Monthly Real Food Menu Plan & 7, 30 Minute Tasks for Filling the Freezer

on Nov 02, 2015, Updated Aug 26, 2022

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Ah November! Who wants another 30 days Here’s another month’s worth of recipe ideas plus seven more 30-minute tasks for filling the freezer!

Monthly Real Food Menu Plan & 7, 30 Minute Tasks for Filling the Freezer

It’s been a while since I shared a monthly menu plan with ideas for ways to sneak in freezer cooking! Truth be told, between our move out of the barn and into the Passive-Aggressive House, my trip to California for a green blogging conference called Shiftcon, and other shorter trips we’ve taken the last few months, I have not been good about planning or cooking! I hope that writing and sharing this plan will help ME get back on track, and be helpful to you too!

Monthly Menu Ideas

Meatless Mondays

Homemade Alfredo
Garlic & Potato Soup
Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes & White Beans
Creamy Pasta with Broccoli (the recipe calls for bacon, but I will omit on Meatless Monday}

Taco Tuesdays

Taco Lasagna – I’m trying out a new recipe! {make extra taco meat for the freezer for use all month}
Fish Tacos
Taco Salad
Regular ole tacos

Slow Cooker Wednesdays – Wednesdays are busy days at my house.

My Choice Thursdays

American Goulash
Honey Mustard & Rosemary Pork Roast
Lazy Day Sausage & Root Veg Casserole
THANKSGIVING!!

Pizza Friday

Pizzadilla
4 Cheese, no sauce pizza {make and freeze extra pizza crusts}
Homemade Taco Pizza
Turkey Pot Pie {made with leftover Turkey – and an extra for the freezer because these are DELICIOUS!!}

Souper / Salad Saturday

One Pot Lasagna Soup
Roasted Tomato & Butternut Squash Soup
Beef & Barley Soup – made in the slow cooker
Ham & Bean Soup made with the leftover ham bone from Thanksgiving {free extra soup}

From the Sea Sunday

Seven, 30-minute {or there about} tasks for filling the freezer

I’ve got lots of freezer tasks this month – See all the bolded text above for 9 different tasks you could easily add to this month’s menu! Pick and choose your favorite, or visit January, February, March, April, or June to see what else you could do. Here’s what I plan to add to my freezer in October:
1. I didn’t include breakfast ideas in this menu, but I highly recommend that you make a huge batch of homemade granola for munching on throughout the month! Just store it in an air tight container. Don’t freeze the granola.

2. One day in the morning, cook up a big mess of beans to freeze and freeze the extras in 2-cup portions, if you’d like to have the equivalent of canned beans on hand. I freeze mine in larger portions because I always cook more than one can of beans at a time. – This is my standard freezer cooking item. I do it every month. I recommend that you do too.

3. On the night you have tacos, cook up a big batch of taco meat and freeze the extras! I plan to quadruple the recipe and use the taco meat once per week on different taco-type meals.

4. After Thanksgiving, make up a homemade Turkey Pot Pie with the left over Turkey. Go ahead and make TWO and put one in your freezer!

5. I also highly recommend freezing soup. Make more bean soup than you’ll need and then freeze in single portion sizes for a quick lunch or dinner when you need one!

6. I also recommend baking a huge batch of bacon {yes, in your oven}. Freeze the extras for quick egg & bacon sandwiches all month long.

7. On the night you make homemade pizza, bake up a few extra pizza crusts and freeze. Then you’ll have quick and easy homemade pizzas for another time.

By the way, I think double and quadrupling recipes is a great way to fill your freezer, but I’ve also participated in freezer meal exchange groups before, where a group of people made 9 or 10 family portions of the same meal and then swapped their meals so we ended up with a bunch of different meals instead of all the same. If you’d like some tips for setting up your own freezer meal exchange group, head on over here.

And that’s it! One month of recipe ideas PLUS tasks to fill your freezer! Have you jumped on the freezer cooking bandwagon yet?? How’s it going for you? What type of recipes would you like to see more of?