Freezer Food Workshop

Disclaimer: I was not paid to review the Wildtree Freezer Meal workshop that I attended Monday night. All of the opinions I make in the following blog post are my own. I just happen to like these products.

Good Morning Crushers!

Monday night I attended a Wildtree party where we prepped 10 meals to store in the freezer. We used Wildtree products to season various meats. We got recipes for all of the meals, so later on I can just pull a bag out of the freezer, thaw it and cook it according to the directions. Easy peasy.

Well, sort of. First you pay for a bunch of products that will be ready and waiting for you to use. Then you buy all the meat (or meat substitutes) and prep them. We had our class on a Monday, so I shopped and prepped on Sunday. It took me a little while to find all of the ingredients, but the nice thing was that you could substitute things that are already in your freezer!

Once you are done slicing or cubing the meat, you put them all in labeled bags so they match the recipes. I felt so organized after this, I practically patted myself on the back! Each meal is supposed to have 4-6 servings, so I split them into two and had a bag 1A and 1B and so forth. You just have to remember that if you use a frozen meat (like shrimp or the roast I had sitting in my freezer), you have to keep it frozen. You really shouldn't thaw something more than once.

When we got to the workshop, everything was all set out for us and there were more ingredients to use that we didn't have to buy. We followed some really simple directions (I split mine between the two bags), and by the end of the night, I had a cooler full of food! 20 meals! I don't think I'll need to go shopping for any meat for months! I even came home with a bunch of product since you don't use it all.

Here are some great tips I learned:

1. When filling a big freezer bag, put it in a bowl once you have a heavy ingredient in it so that it stays up right while you fill it. Or, as my friend Mary did, use two wine bottles to prop open the top of the bag when you fold the opening over it.
2. If you want to season ground beef/turkey/chicken, putting it in bags or in a big bowl and squishing it all around works great. You meat will be seasoned through and through!
3. You can keep a list of all the meat or prepared meals in your freezer so that you know what you've used and what you need to replenish instead of digging through your freezer. Whenever I do this I end up going, "huh, look at that..." I think we will have a lot less freezer burnt foods.
4. Cooking is why you learn fractions in grade school. Sometimes you need to double them and sometimes you need to divide them.
5. Prepping all your food when you get home from the grocery takes a little while, but is totally worth it. Thanks to a fun food blog on CNN called Eatocracy, you can find more ways to waste less food!