Freezer Meals for New Moms

Freezer meals for new moms are a life saver. Before giving birth to my first child, I knew I had to have some freezer meals on hand. I’m already well equipped for meal prepping, but that’s considering having unlimited amounts of time on my hands to meal plan, cook and prepare those meals. Given I’ll be in uncharted territory with lack of sleep, limited time and possibly just not wanting to be on my feet hours at a time, I wanted to have meals that were ready to go.

WHAT ARE FREEZER MEALS FOR NEW MOMS

As an avid meal prepper, I’ve always prepared a few freezer meals during my weekly meal preps. For those rare occasions where I truly did not feel like cooking either on the weekends or during the week. Freezer meals, pre-assembled meals/ingredients, that are convenient to defrost and either cook in the oven or in a crockpot.

They are amazing for not only new moms, but for anyone that doesn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to cooking during the week.

WHY FREEZER MEALS

I love doing freezer meals for several reasons:

Cost Effective: It cuts down on costs of spending money on eating out
Healthy Ingredients: you get to control the quality of ingredients that goes into your food
Batch cook: batch cooking meals for lunches and dinners throughout the week for simplicity

HOW TO DO FREEZER MEAL PREP

Meal plan: plan out those meals that you want to prep and freeze. My suggestion would be to do a minimum of 2 breakfast options, 2 lunch options and 2 dinner options. Of course you can do more or less of any of these if needed.

Create a shopping list: Once you have your meal plan laid out, and you’ve reviewed the recipes (if needed) next you want to create your shopping list. Remember to take stock of what you currently have on hand and what you need to get from the grocery store.

Gather your ingredients: Gather all of your ingredients together for each recipe. That means gather your meat, sauces, can goods, vegetables, spices on the counter. Don’t forget to grab gallon zip lock bags and a marker for easy storage and labeling.

Pro tip: Try to use the same ingredients across multiple recipes to eliminate food waste.
Kim Abbage Hart

Pre chop vegetables: To save time when you’re ready to cook your freezer meals, pre chop your vegetables before placing them in the ziplock bag. You can also take a shortcut and purchase recipe starters like these from your local grocery store as well.

Prep your protein: This includes slicing or cubing as well as adding the desired seasoning for the dish you’re preparing.

Assemble & label: Place all of your ingredients in a ziplock bag and ensure you label with any additional instructions such as how to cook (crockpot, oven, etc) and if any additional fresh ingredients should be added.