Hubby’s pay day was yesterday which meant another round of grocery shopping today followed by another round prepping some freezer meals.  I didn’t want to just duplicate everything I did the last go round so I changed it up some.  Unfortunately, today didn’t run nearly as smoothly as last time around and it took every ounce of willpower I possessed to keep going!  Last time around I used all of the recipes but one from the same blog and her step-by-step directions were incredibly helpful!  (Side note – check out that particular blog entry here – The Test Kitchen of Melissa Fallis.  I didn’t do the BBQ recipe but made all the rest!  Believe me, I will repeat those recipes again!)

Every time I got close to saying “chuck it”, I remembered the complete lack of stress when it came to meal time this past week and I kept going.  As I type this, I have a batch of sloppy joe meat all cooked up – it’s my mom’s homemade concoction – that will get defrosted and reheated on Friday night since there is a home football game which means marching band responsibilities for my son and uniform responsibilities for mom!

I also have a double batch (translated: two casseroles) of cheeseburger and fries casserole frozen and ready.  The steak marinade from the Melissa Fallis blog was a HUGE hit last time around so I did that one again.

I have four more recipes that I will take a go at tomorrow, all of them new.  One of them will make individual servings of calzones, another will make a double batch of  Baked Penne with Chicken and Sun-dried Tomatoes casserole, then there is Sausage and Spinach Pasta Bake as well as Upside Down Fettuccini Bake.  With the holiday on Monday, we are grilling out – burgers – and we are doing “breakfast for dinner” one night this week.  Still have two Chicken Pot Pies in my freezer and one of those will get pulled for supper on Wednesday.  Tomorrow’s dinner is a Marinated and Baked Pork Chop recipe from the blog I mentioned above.

I wasn’t planning to do any more twice baked potatoes but there was a sale at the store we couldn’t resist – $2.99 for a 15 lb. bag of potatoes.  No, that’s not a typo.  So I did two or three more meals worth of twice-baked potatoes (still had one of those in the freezer that we’re using for dinner tomorrow).  We’ll throw some fried potatoes on the menu with the burgers on Labor Day to use up another significant portion of the tatoes.

The butcher counter at our local grocery store does “meat bundles” and we purchased one of them this week – 100 servings of various meats for 100 dollars.  The box included pre-done burger patties (Labor Day cookout!), brats, pork chops, boneless pork chops, steaks, cube steaks, ribs, . . . lots of tasty stuff!  Between my freezer cooking and the meat bundle, we are well on our way to having most of the entrees for the month of September taken care of!

I’m absolutely exhausted and my feet hurt.  But I’m soooo glad I accomplished at least half of my freezer cooking today, especially since I didn’t get the grocery shopping started until after lunch!  Feeling very blessed that the freezer cooking thing (and the deal on potatoes and the meat bundle from the store) have stretched our grocery budget to crazy lengths!