Hellobee Boards

My husband made and froze a bunch of meals so we could just defrost and add a starch. I basically subsisted on his bolognese (over pasta) and his green curry chicken (over rice) for several weeks. I also had almond butter on multigrain toast and a sliced apple for breakfast pretty much every day for months.

Recently my husband started making a Moroccan chicken stew which also freezes well and tastes great over quinoa (though obviously couscous would be more authentic).

If you have a Trader Joe's near you they have tons of great options in ready to go bags for reheating. You typically just pop them in a covered skillet for a bit and that is it.

I did a bunch of mason jars with overnight oats or smoothies and popped them in the freezer for breakfast, which I found was my hardest time to find time to eat.

I tend not to make complicated breakfasts or lunches anyway- breakfast is some sort of combination of toast with avocado (for me) or pb (for DH and DD), yogurt, cereal, or quick oatmeal with fruit or a smoothie. Lunches are leftovers or sandwiches with fruit and veggies.

For dinners with DD I made a ton of freezer entrees- meatloaf, lasagna, mac and cheese, beef stew, chicken pot pie.

We had everything with steamed rice, rolls from CostCo, or microwave baked potatoes (if it needed a starch) and a salad or steam-in-bag fresh veggies from Trader Joe's. There wasn't much variety but it got us through a month or two with the occasional pizza. I also made a huge batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and froze it in individual lumps so I could make a fresh baked cookie when I wanted a treat!

I made 15-20 freezer meals that I could just thaw and throw in the crockpot and those lasted us a few weeks. Some that I can remember off the top of my head are chicken tortilla soup, sesame honey chicken, brazilian curry chicken, and jambalaya.

@caterw: Your reply made me realize a couple things: I will need to think about lunches for DH because he will be on paternity leave, and he usually eats the free food they provide at his office. He is not big into leftovers or sandwiches for lunch and our bank account will not be able to handle him eating out 7 days a week!

But your mention of Costco rolls also make me think of the yummy stuff they have. Their tortilla roll ups are so good for lunches or snacks especially if you have guests. I will definitely be stocking up on those!

So we have sorta 3 tiers of food prep we do for a new baby. For the full on newborn days when no one is sleeping, we prefer fully cooked, individually portioned dinners that we can easily thaw overnight in the fridge and nuke in a few minutes.

So basically, 2 months before each of our boys was born, we started making doubles or triples of our dinner entrees and packing them up in containers with a scoop of frozen veggies. We'd aim to cook 3-4 nights a week and that would mean we'd have 6-12 meals packed away in the freezer every week. We have a chest freezer, so we had the room. We used these containers and labeled them with masking tape and a Sharpie:

https://amzn.com/B009W2LMRM

I'm Korean so we naturally eat a lot of rice-based meals, but also because it freezes really well. So we made jambalaya, arroz con pollo, dirty rice, chicken and rice casserole, broccoli cheese and rice casserole, and curries with rice. (We pack up the curry the next day when its cold and sorta congealed, alongside a few scoops of rice and freeze). We also made meatloaf and shepherd's pie using those tubs of premade mashed potatoes at the store (Bob Evans, Hormel, etc). We'd just scoop some extra mashed potatoes into the container and add 1/2 cup of frozen veggies (mixed veggies, green beans, peas, corn, etc). We froze portions of tuna noodle casserole, chicken tetrazzini, and DH's favorite pasta (chopped rotisserie chicken or chicken sausage, zuchinni, rigatoni, and marinara). When freezing pasta or noodle dishes, I find making them saucier makes them taste better when you reheat them.

By the time our babies were born, we had a large variety of meals frozen. DH could grab a few different containers every few days and stick them in the fridge and each person could pick and choose what they wanted for dinner. It also meant no extra dishes since we could just eat out of the containers and stick them in the dishwasher. Doing this, we had dinners covered for 2 months.

On the weekends before the baby was born I'd also run the crockpot and do a big batch of chili, meat sauce, soup, pulled pork, shredded beef, and chicken. These things were our second tier meals - things that would still require us to boil pasta, cook rice, find tortillas/buns, and figure out a salad or veggie. We'd portion them and if it was a sauce, we'd freeze flat in gallon Ziploc bags. I stocked up on pastas and canned goods and grains in my third trimester so a meal could be cobbled together quickly month 3 and beyond.

The third tier was convenience foods. We kept a lot of toddler friendly things around so a meal could be thrown together for our 2 year old quickly. Chicken nuggets, mini corn dogs, frozen pancakes and waffles, hot dogs, chicken sausage, meatballs, and mac n' cheese. Pouches, Yakult probiotic drinks, yogurt tubes in the freezer, and dry snacks.

For lunches, we kept big Costco packages of lunch meat (they make one that's chicken, ham, and roast beef and another that's a variety of Italian meats) and their double packages of multigrain bread in the freezer or fridge. We also bought mini hummus cups from Costco and those big 5lb bags of carrots and we could quickly pull a lunch together that way.

Breakfasts were a combination of Costco muffins, croissants, cereal, hard boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, toast, etc. We leaned harder on the muffins and croissants in the early days and then slowly I could manage to make some eggs after a few weeks.

Every few days I'd send DH out for milk, bananas, eggs, 2 kinds of whatever fruit was on sale or looked good, and Gatorade for me. Every 2 weeks or so one of us would go to Costco and get bread and deli meat and muffins.

@Pumpkin Pie: Sorry for the delayed reply. Yes, it freezes well. Here is the link to the recipe. My husband makes the following modifications:

1. Sauté the chicken instead of frying
2. Use lowfat coconut milk
3. Use only a tsp of sugar (instead of the Tbsp called for in the recipe)

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/green-curry-chicken-5702

And he said that you wind up with a ton of leftover sauce.

Second the Trader Joe's suggestion. Lots of their skillet sides/meals are actually relatively healthy (at least in terms of added crap like preservatives...). We do a lot of their frozen vegetable sides, fried rice (doctored with extra veggies and egg), chicken lime burgers, etc.

I also end up doing a lot of crock-pot meals (or make DH do it once baby comes...ha), and just double it to freeze another meals' worth.

We don't have an extra freezer, so I am not able to "stock up" much before baby!