It’s late November, and the busy holiday season is underway! During the holidays it can be tempting to skip out on your weekly meal planning sessions because you feel crunched for time. Don’t do it!
Meal planning saves SO much mental energy. Since my mind is currently running crazy with a million to-do’s, being consistent with my meal planning is totally saving my sanity right now.
As I’ve been working on this habit over the last four weeks, I’ve discovered one of my weak spots. I’m great at planning crockpot dinners on busy nights, but I’m not great at actually getting said crockpot meal put together the night before so that it can go ahead and cook all day. Then, partway through the day when I realize my mistake, I often end up resorting to my back-up meal. Not ideal!
So, I’m going to schedule out a big freezer cooking day in the next week or two. I’ll be focusing on meals that can be dumped into the crockpot, straight from the freezer. They’re sometimes called just “crockpot freezer meals”, and sometimes “dump meals”. Either way – they’re pretty genius. And they’ll allow me to plan crockpot meals without worrying if I’ll be too tired or busy to prep them the night before.
With the end-of-the-year chaos getting into full swing, I thought you might like to include a few of these in your repertoire as well. Here are twelve I plan to try that sound delish!
15 Nourishing Freezer Crockpot Meals (Gluten-Free, or easily adaptable)
- Honey Chicken with Quinoa | I Heart Naptime
- Aunt Beulah’s Saucy Chicken | Red & Honey
- Slow Cooker Orange Shredded Beef | The Family Freezer
- Goulash | Once a Month Meals
- Cilantro Lime Chicken (plus 9 more in the same post!) | Ashley Noel Barnes
- Turkey Black Bean Chili | The Family Freezer
- Amazing Irish Beef Stew | Red & Honey (not specifically written as a freezer meal, but should work fine!)
- Mexican Stuffed Peppers | Once a Month Meals
- Chickpea and Potato Curry | The Pretty Bee
- Garlic Mint Pork Loin | The Family Freezer
- Pork Chops with Apple and Sweet Potato | 5 Dollar Dinners (I’d use honey instead of brown sugar)
- Tuscan Chicken Stew | Once a Month Meals
- Cuban Black Beans | Frugal Family Favorites
- Chicken Fajitas | The Humbled Homemaker
- Chicken Teriyaki | Thirty Handmade Days
Our Meal Plan: Week 5
Monday
Lunch: Crackers and cheese, baby carrots, hummus
Dinner: Out at our friends’ house for a birthday dinner
Tuesday
Lunch: Boiled eggs, oranges
Dinner: Cheesey-Mexi Lentil Macaroni (didn’t get to it the last time I planned it, so trying again this week!)
Wednesday
Lunch: Leftovers
Dinner: Crockpot chicken with mashed potatoes and peas, gravy
Thursday
Lunch: Leftovers
Dinner: Amazing Irish Beef Stew (this is a recipe from waaay back in my archives. I knew nothing about blogging back then, but the stew is to die for!)
Friday
Lunch: Leftovers
Dinner: Flatbread pizza (perfecting a gluten-free flatbread recipe – my kids raved about it last week!)
Saturday
Lunch: Packed lunches at the dance studio
Dinner: Slow cooker coconut cashew chicken
Sunday
Lunch: Leftovers
Dinner: Tuna steaks, rice, salad
Do you include freezer-to-crockpot meals in your regular rotation? Share your favourites!
Related: Quick Healthy Meals Ultimate Guide (101 Tips, Recipes, and Strategies)
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Bonnie
I love Plan to Eat and have been using it for a year! What I am trying this month is adding all the freezer recipes I want to make in one day to a specific tag (“Saturday ” for example). Then I can “schedule” those for one day and print my shopping list for that particular day so I have all the ingredients in one list instead of 12 separate recipes with 12 separate ingredient lists 🙂