Dishing It Up Recipe Hop: Freezer Meals

It's a brand new month, so we are kicking off a brand new theme for our Recipe Hop:  Freezer Meals!  

It's getting to be a hectic time of year, so it's always helpful to have some pre-made dishes on hand in the freezer.  Not only can they save you some time and hassle at dinner time, they can save you money, too!

 Here's why:

1.  You always have meals ready to heat and eat, so no more last minute cave-ins to getting fast food or go out to a restaurant when you've had a long day and don't feel like cooking.

2.  When you cook more of something, you buy the ingredients in bulk, which usually gives you a better price.

3.  You can watch the sale ads for great prices on meats.  When you find a good deal stock up!  Cook it in bulk right away, or if you don't have the time, freeze it for later!

4.  If you shop with coupons, and are able to stock up on some cheap or free pantry items, you can choose recipes to cook that contain the ingredients that you already have in your pantry.  Sometimes I find that I do not need to go to the store at all.  I love that!

5.  This is not so much a money saving tip as it is a nice thing to be able to do, but you can easily give a meal to someone in need if you have a freezer of ready made food.  At my church, whenever someone has a baby (and that happens quite a lot in our small congregation =P), we make a sign up to bring them food for a couple of weeks.  Doing freezer cooking has allowed me to be able to take part in that more often.  I love that, too.

For this first week, I'm not going to share a new recipe with you guys.  Instead, I'm going to direct you over to my Freezing Cooking label, which contains all my past freezer cooking posts.   That will give you a basic overview of the different types of things I've tried with my freezer cooking.  I plan to be cooking up some new things soon, so I will have a brand new recipe ready for next week!

I'm also going to share once more my favorite freezer cookbooks with you: