GainesvilleMoms.com

You guys, I am wanting to plan, prepare and freeze some meals for my family before the baby comes. I have never really done the frozen thing, unless you count frozen dinners from Publix. Anyone cook and then freeze meals? I'd love some tips and recipes. I don't have much longer to plan for this. Anything you can tell me will help! Thanks!!

All kinds of soups, chicken and rice, beef stew, homemade pasta sauce...these things freeze really well and heat up with minimal fuss and effort. A really good hearty soup is Giada's lentil soup with beef (check out the recipe on foodnetwork.com). The recipe makes a lot.

Pasta sauce is definitely a good one! I've also freezed chili and soups. Another idea: You can premake some burritos and then freeze.

Ingredients:
Flour Tortillas
Refried Beans
Taco Meat
Mexican Rice
Mild Green Chilis (optional)
Shredded Cheddar or Mexican Cheese

Cook up the taco meat and rice as directed, then mix together with 1/2 to 1 small can mild green chilis.

Spread beans on tortillas. Place meat mixture in a row on one end of tortilla. Top with cheese. Roll up burrito and place in pan. Repeat until desired number of burritos are made. Top burritos with extra cheese and if desired, fill in extra spaces in the pan with remaining rice mixture.

Freeze or cook at 350 for about 30 - 45 minutes or until cheese is melted and bubbly. If you decide to freeze, pull out of the freezer about 2 days before you want to cook and thaw out in your fridge. Cook as directed above.

Chicken pot pie freezes really well. There is a great recipe on the Pillsbury website.

I have a crockpot meatball sub recipe that freezes well (at least the meatballs and sauce do!) but there are a lot of ingredients and I make the meatballs from scratch. But I was thinking you could find one of the easier recipes, or buy frozen meatballs and then freeze it all up. Then you could do meatball subs one night, spaghetti and meatballs another night.

Well I just checked out the Pillsbury web site and found LOTS of goodies. Thanks for that tip, Mama C! My hubby and I are going to be trying these recipes...he likes the sound of the meatball recipes and the pot pies. Okay, he likes the sound of it all So, what kind of storage containers do you recommend for freezing dinners?