This is How We Do It: Dinner Time and Freezer Cooking

This post is part of a link-up that my friends at The Boutelle Family Blog and Grace Mountain Diaries are hosting. You can find that link-up here and here.

Take one toddler just woken from nap, add pinch of preschooler coloring appendages with marker. Mix in one always hungry boy who probably needed a nap but didn’t take one. Add one living room in dire need of clean-up and dinner in need of cooking. Stir and let simmer.

Result: Grumpy Soup.

That hour before dinner can be crazy, and I struggled with it for a long time. It seemed that I was in high demand and short supply. Mostly, I just felt like I needed more hands.

I had tried to use the crockpot in the past without much success. I was forever forgetting to set out meat to thaw, and it always seemed that I needed to be putting things on right when our naptime routine was happening. I also always struggled to find recipes that work for my gluten-free, dairy-free (and mostly sugar-free) diet.

When our fourth child was born, some dear friends arranged meals for us. One of those friends brought me a crockpot freezer meal. I made it, and it was so easy. I just stuck the ingredients in crockpot, turned it on, and walked away.

Amazing.

I started fiddling with recipes and tried to prep meals on the weekends, but found it hard to get into a groove. I still felt like I was always cooking.

Then I was talking to my Dad one night, and he said something to the effect of: “You should just always double what you’re cooking. It’s more efficient that way.”

As I thought more about it, I realized that there are three or four meals that we have almost every week (without complaint—they are family favorites). With that much repetition in our meal plan, it was a much better use of my time to quadruple those recipes (adding in a few other things for variety). This meant I would only have to do heavy meal prep once a week.

So, each week when Ava was at co-op (and I wasn’t homeschooling), I would make a big batch of something. After a few weeks of doing this, I had a stockpile, and most nights I could just pull something out and re-heat it, maybe quickly cooking a veggie or some rice or noodles.

Dinner is (Almost!) Served

This has been revolutionary.

Most of what needs to be done I can now do one-handed (which is necessary when that little one wants to be held). It frees me up to supervise and help the kids more with the chores they need to do and allows me to even be outside with them some in the evening (which in turn helps me to actually see my neighbors). It has also helped us eat dinner at a normal time, which keeps their bedtimes from getting too late. Things can still get a little hectic, but I don’t get nearly as stressed out during the witching hour.

Long story short, Grumpy Soup is no longer on the menu.