Freezer Meals for Grandmother

We tried out Let's Dish a while back, where you prep meals at the store to cook at home. The various parts of the dish/meal go into smaller ziplock bags, and they all go into a big ziplock bag, along with a recipe card of defrosting and cooking instructions. Very compact and easy.

Dear E.,
What a great cost saving and lovely idea for yuor grandmother!
Helpful Hints for Freezer Meals:
• Allow sufficient time to defrost the frozen meal.
Depending on the size of the meat pieces, this can
take 24 hours. For best results, take the meal out
of the freezer the night before you plan to prepare
the meal, thawing overnight in the refrigerator.
• For food safety, thaw meals in the refrigerator
only.
• Adjust cooking times accordingly to allow for
thick or large pieces of meat, or meat pieces that
are not yet fully defrosted in the middle.
• For best results, cut large pieces of chicken breast
in half crosswise. This will help with the
defrosting time and help to ensure more even
cooking. These are for meals that have been prepared BUT not cooked yet!
• Freezer meals should be used within 2 months of
preparation.
Don't freeze these!
Most foods freeze well but here are some that don't.
-Raw salad veggies such as lettuce and tomatoes
-Hard boiled eggs
-Potatoes, rice, pasta in a stew, soup or other liquid medium. they get mushy and can actually dissolve. You can add them later when you're ready to heat a frozen dish.
-Instant rice. You can freeze regular cooked rice(from a steamer or rice cooker)
-Breaded and or fried foods
-Most sauces and gravies made with cornstarch, milk, or sour cream.

Pammy
and good luck!

There are some really inexpensive stackable plastic containers that do well in the microwave...they can be re-used every week, so you can buy 7 or so smaller ones for one meal options and freeze them - like baked ziti, veggies and chicken, or whatever she likes to eat...then she can just take one out at a time and heat them up and eat out of the container....they have these at the grocery store and walmart, etc....I think I have used just about every brand and they are all good. You can also put salad in storage ziploc bags - they are easy to stuff into the small spaces. :)

Here's a thought...

Consider buying her a set of 2 personal size corning ware dishes. Then freeze your meals in these dishes and once they are frozen, pop them out and store them in the ziploc bags that you pump the air out of them. That makes them vacuum sealed for freshness and they fit in the casserole dish. She simply slides a new one into the dish and microwaves it or pops it in the oven.

I'm against heating things in plastic because it gives off fumes that are hazardous to your health. Now your 80+ grandma probably won't be too affected since I think it takes a decent amount of time... but it would be nicer for her to eat her meal out of something nice rather than some plastic container. The meals and the dishes are a really nice present and the dishes shouldn't cost much.

Just a thought.
Liz

I do not really have any suggestions but to say google once a month books but did want to say I think this is a super idea. Very thoughtful and I am sure she will love it.

This is a great idea. I'm not sure I can help you exactly. When I have done this in the past for myself before my husband deployed, I used www.savingdinner.com. However, her freezer meals aren't actually cooked - everything is measured and cut up, but not ready to microwave. Most of the items still need to go in the skillet, oven, or grill.

After Christmas once she has gone through your wonderful idea you might want to consider helping her to use the Angel Food Ministries program for seniors. http://www.angelfoodministries.com/menu_0911en2.asp The program offers 10 convience meals especially made for Seniors for $28.00. Though it was initially a program for those in financial need they encourage everyone to participate because the more people who use it the cheaper they can offer the food by buying in bulk.

You have a lot of good ideas already. I have always used seal'n'meal machine and bags. When my kids reach Jr High School and I was working full time plus and hubby was working odd hours. Everyone was on a different schule. It was just too much work to have dinner 4 times an evening ranging anywhere from 5pm to 11:30pm. I would take one long evening and cook up a week worth of dinners and bag them up, mark them and freeze them. I would bag up carroles, sauces, meats and veggies. That way when the kids or hubby got home from school clubs/sports practices/work, they could pick out a meal(bag or bags) and either boil it or micro it and have healthy dinner. You dont have to de-freeze the bag either.
Even tho my kids are out of school, I still do it somewhat. Certain dishes/dinners are just too much work to make just onces, so I double the receipe and bag it, mark them and freeze them. Plus I use this system for lunchs for me at work now. It helps me to eat healthy low calorie lunchs.
Good luck

P.S. You can get the seal'n'meal machine and bags from Qvc and now they have plates that you can use too.

ou can try once a month cooking, it is a book from amazon, or i go it at sams. it gives you step by step instructions on how to cook a month or 2 weeks worth of meals, you can freeze them in smaller portions for one person and keep the rest for yourself, anyway its a great book

I did this for my parents once for a birthday. I only did a week's worth of meals, though. I went to Walmart and bought some inexpensive plates and bowls - they turned out to be Corel, but on sale for $1.00 each. They were quite large, like a square with rounded off corners. I fixed and plated entire meals on each plate. Then I vacuum packed the entire plate with my Foodsaver. (It does squish the food down a bit, though.) Then I froze them. All they had to do was cut the end of the bag and place in the microwave. I included small cans/jars of things like cranberry sauce or gravy. Add a bag of salad and you're set. After the meals were gone, they returned the plates. Now, whenever I have enough extra food I plate it and freeze it. When I get enough I just take them over again.

If you want the meals to be microwaved, I would use glass. If you want it to go in an oven, you could use small, disposable metal pans. Ideas: minestrone, chili, chicken divan, rigatoni, .......hope this helps. Great idea!