Freezer Meal Swap

With the hustle and bustle of family life these days, it’s tough to get a hot meal on the table every night.  There are so many tasks that we have to accomplish during the day that by the time dinner rolls around, making a meal is the last thing on our minds!  Have no fear, daily dinners don’t have to cause you stress!  Here’s an idea that might help you.

Why not start a freezer meal swap?  A few months ago, I mentioned the idea to a friend.  She mentioned it to her friend and so on.  Before we knew it, there were eight families lined up to give it a try.  What do we do, exactly? We make the same meal eight times and freeze them.  We keep one for ourselves and take the other seven to a monthly gathering where we do the swap.  When we get home, we fill our freezers with new meals for the next month!  This allows us to have dinner already planned and prepared for two nights out of the week.  We also get to have meals we may not have tried before.  We’ve been going for a while now and have learned a few things along the way.  Here are some of our other guidelines and tips:

Guidelines

• Meals should be made in portions of 4 servings.
• Each family is allowed to offer one vegetarian option per six months.
• We meet on the 3^rd Monday of each month, unless a majority of schedules do not permit.
• It is helpful to provide name of meal, cooking instructions, dietary information and date of initial preparation.
• As our gift to families in the group who’ve just added a new member to their family, we give them a month off but they still get meals from us.
• Come each month prepared with a few ideas for the next meal you’ll prepare and we decide on them as a group.  This helps ensure a family will like the meal.  For example peas can be left out of the Chicken Tetrazzini if desired.
• We pass around rating sheets for each meal the meeting after they are swapped using the following scale

• 1. Make it again
• 2. Indifferent
• 3. Don't make it again

Tips

• Buying in bulk helps cut down on overall cost.
• Preparing meals in one or two sittings is optimal for less prep work and clean up.
• Low fat dairy products do not freeze well.
• Gallon zip lock bags that are marked specifically as freezer bags are necessary to insure freshness.
• Most meals need to be thawed in the refrigerator 1-2 days before they will be cooked.
• Spice is intensified when frozen.
• For quick and easy shredded chicken, boil the chicken and then use a Kitchen Aid stand mixer with the paddle attachment on low, then medium speed while the meat is still hot.  This cuts down drastically on manual shredding time!

When we choose meals, we try to make sure there is a variety.  For example, we don’t want everyone to make a chicken dish or end up with 5 Mexican casseroles.  Once we’ve decided on the meals our organizer and de facto scribe e-mails us the list of the meals we agreed upon.  We also have a shared Pinterest board called Freezer Meals that we can pin ideas on.

It can be tricky to prepare healthy meals when you go the casserole route and low-fat dairy doesn’t freeze well.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  Cheesy, gooey, creamy casseroles are delicious!  If I could eat those every day and not have to worry about packing on the pounds, I’d say “Bring on the Cheesy Potato Creamy Chicken Bake!”  But alas, ‘tis not so!  So, we try to think outside the pan.  We do crock pot or skillet meals and seasoned meats to grill.  This is nice in the summer months, especially when we don’t want to run our ovens every day.

If we can’t make it to a meeting, we get our meals to another member so that they can pass ours out and collect our new ones.  Sometimes members of the group drop out.  This happens for various reasons.  For example, one of our members left the group to start her own.  She had heard from enough friends that wanted to give it a try, too.  We always try to keep the group at eight families.  We usually ask around and can fill the spot easily.  One month we were not able to fill the eighth spot and still brought seven meals to exchange.  We put the seventh meal in a pile and let everyone pick a meal that they wanted to have twice that next month.

Once a quarter we’ve started doing an extra exchange, in addition to our freezer meals.  Once we did a muffin exchange.  That way we had a variety of muffins available for us to pull out the night before we knew we needed a quick breakfast.  For December we’re planning a cookie dough or cookie exchange.  This will help us be able to provide cookies for house parties, at office gatherings, as house warming gifts, and for all of those unexpected, “Oh, honey, I’m supposed to bring cookies to work tomorrow” announcements at 9:00 p.m. the night before!

As an added bonus to these meal exchanges, we’ve made some great friendships.  The actual “business” of the exchange only takes about 20 minutes, but we end up staying around to chat for more like two hours.  It allows us a chance to get out of the house, catch up and swap child-rearing escapades.  I really count these monthly meetings and the meals they bring as a blessing to my life.  So, now that I’ve whet your appetite, why don’t you give it a try?  I’d love to hear about your ideas or questions.  Feel free to leave comments below!