Dinner on ice
Stockpiling frozen meals offers advantages to busy families
Here's Jenny Stanger's solution for the 5 p.m. "What's for dinner?" panic: Every two weeks she spends two hours preparing two recipes, with each recipe large enough to make three family-size dinners.
"You can build up a good supply of dinners in your freezer this way," said the Pleasant Grove mother of three. She teaches a "Freezer Dinner" cooking class at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi and Ace Hardware in North Salt Lake, and she has a Web site, freezerdinner.com.
On the nights you feel like cooking, you can. But when you don't feel like it, use those "frozen assets" in the freezer.
"I believe that you need to have one meal a day for the family to sit down and enjoy," said Stanger. "Making freezer meals has given me more time with my family because there's less cleanup."
Most home cooks already do freezer meals in a limited form, such as making a double batch of lasagna and freezing half for later. Several cookbooks have expanded on the idea, such as "Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month," by Deborah Taylor-Hough (Sourcebooks, $14.95), and "Once-A-Month Cooking," by Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg (St. Martin's Griffin, $12.95).
Stanger outlines her own strategy in her self-published book, "Fantastic Freezer Recipes," sold on her Web site.
No matter how you do it, stockpiling frozen dinners offers some advantages:
• Your time is spent more efficiently. By chopping all the vegetables at once, you've saved the time it takes to get out and clean up the cutting board or food processor, for instance.
• Cost savings. "Cooking this way saves us $200 to $300 a month," said Stanger. You make fewer trips to the market, which discourages impulse shopping. And you can take advantage of bulk pricing and sales. Stanger suggested buying a whole ham and having the butcher dice it into cubes to use in casseroles, omelets, pizzas and so on.
• You can tailor the meals to your family's tastes and diets. "Making your own meals is healthier than fast food and pre-packaged frozen foods," said Stanger.
• Portion control. You can package the meals for your family's size and avoid waste.
Recent comments
Yes this book is worth buying. It's been great to learn how to...
Julie | June 23, 2008 at 1:42 p.m.
That is something I wonder, too. Is there a good way to stock up...
DleeD | June 19, 2008 at 7:32 a.m.
We are pretty much vegetarian, it sounds like the freezer recipes...
Question | June 18, 2008 at 5:18 p.m.
