I don't cook every night!

Despite being a stay at home Mum, (and oh yes, having nothing better to do with my time, yeah right), I do not cook every night.  I plan my meals ahead fortnightly, and grocery shop fortnightly (I will do a post on that process).  And I have nights off cooking.  How?  Simple really.  On some of the nights when I cook, I cook extra and freeze it.


When I was pregnant with my first child I got carried away and filled a 440 litre freezer with precooked meals.  We were still eating them when he was one (as I found you can actually cook when you have a baby, wow!).

Having a big freezer, and lots of meals in it, taught me that I needed to organise the freezer.  So this is how I do it.  It is rough and ready but it works.

1.  Label all meals.  Ideally that includes what it is, what it isn't (i.e. whether it has rice or not, how many drumsticks made it in there, etc), and perhaps the month and year.  I do this most easily using that type of sticky table that is called 'invisable' because it is matt and you can write on it with a pencil.  I have a standard lead pencil, but also a white one, as that shows up better on some containers.  I keep these pencils and a rubber in the kitchen drawer so I don't have to hunt for them when packing the leftovers.  I simply rub-out the previous content description and put on a new one.

2.  Cool the food in the fridge and then freeze.

3.  My freezer has drawers, and I organise them as follows so that food is grouped and easy to find.

• Top Drawer: bread and bread rolls.  
• Second Drawer: parts of meals (i.e. not complete in own right, e.g. frozen grilled capsicum, frozen leftover rice, etc).  
• Third Drawer: complete or almost complete meals, family size.  
• Fourth Drawer: Single size meals, or enough for two kids.   
• Fifth Drawer: uncooked meat, oven chips.  
• Sixth Drawer:  Yummy treats - ice cream, cakes, muffins, slices.  A good weight management tip is to freeze most of what you make, so that at least defrosting time slows down the consumption rate.

Freezer Chart

4.  The chart.  I have a large piece of paper attached to the fridge using magnets.  It is usually the back of some poster or bit of packaging.  I don't have to change it often, we are on our third in seven years!  You can see on the picture above that it has a section for each drawer.  I keep a pen on top of the freezer.  When an item for drawer two, three or four goes in the freezer, it gets written on the chart.  when it comes out it gets crossed off.  Easy.  So you can look at the chart before you open the freezer, choose what you want, and use it.  It also makes meal planning easier as you can see just how many containers of Lasagne are already in there!