Thanksgiving Leftovers Become Make Ahead Freezer Meals With These Fabulous Cookbooks

November 26, 2010

Thanks to these life changing cookbooks, this working mother of five has had a healthy, homemade dinner on the table every night for the last several months. The idea of "assemble-and-freeze" meals was new to me, and I’ll never go back to cooking and washing pans every night again!

I learned about make ahead freezer meals last summer. To get an assorted inventory started, I cooked ahead and froze multiples of several different meals over a long weekend. Now every Sunday afternoon, I simply multiply what I’m making for dinner by five. We eat one meal, and I add the other four dinners to my frozen collection for the week nights. I freeze most of my meals in aluminum 9 by 13 pans purchased from a party supply store for about fifty cents a piece. Check out the grocery ads, and plan what to cook around what’s on sale. You’ll be able to put a frozen meal in the oven over a lunch hour, set the oven to come on at three, and dinner will be ready at five. This simple trick allows me to enjoy more time with my family, better meals, more rest, and a lot less work!  Put an armload of these fabulous cookbooks on hold, pick them up at your local library, and try it for yourself.

Girlfriends On the Go by Suzie Roberts
The Freezer Cooking Manual From 30 Day Gourmet: a Month Of Meals Made Easy by Nanci Slagle
Don’t Panic—More Dinner’s In the Freezer: a Second Helping Of Tasty Meals You Can Make Ahead by Susie Martinez
Dream Dinners: Turn Dinnertime Into Family Time With 100 Assemble-and-Freeze Meals by Stephanie Allen

This would be a great weekend to get started too. Instead of eating Thanksgiving leftovers for the next three days, use the ingredients you have on hand to make a new dish and freeze it for another day. With meals in the freezer, extra holiday company is also a cinch. All you have to do is pull out the lasagna you assembled last week. I can’t wait to hear about your experiences. Let’s swap recipes, tips and tricks.

See you at the library!

Tiara D.
Edgerton Branch