Planning Part 2: What to Make

Planning, Part 1: How Much Food to Make

I don't know if there is a meal planning equivalent to writer's block, but there should be because I definitely get it.  I suspect it is a common problem.  I don't know why, but when I sit down to meal plan I suddenly can't think of anything to make.  I know how to make many delicious meals and yet, nothing.  There are some ways to combat this.  I keep a list of ideas. When I'm going about my life and think of something I'd like to eat I put it on a list on my phone.  When it's time to plan I consult the list to help me with ideas.

I also come up with categories.  It's a lot easier to think of things when you narrow it down to specific categories.  This helps me to have a variety of things, so I don't end up with chicken everyday.  When I did meal planning before I started doing freezer cooking I would do categories like: chicken, soup, pasta, vegetarian,....  With freezer cooking my categories are different, which I will elaborate on more in a bit.



It is also helpful to save past meal plans.  With my freezer meals I have my spreadsheet that I can browse through to see what I've made in the past and get ideas.  Before I started doing freezer meals I kept all of my previous meal plans in a spreadsheet so I could look back and get ideas.  What can I say? I like spreadsheets. :)

Before you get started reading, I realize that this is a lot of information.  Yes, meal planning is a lot of mental work.  I think anyone who has done it would agree, but this isn't as much as it looks.  I'm trying to take you through my whole mental process of creating a balanced freezer full of meals.  That's a lot to write down, but a lot of this just gets done in my head as I go about the rest of my day. Plus like anything else it gets easier with practice, so just keep that in mind as you go through my wall of text.  Okay?

Here's what I consider when deciding what meals to make

The Season

What season is coming up is the first thing I consider when planning my meals.  I do this because the first year I did freezer cooking I still had a lot of winter foods in the freezer when summer rolled around, and it's really hard to get excited about eating a hearty, hot potato soup in July in Mississippi.

I also try to avoid turning on the oven in the summer since it makes the house hot.  So in summer I want light refreshing foods and nothing that needs to be baked.  I know right off the bat I will want to make smoked pork and smoked chicken since they are both versatile and can be used in great summer meals like salads, cold noodle bowls and tacos.

Getting it on the Table

The next thing I consider is what it takes to get the meal from the freezer to the table.  I put my freezer meals into 4 categories:

• Freezer to Pan: Requires no thawing.  These meals can be cooked straight from the freezer.  They're convenient for when you forgot to thaw something for dinner.
• Heat and Eat: This means the recipe is a complete meal with protein and vegetables in it.  All you have to do is thaw and heat or cook through.  No need for anything else.
• Simple Side: This meal requires a simple side like pasta, rice or a salad be made in addition to reheating/cooking the freezer meal to be a complete meal.  Or it can indicate a small amount of finishing work is required on the meal itself.
• Some Assembly Required: These meals require some work to put together or finish after coming out of the freezer.

Most of the meals I have for the freezer are either of the Simple Side or Some Assembly Required variety.  It's hard to come up with meals that are complete coming out of the freezer or don't require any thawing.  I always try to make sure I have some Freezer to Pan meals because sometimes I forget to thaw something or plans change and it's nice to have some meals that can just come out of the freezer without any pre-planning.  SW Chicken Patties and Pierogi will fill that slot.

I usually like to have some Heat and Eat meals in there too.  It's nice to have some complete meals that don't require any sides.  Unfortunately most of the Heat and Eat meals are more winter foods (like casserole and soup), but Potato Chorizo Tacos are a Heat and Eat that work for summer.  I've had a hankering for them anyway.


Vegetarian vs Meat

I like to have a balance of vegetarian and meat dishes.  So far I have 4 meat dishes and only one vegetarian.  It is a little harder to think of vegetarian freezer meals for the summer as many of the ones I come up with are casseroles as soup while I can prep meats for the freezer and then serve them with a simple salad or veggie side.  Black Bean Burgers and Falafel will add some vegetarian options.  I will probably need to revisit this balance as I keep adding meals.  Vegetarian brings me to...

Budget

One of the reasons I do freezer cooking is to save money.  Some of the meals I enjoy can get pricey, but when planning my freezer cooking I try to balance the more expensive meals with cheaper ones.  So far I have chosen fairly inexpensive to moderately priced meals although the ground chicken for the SW Chicken Patties can get pricey.  That's okay though because the black bean burgers and falafels will both be inexpensive.  Since it's always good to reduce food costs I'm going to add in lentil joes.  It's one of the cheapest meals I make.

Stuff I Just Want to Eat

I've been in the mood for Chicken Tikka Masala and Jambalaya, so those are getting added to the list.

New Stuff

I'm regularly trying out new things to freeze because I like variety.  This time I'm experimenting with breaded chicken cutlets for frying.  I did something similar when I made Chicken Milanese, but I have some ideas now how it could be made more versatile.  Look for a post about that in a few months.

So far I have...

Smoked pork
Smoked chicken
SW Chicken Patties
Pierogi
Potato Chorizo
Black Bean Burgers
Falafel
Lentil joes
Chicken Tikka Masala
Jambalaya
Breaded Chicken Cutlets

for a total of 11 meals.  4 of them are vegetarian.  2 of them are on the pricier side with rest of them being moderate to inexpensive.  There's only 1 new meal, but that's okay.  Right now I'm just trying to get the freezer stocked with stuff I know works.  I'll experiment more later.

I would like to have 16 total meals, so I need to come up with 5 more.  Preferably most of those 5 will be vegetarian since I have a lot of meat already.  I'm flexible on that though.  Now it's time to browse my spreadsheet and Pinterest boards to see what else I can come up with...

All right, I'm back and I have decided to add:

Sweet potato flautas - I've made these once before and they were good but still required some tweaking.  I think it's time to give them another try.

Veggie Blintzes - I have no recipe for this, but it's something I've had in mind for a while.  I'm thinking something like green vegetable tart but in crepe form.

Cheese Souffle - I know this sounds crazy, but I have an idea how it could be done.  This does violate my no oven rule. It's really more of a guideline.  I'll probably try to eat these up before the summer gets too hot.

Thai Chicken Burgers - Came across this on one of my Pinterest boards and remembered I've wanted to try this for a while.  It looks like SW Chicken Patties with a different flavor profile.

Gyros - It's been a long time since I've made these, and I've never frozen them.  My husband really likes gyros, and I think it's time to bring them back.

Now that I've made my list it's a good idea to look it over and make sure it's a balanced workload.  Sometimes I look over my list of meals and realize I have chosen several difficult or time consuming items.  Or I find that I have a lot of meals requiring all the same equipment.  One time I realized I had way too many soups on the list, and I would have to spend several days making soup and not having anything else to work on while the soup cooked.  I ended up replacing some of the soups with other things.  Looking over this list I see that I have a lot of items that need to be assembled: flautas, chicken burgers and patties, black bean burgers, falafel,...  I'm okay with that.  It's kind of the nature of summer freezer cooking.  I'll just be spending a lot time shaping things.

Now I have a few new recipes I need to add to my spreadsheet.  Next up I'll generate a shopping list and head to the store.