31 Days to a More Organized Life : Day Fifteen : Meal Planning, Part One

Confession: I am awful at meal planning. It's one of the areas that I know would really help me, but I'm inconsistent at best when it comes to planning our meals in advance. I'd really like to improve on this so the next few days will be about taking some steps towards consistent menu planning.

To start off, I wanted to have some back-up meals in the freezer that can be thrown in the crock pot when I know it's going to be a hectic day. Even this takes some planning because the meals have to thaw beforehand. I think I can handle looking ahead at the week and seeing that Thursday is going to be busy so I better thaw a freezer meal Wednesday to make dinner easier the next night. Are you following me?

I did some research on good old Pinterest for freezer meals and found myself a brand new blog to read. It's the mecca of meals, crafts, DIY and it's called Six Sisters' Stuff. You might have heard of it; they have like ten zillion followers. The post that I found on Pinterest was this one about making 8 slow cooker freezer meals in one hour. Yahtzee!

I chose three of the eight meals to start: Black Bean Taco Soup, Hearty Beef Stew, and Cilantro Lime Chicken. I made a shopping list and took my little guy to the store to stock up.

I labeled gallon ziploc bags with each meal, today's date and the time each needs in the slow cooker. Then I just followed the instructions on Six Sisters and dumped everything in. I browned the ground turkey for the black bean taco soup first and let it cool while I put together the other two meals.

Now I have three ready-made meals that just need heating up to make dinner a snap!

Join me tomorrow for more adventures in meal planning and check out the previous days in the series here.