Eating in a hurry?

It is 6 p.m., you just got home from work, you have 1 hour to feed your family and get back out the door to a practice/game/recital/meeting and you have no idea what’s for dinner.

This may sound familiar. It happens quite often in mine. What a difference having a meal planned, even better to have it prepared and ready-to-eat, more hints.

I received this week in the mail an ad for meal prep. This is a great service. You can go to the kitchen and prepare your own meals, or order ready-to-eat frozen meals. I went through the list and made my own version of it. So I thought about what I could do better and made 10 meals in under 2 hours.

I have written many times about the beauty, and ease of use, of the slow cooker (“crockpot”) so I won’t give any more details. Focus on making meals ahead to make it easier to use your slow cooker. Take 15 minutes each morning to make your meal preparations. When you get home, you will have dinner ready for you.

Let’s now go even further.

1. Spend an hour or so on the weekend to prepare several meals, and then put them in your fridge.

2. Place tomorrow’s meals in the freezer for one day before you need them.

3. When life gets busy, you can simply empty your freezer containers into the slow cooker in the morning. Turn on low heat to bring your home smelling delicious and ready for dinner.

Tips for freezing meals

1. So meat doesn’t end up in your slow cooker’s bottom, you can place it first into a freezer container.

2. For freshness, empty your freezer container.

3. Make two of each meal, and freeze for up 3 months.

4. For freeze-ahead slow cooking meals, you will be able to cook tenderer foods like fish and legumes. However, I prefer firmer meats like chicken, pork and beef.