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Hi ladies, I'm due to have my bubba via cesarean this tues 5th July. I want to cook up and freeze some meals that still taste good after you defrost and reheat them. I want to make it a bit easier for my husband who will already have his hands full with a 5 4 and 2yr old. I know spaghetti is a good one but what else??? Please any suggestions would be great. :)
Rissotto
Stews etc anything that can be done in slow cooker like beef straganoff, chicken curry, stewed sausage
Soups (ham hock and vegi, pea and ham, leek and potatoe, chicken and sweetcorn
Pies
sausage rolls
Good luck
I pretty well freeze anything that can go with pasta or rice. Just make up and freeze the sauce and write whatever goes with it on the lid to be cooked while you are heating the sauce.
eg: Tuna mornay, tomato based sauce with chopped sausages, chicken stroganoff, taco (mexican) mince and beans (can have with corn chips or wedges like nachos),. mild curries. Anything really.
HTH
pasties, mini quiches, sausage rolls etc are good cos they can be snack or meal and you can just get out the ones you need
apricot chicken
i was told recently, make up meatballs and freeze them raw. (then cook for 50 mins on a tray, close together, at 180 degrees).
Homemade soup is a good one to freeze.
Homemade lasagne. I freeze it in dinner sizes. E.g the lasagne dish makes 12 squares of lasagne. we eat three squares per meal. so i gladwrap up four packages of three squares.
Freeze things thin, for quicker defrosting. e.g chicken schnitzels.
Homemade sausage rolls.
i'm a pretty basic cook, i'm sure much more experienced cooks will come along and give you many more ideas.
THis is not about FREEZING or PRE-COOKING, but something i wish i had done, before i had my bub, was
- automate bill paying (online)
- set up online supermarket shopping (at least for the basics)
- set up online fruit n veg shopping (so there's always "grab n go" healthy food in the house, when you're too tired to cook/make a sandwich) - the most important bit in these last two, is the delivery part.
- having lists on the fridge, so if you don't set up auto shopping, then when people visit and say "what can i do to help" - and you are frazzled, just give them one of your lists on the fridge "could you go and pick this shopping up please"? and then you've made them feel useful, and you've gotten something you actually need, done.
- booking a cleaner for once a fortnight (for e.g) to do the wet areas for first six weeks.
i lived off weetbix for the "early daze", all the plans of dh doing grocery and fruit/veg shopping didn't work out, too much else happened. At the time, we were both too exhausted to work out online shopping, so it just didn't get done. Just to have had fresh fruit around, to be able to grab and munch, would have made such a difference.
Agree with gigi!! I thought we would be fine, and DH or I would take it in turns, one watch bub the other cook.wrong!! Had cereal or toast for about a week, then takeaway for another week. If there's a next time I will be prepared lol.
Beef strog, shepherds pie,curries, sausage rolls,savoury mince,slow cooker meals....
Spagetti Bowl is always easy. Quiche, pasta bakes, stir frys.
By the way...tuesday the 5th July is my birthday! How exciting for you. My baby is due on my husbands birthday in January.
curries and stews always taste good defrosted. Also things like chilli so all you need to do is make some rice to accompany it.
I make up and freeze a lot of sauces, so all that needs doing is pasta cooking fresh and the sauce heated up. Pretty much anything in a sauce can be frozen. To freeze and re-heat and it taste nice you need a fairly high liquid content.
WRT on-line shopping. I did this. I also set up an order that was ready to process when I was overdue so I could come home, find no food, order everything with just two clicks. Well, when I was finally home with no visitors (almost a month later), I did just that and was so proud of myself. But wait a minute... I must have been craving more than I thought I was because all my favourite stuff was NOT what I was fancying. Cottage cheese with pineapple anyone?
Things we have in our freezer at the moment: butter chicken, lamb korma meatballs, chilli con carne, nachos, spag bol, chicken bol, cottage pie, soups. In the past we have had lasagnas (chick, beef, vegetable), sausage casserole. I've made up hamburger patties and just frozen them ready to chuck in the grill. Don't forget easy meals like sausages and mash.
Check out the taste website, you should be able to search for freezeable meals.
I also sometimes marinade things in the freezer which takes out a step. I also precut chicken breasts into strips and freeze them in meal size servings which saves a lot of time - easy to cut up some vegies and pour a stirfry sauce over the top.