Chicken pot pie
9. Italian pot pie
10. Shepherd's pie
11. Burgers
12. Breakfast components (bagels, pancakes, waffles, granola, cereal, etc)
13. Dinner components (noodles, tortillas, bread, beans, whole meats portioned, etc)

As I make each mass meal I'm going to update with a recipe (unless I've already given it to you) and a breakdown of how much we spent so as to keep myself motivated and on-track. We technically have the white turkey chili done because we had so many leftovers from our church meal that we dare not make any more, and since we're going to be gone the first two weekend in April anyway, we're counting it as our first accomplishment. The 3rd Saturday (Sunday in this case) we're making felafel and the 4th Sunday we're making enchilada bake.

Have any of you done freezer meals for any reason? What did you make? Do you have any tips, comments, or questions? Let me know - I'd love to hear them!

Love, Andy