The time has come, it's fall! And you know that that means?!?! It means school, hectic kids schedules, my busy season for photo sessions AND CROCKPOT MEALS! Let's face it everyone loves crockpot meals. Seriously you can throw three ingridients in and leave it on for a couple hours and come back to a ready made meal, what is not to love? Well I had heard so much about freezer meals lately. Apparently it's the go to for what to bring to a mama who just had a baby...who knew :P Not me lol I have had six kids and never had anyone bring me a meal..that would have been awesome....lots of unwanted adive, but no meals lol. But I digress, I had heard so much about them I finally decided to just do it. So I did my planning, I was slightly over ambitious and thought I'll do 20 crockpot meals and double them and that will be 40. And then I thought...this is my first attempt what the heck am I smoking...and so I decided to cut that in half.
I did all my planning and made sure I went shopping on my hubby's first day off and planned to do all my batch prepping, cooking, bagging and freezing the next day so he would be home with the kids. I didn't schedule anything that day hoping to have all day to cook. Well you know what they say about the best laid plans. We ended up having to run errands and then we had to pay bills, hubby ended up having a appointment in the middle of the day and the contractor finally came to replace our back door. So by the time I finally got to cooking it was 4pm. I almost decided to call it quits but I had a fridge full of meat and fresh veggies and it was either prep them and freeze them, eat it all or let it all go to waste...you can guess which option I chose.
So I enlisted my hubby as my sous chef (he works in a professional kitchen so this was actually genius on my part). He started dicing and slicing the veggies and I started browning meat and seasoning. I started by browning 3lbs of ground turkey with garlic and onion for my turkey Chili. I was smart and all the other recipes I had decided to attempt this time didn't call for cooked meat, so my turkey chili was the only one I had to prep meat for. While the turkey was browning I started labeling gallon sized freezer bags. (Now the only issue with enlisiting my hubby was...you guessed it we had four kiddos decide to be terrors so forgive me but I was so focused on finishing up that I forgot to take photos, I will get some next time promise).
I have read a lot of blogs that say starting with meat or starting with veggies is the best way...blah blah blah. Honestly I just looked at the recipes and said okay I need this much onion in total babe get to chopping and while he was chopping I would start putting the other ingridients in. I guess maybe I just thrive in chaos ( says the mom of six under eight) because this method worked for me. It worked so well in fact that in under 3hrs from start to finish my husband and I had done 16 crockpot freezer meals, he had also bagged for freezing about 25lbs of hamburger, cut up 20chops out of a pork loin, 3 pork roasts out of another loin and had those all bagged and ready for freezing. On top of that I also got the dishes done and cooked homemade potato soup for dinner last night. I would say for just under three hours that was pretty dang good. So without further ado, I present you with my crockpot freezer meals list.
September Crockpot Freezer Meals
1. Crockpot ready Pumpkin Pork Roast
(http://beautifulbensonbunch.blogspot.com/2014/10/happy-october-recipe-included.html )
2.Crockpot ready Pulled Pork
3.Crockpot ready lemon cilantro chicken (I made two of these)
4.Crockpot ready tomato basil chicken
( http://beautifulbensonbunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/crockpot-ready-tomato-basil-chicken.html )
5.Crockpot ready white chicken chili
6.Crockpot ready turkey chili ( I made three batches of these, it's a family fav)
( http://beautifulbensonbunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/runny-noses-and-chicken-noodle-soupyep.html )
7.Crockpot ready chicken tacos
8.Crockpot ready beef and brocoli ( I made two of these)
9.Crockpot ready beef fajitas
10.Crockpot ready chicken fajitas
11. Crockpot ready cowboy stew ( I made two of these)
( http://beautifulbensonbunch.blogspot.com/2014/09/another-dayanother-recipe.html )
( I would have made more...but alas with all my planning I forgot to check how many gallon sized bags I had and I ran out and said forget it lol)
:) Don't those sound nummy :) I thought so to! Now because I love you I will be posting recipes for all these. But just one at a time, or maybe two at a time :) so stay tuned for all the yummy goodness to come. By the way the only reason I had time to write this blog at 2:07pm on a Friday is because I somehow managed to get all 4 littles asleep at once!!! Not sure how but I will take it.
For starters how about we start off with one that isn't on the list :) I had some left over pork chops I didn't get to freeze so I had to use them and hey look at that shiny crockpot ( my hubby doesn't call me the crockpot hoarder for nothing). This is totally another one that you could add to the freezer meals, I just happen to be making it fresh.
Crockpot Apple Cinnamon cayenne sweet Pork chops
Ingridients-
3-4 pork chops
1/2cup apple sauce
1/2 cup brown sugar
1tbls cinnamon
cayenne to taste
Mix the cayenne,cinnamon and brown suagr together in a small bowl. Now coat your pork chops with your apple sauce and place in crockpot. Next evenly sprinkle your seasoning mixture over your pork chops. That's it folks. Place on low setting and cook 4-6hrs (if you have a big family like us double your recipe. Also if you perfer your pork a little, or a lot sweeter...like me, then double your brown sugar) I suggest serving with roasted sweet potatos and fresh corn on the cob. (This is a Benson family recipe so we hope you enjoy) Come back tomorrow for another recipe.
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