Freezer meals

I'm back from my hiatus and am in the process of revamping this blog.  Instead of it just being recipes, I'm going to be focusing on other tips and ideas for young adults to save money.  Since my semester ended, I should have more time to make posts and hopefully my summer courses won't interfere and prevent me from posting.

One of the best ways to save money is to take a homemade lunch to work with you, rather than hitting up a fast food chain everyday.  Sometimes it can be difficult prepare a lunch early in the morning when your coffee has barely had time to kick in or you are rushing around trying to get ready and it takes forever to figure out what to wear...this is when freezer meals are perfect!  Ryan and I usually set aside one weekend a month to dedicate to cooking and creating freezer meals for the month.  We plan out what meals we want to make and then make a giant batch of them and divide into individual containers.  We made red beans and rice using 3 boxes of Zataran's red beans and rice mix and cut up cooked Italian sausage to put in them. We also made more meals of chicken stir fry using the recipe at the bottom of this post.  Once the meals are cooked and have had time to cool down, we place them in individual tupperware and label them.  Then they are ready to freeze.  These meals are perfect and end up costing about $1.50 per individual container, which is a lot better than spending $5 or more each day for fast food on a lunch break!

In addition to the lunches, we also made a batch of breakfast burritos for busy, on-the-go mornings.  Here is the link to my recipe for these: http://cookingformyhungryhusband.blogspot.com/2014/01/breakfast-burritos.html.  The ingredients for these generally cost about $12 total, but will provide breakfast for 15 days!

 Chicken Stir Fry

Ingredients:

• 1 lb bag brown rice
• 1.5 lb precooked tyson chicken
• about 10 diced mini carrots
• 1.5 cups broccoli florets
• 1 Bottle of stir fry sauce such as the Panda Express Sweet Chili Sauce
• Any additional vegetables you would like to add such as zucchini

 Directions

• Cook rice according to directions
• When rice is almost done, start heating the chicken and vegetables in a skillet with a little bit of olive oil.  Saute until chicken and vegetables are golden. 
• Combine chicken and vegetables with the cooked rice.
• Pour sauce over chicken, vegetables, and rice and stir together thoroughly.