Marathon Meals

I have the best intentions for creating healthy, well balanced meals for my family every night. Lean meat with healthy portions of fresh vegetables. Food prepared by me, for my family.

 As the saying goes, "The road to hell is paved with the best intentions"

Some days, time gets away from me. And to be honest, some days I just do not want to cook. Unhealthy options have become limitless. Dollar Menus, Value Menus,  $.99 Menus, BOGO pizza... Can you tell we frequent these places too often?  I know who has the best deal on food most days of the week.

However, I have seen what I consider a "new craze" (yes, I know my hipster talk has your attention) on Pinterest. I haven't seen a name for it yet, but I'm calling it Marathon Meals.

If your heart just fell, take note: these meals have nothing to do with running 26.2 miles, or preparing to run 26.2 miles.

The basic idea is this: You dedicate a block of time to prepare a large number of meals, then freeze them. On days where cooking is out, eating well doesn't have to be.

I read the recipes that some use to do this, but ultimately thought about my own favorite recipes that would probably freeze well. I tried to stick with things that were similar, because that seems like it makes the prep that much easier.

Here is what I came up with. (Most bloggers would insert some photos here, but I honestly just didn't think about it when I was cooking. Next time!)

Taco Soup
Chili
Chicken Casserole
Beef Enchilada Casserole
Breakfast Burritos

Click here for a link to the recipes.

The biggest bulk of the recipes is ground beef. Ground beef is easy to work with and we love it. I always buy the leanest I can find, never going below 93% lean. Ask your local meat department when they mark their meat down, and buy it on sale. When I do that, the meat is even cheaper than the regular priced 70% lean (that just sounds wrong ~ 70% lean?!)

I cooked the ground beef (about 9 pounds total) all together, then divided it up between the recipes that called for it. While I was cooking the ground beef, I also had chicken cooking for the chicken casserole.  This way, basically all that is left for the first four meals is assembly. Cooking the meat portion took all of about 20 minutes.

Then I broke out the stock pots and disposable aluminum pans. In one stock pot, all the ingredients for Taco Soup. In the other, Chili. Two aluminum pans got Chicken Casserole, and two others got Beef Enchilada Casserole. I covered them with aluminum foil, labeled what they were and the date, and they went into the freezer.

While the soup and chili simmered, I reserved the chicken broth ~ from the chicken prepared for the casserole ~ into an ice tray.The next day I put the frozen cubes into a freezer bag. Voila! Perfect chicken stock, and I know exactly what is in it. Be prepared to never use that tray for anything other than preparing chicken stock, however. No matter how much you wash it, the smell is never going away.

Then I started on the Breakfast Burritos. Those took about 30 minutes, tops. I placed the filling inside the tortillas, rolled them up, and placed them in freezer bags.

All that was left was the Taco Soup and Chili. I filled up gallon size Ziploc bags, 2 with Taco Soup, and 3 with Chili., laid them flat in the freezer (so they take up less space once frozen solid), and cleaned the stock pots.

In less than 2 hours, I had 9 dinners for a family of 6 and 20 breakfast burritos made, as well as a clean kitchen. Now on those days where I don't feel like cooking, I can just pull out one of our "Marathon Meal" dinners!