Hellobee Boards

i'm not sure if they would still be good. but i would start making some now (and eating them!) if you're interested. that way you can see what your family likes best and then you could make more of those closer to the time for baby's arrival.

I agree with @jhd:, if you wind up sick or even just tired it will be super helpful to have the freezer meals throughout your pregnancy anyway and it gives you a chance to fine tune your method.

I made a concentrated effort to prepare freezer meals at about 25 weeks (in June for me) and got a bunch done over 3 weekends and a few weeknights where I made doubles of dinner.

I'm glad I did because we started eating them during the pregnancy! Those days when you're just wiped out, its so nice to have them around, especially when eating out makes you bloated with all the sodium later in the third trimester! We don't have to worry about freezer burn that way either - we just eat the ones labeled earliest first and then replace them with another one later.

I'd say since July, we've been eating frozen meals at least once a week, maybe twice, and then I try to cook once a week where I make doubles of something and throw one in the fridge. So the number never really goes down. Its been totally manageable.

The best tips I have for freezer burn is to make sure everything is cool/cold when you put it in the freezer (steam = ice crystals = freezer burn) and that its sealed as tight as possible (air = freezer burn).

Another magical thing I learned is that you can make muffin batter, pour it into paper liners, freeze them in a cupcake tin, and then bake them off later! You can just drop the pucks of batter into the cupcake pan and thaw them overnight in the fridge, or leave them on the counter for an hour or two to thaw, or just add about 15 minutes to your bake time. Just made muffins this weekend with batter I froze over a month ago and they taste great!

I made so many freezer meals for my first pregnancy, then didn't use really any of them. Almost 10 months later and we still have a few enchiladas and gallon bags of soup in the freezer. The casseroles are definitely not great after about 6 months, but I am hoping the soup will still be good once it starts getting cold.

I am wary to do freezer meals again this time, I'm just afraid we won't use them. So my suggestion would to be sure you will use them before you put the effort into making them.

Do you have a vacuum sealer? I feel like if you're going to make a lot of freezer meals, you don't want any of them to be sacrificed to freezer burn.

I make extras and freeze leftovers, it's nice to have some options year round. Also as others mentioned, it's good practice to see what you like before you make items in bulk.

Like others have said, it definitely wont hurt to start now. I was SO sick for so long, that my husband lived off of take out - haha - so it would have been nice to have those. But the biggest, is that you can experiment with what freezes well and what doesn't. I wouldn't save things for longer than 6 months - but you can freeze it for a month, try it out and if it worked great make a big batch later on in your pregnancy.