Preparations...

With a second baby coming into our home in about 8 weeks I've hit the nesting stage. I suddenly feel the need to pre-prepare meals and freeze them for my family. I didn't worry about meals with our first child, I just figured we could wing it with my awesome mom cooking while she came to help, some wonderful members in our church bringing in meals for a few days after my mom left and then my hubby who is an awesome cook when he wants to be. We actually did pretty great, though I wasn't worried about nutrition because it was just the two of us we were feeding, lol! My hubby can cook, and he is really great at it, but he gets stuck on certain foods for long periods of time, not to mention he is cooking at 6:00pm after a long 10 hour day at work. So with our first child he fed us a lot of frozen Freschetta pizzas, mongolian beef (made from seasoning packets), sweet and sour chicken, and fried potatoes or french fries with steak. Needless to say I got quite bored with our menu after a while, though I wouldn't say anything because I appreciated his cooking so much!

This time around I've been thinking about our son and how I'd like him to be eating while I'm "out of commission" for a time. It wouldn't be such a big deal other than getting used to cooking while taking care of 2 kids now instead of just one except that I have to have my babies via c-section, this puts me down a little longer than I'd like to be, I feel great but standing for long periods of time doesn't bode well for me. I've started freezing pre-prepared foods, as of last night that is, lol!

My plans so far:

2-3 times a week I'll be making something for dinner that I can double and successfully freeze half of, definitely things that will still taste awesome after a month or so in the freezer and being heated up in the oven.

I started last night with my Cheesy Hamburger Cassarole. I made two casseroles, baking only the first one for dinner last night. The second one I left the cheese topping off until the day we choose to eat it and I did not bake it, just put it together in a disposable casserole dish, placed the lid on it, wrote an explanation of what it was and how to bake it on top and then stuck it in our little deep freeze.

I have planned out quite a few different meals to freeze over the next few weeks, none of which will be baked before freezing:

Chicken Pot Pie (this time I will be making it with a real pie crust, yummy!, it tends to freeze better that way. I won't be baking it at all, just assembling it and freezing)
Classic Tuna Noodle Casserole (assembling, and leaving the topping off until baking day)
Pizza Casserole (leaving the cheese off the top until baking day.)
Homemade Mac and Cheese (putting it all together, even the topping)
Cheese Filled Jumbo Shells (completely following the cooking directions, no baking though)
Meatballs and Rice (following the complete cooking directions, but placing it in a casserole dish and freezing it, then when we want to eat it we'll bake it casserole style and eat it.)
Chicken and Biscuits (freezing it without the biscuits on top, whoever gets to bake it will need to bake the dish for so long then add biscuits on top and bake again)
Tater Tot Casserole (completely assembling, even topping)
Spinach Cheese Manicotti (completely following cooking directions, no baking though)
Shepherds Pie (freezing it all assembled minus the cheese on top, top with cheese on baking day)

And I'll be storing up as much homemade bread as I possibly can. We've had to purchase bread the last few weeks and I can't believe how much more we spend on groceries just adding a few loaves of bread to the cart each week! Hopefully I can get enough bread baked and frozen before the baby comes to last us for a few months.

I feel if I can get the 10 or 11 meals prepared and frozen we'll do great after the baby comes for a few weeks at least. Just like with the first baby we'll have my wonderful mom here and as long as she feels like cooking from scratch we'll let her while she's here. Our church members will most likely bring in 2-3 days of meals. I'm thinking my mother-in-law may be coming to help after my mom leaves, and if she feels the need to cook that'll be great ;o). And of course my wonderful hubby will add a few of his own meals to the mix. I think we'll definitely be set for a while until I can feel up to cooking a real meal from scratch again.