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

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It’s October already!! and time for another meal plan! Here’s another month’s worth of recipe ideas plus seven more 30-minute tasks for filling the freezer!

Monthly Menu Plan - real food cooking, featuring slow cooker and freezer friendly recipes plus 7, 30 minute tasks for filling your freezer. From SimplifyLiveLove.com

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

Taco Tuesdays

  • Taco Meat for a Crowd – (quadruple for the freezer then you can eat this taco meat on chili cheese fries, baked potatoes, over loaded nachos, in burritos – very versatile freezer meal.)
  • Chili Cheese Fries
  • Loaded Baked Potatoes with Taco Meat
  • Homemade Taco Pizza (bake extra pizza crusts for the freezer)

Wing It Wednesdays

My Choice Thursdays

Slow Cooker Friday

Souper / Salad  Saturday

Breakfast for Dinner 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 JanuaryFebruaryMarch, April, or June to see what else you could do. Here’s what I plan to add to my freezer in October:

1. On the night you have Parmesan Garlic Chicken, go ahead and make a double batch! Bam! A meal component ready for another day.

2. One day in the morning, cook up a big mess of black 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.

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. On the night you make Baked Potato Soup, go ahead and bake extra potatoes! Left over baked potatoes will form the basis for a quick dinner on the night you eat loaded baked potatoes with the taco meat you made on Tuesday!

5. Make two batches of Irish Shepherd’s Pie instead of one on the night you eat Irish Shepherd’s Pie and you have an entire meal in your freezer!

6. Make a double batch of Bacon Wrapped Egg Muffins and you’ll have a nice breakfast for another day, or another easy dinner.

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?

Linking up: MPM

About Michelle Marine

Michelle Marine is the author of How to Raise Chickens for Meat, a long-time green-living enthusiast, and rural Iowa mom of four. She empowers families to grow and eat seasonal, local foods; to reduce their ecological footprint; and to come together through impactful travel.

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1 Comment

  1. Thanks for featuring my crepes. You have a great meal plan and the tips will be helpful for using leftovers and staying ahead of the dinner game.