Anyone making/freezing meals?

[sojourn]

I have read a lot about preparing meals to freeze ahead of time so that you don't have to worry after baby is born.

I know that my grandma and my aunt will make stuff and bring it, but they are kind of set in their ways. My husband is currently eating vegan and gluten free (to help with some digestive issues he's been having). I want to make sure there's some food in there for him too! He'll be up all night and just as tired as I will, and I don't want him to have to eat stuff that doesn't make him feel good. So I am going to make sure I make at least a few things that he can definitely eat.

Is anyone else doing this? If so, maybe we could start a thread to share recipes?

 

[TicToc]

I am. Me and DH are also gluten free but I have a lot of other intolerances and allergies on top of that. We plan to bring a cooler with frozen meals with us when i go into labor so we have something to eat at the hospital and then have some stuff in the freezer at home for the first stretch when we get back. Of course, I am due in January so with the holidays I am going to have a busy month in the kitchen between Thanksgiving and Yule. I need a nap just thinking about it.

 

[sojourn]

The hospital is a great plan! My grandmother works at my hospital and she's already planning the food she'll bring

I can share some of our GF vegan recipes if you want. Maybe you could use them or omit/substitute to suit your dietary needs.

 

[TicToc]

The hospital is a great plan! My grandmother works at my hospital and she's already planning the food she'll bring

I can share some of our GF vegan recipes if you want. Maybe you could use them or omit/substitute to suit your dietary needs.

Honestly, I would be too lazy to try anything new anyway. I just eat veggies with meat or else some fruit, sometimes with peanut butter. There aren't many GF recipes that i can actually have because I am also grain and dairy free and won't eat anything with strange additives or chemicals. DH can eat more than me, it's always rice pasta or rice with meat though, and maybe the occasional potato or GF bread product. I try to stay away from the substitutes (besides the rice pasta) and just stick to simple combos of whole foods. It's so much less work and cheaper.

Although, I do have two big zucchinis and I was thinking about making pasta out of that but I have no idea how. Do you?

 

[sojourn]

I would just make ribbon pasta a'la fettucini. That way you can just use a knife. If you have other fancy pasta making gadgets (unlikely with the GFness) then you can use those.

I don't like weird substitutions for things. Our gluten free meals are sometimes GF pasta, and mostly just some combination of quinoa, brown rice, beans and veggies. I do dairy and meat, but my husband limits his animal products to eggs.

The only "weird" kind of substitute-ish stuff I use is nutritional yeast (for a cheesy flavor without the dairy) and tofu. I can still not really make myself eat tofu (the texture is totally yuck!) but I make it for my husband and just marinade it in the same stuff I use for my chicken. I'll use a combo of food processed silken tofu with cashews to make the base of a vegan pesto alfredo sauce.

I am not a good enough cook to experiment with all of the other junk!

 

[TicToc]

It sounds like we eat the same kinds of things. I also could never bring myself to eat tofu, it looks to gross to even try.

 

[sojourn]

Haha. I have tried it, I just can't stand it.

Sometimes, if I make a really amazing marinade (it's been known to happen...once in a very great while). I'll use leftover tofu to crumble onto salads or something. I have to make it SUPER small though!!!

 

[LisaDanielle]

I haven't started yet, but I definitely will be! My sister also told me about an awesome idea for a baby shower (that she said she would do for me! Yay!). It's a frozen meal shower, so everyone brings a frozen meal for you, with instructions on how to cook it. If you were to have a similar shower, you could include your food sensitivities/allergies on the invitation.

I'm ridiculously excited about it, even though I know it is still far away!

 

[sojourn]

Oh I love that idea!

It would be great for a 2nd child (or more, of course)

We need ALL of the stuff, so I'd rather spend the money on cooking myself and have my shower guests buy baby stuff.

 

[KerryGold]

I cooked with my DD and will definitely be doing it again. I think we had the basis for about 2.5 weeks. I tried one new recipe for it but we both found it really bland.

We had chilli, bolognaise, cottage/shepherds pie, basis for burritos, another chicken/prawns thing (bland) sliced garlic potatoes and lamb with lemon

I need more chicken recipes now though as our DD isn't a great fan of red meat.

xXx

 

[ashybug]

I'm planning on it, although it may not happen. We only have a very small freezer about the size of a microwave. I could make a couple meals, but probably not enough to make it worth it.

 

[sojourn]

Maybe you can make foods that go a long way but don't take as much space?

You can make chili or soups and then freeze them flat in ziplock bags. They take up very little space, but pack a big punch. Just put them in the crockpot and then you and OH can eat for a while. You could probably get a couple of weeks worth of food in there!

When I lived in a weird apartment with no kitchen, I would do this at my parents house and then keep 4 zip bags of meals in the freezer part of my mini fridge and heat them up in the crockpot.

 

[george83]

I didn't do this when I had my son but I really wish I had done, we had do many take always after he was born I hated it, great idea

 

[AC1987]

I didn't do this last time as we were about to move so we were pretty much clearing out our freezer and such but it was tough, thank God the hospital sent us home with a warm meal!! And then my DH would just pop to the store and pick up freezer meals and such til my mom came to help. This time I plan to freeze more meals.

 

[Whitesoxfan41]

I have a friend who has offered to fill our freezer as a shower gift. She's an AWESOME cook so of course I said yes!

 

[Mrs HM]

This is a great idea ladies and I just wanted to add that if you are thinking of doing this, don't leave it too late. I had planned to do this once I started maternity leave, but LO came early and I was still at work...it meant weeks of takeaways and lots of extra weight gain.

So this time around I'll be starting around 34 weeks to make sure I have something prepared.

 

[sojourn]

I plan on doing it toward the middle of the third trimester. Probably anywhere over 30 weeks. I don't want to do it too early and have yucky freezer burned food.
Hopefully that works out!

 

[ready4family]

I definitely plan on making some 32+ weeks as most of what I read say not to freeze stuff longer than 2 months. I'm up for ideas! I love to eat healthy but also will need to keep up the calories/carbs for breastfeeding. I hate how every recipe I look up is some unhealthy pasta or casserole! Do you think you could make everything for, say, chicken fajitas (veggies, chicken etc) and freeze or do you think the veggies would thaw soft?

 

[sojourn]

The veggies do thaw soft.
I would try (do a test run with a small amount, maybe leftovers or something) doing something like that and chopping/marinating and doing all of the prep work, then freezing it raw. You'll need to make sure that you thaw it and bring it up to room temperature before you try to cook it.

A lot of freezing stuff is just undercooking it or freezing it raw. Generally speaking, you can skip the very last cooking step. Do that, let everything come down to room temp, freeze and then when you thaw, pull it out the night before and let it come up to room temp before doing the last cooking step.

That always works for me.