Meal Planning - Cooking "Ahead"

One of the important parts of meal planning is what I call "cooking ahead". There are actually two ways to "cook ahead": 1) cooking in a large quantity and freezing leftovers for future meals and 2) making meals that will be cooked or reheated and eaten later.

I actually stumbled upon cooking ahead out of my inability to cook any meal that would only feed 2-3 people. I would freeze leftovers in individual containers that could be used as lunches for me and my husband later. However, as I began to use the meal planning calendar and our schedules became more hectic with the birth of our son, I realized freezing the entire quantity of food could equal an "emergency meal" if we weren't able to do what was planned or would work in a pinch for a very busy night in which I couldn't cook a meal from scratch and we didn't want to do take-out. The first few times I pulled a meal from the freezer for a dinner, it was so liberating I started thinking about actually preparing meals just for the purpose of reheating or cooking later.

There are tons of "do-ahead" recipes out there and many of them are the stand-bys like lasagnas and casseroles. However, I got creative and did things like enchiladas, pulled chicken and pork and sausage and peppers. My only advice is the following few points:

1. Label your meals with a date and a name. Nothing worse than a huge container of unknown food slowly becoming a fossil in your freezer or going to thaw a meal past its prime.
2. Use proper containers. I ruined a few lunch meals early on thinking I could re-use that Hillshire Farms  Ham Glad container!
3. Pay attention to what can be frozen safely and properly. The USDA tends to know what it's doing. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/focus_on_freezing/index.asp

Also, not everything has to be frozen. Some of my friends make meals on Sunday that can be used during the week and they go right into the fridge. Find out what works for you and even better...share it with us here!

Finally, now that I am really trying to stick to South Beach, the idea of cooking ahead has been expanded to include breakfast. Breakfast for me has always been my diet killer. All it would take is one morning getting out the door late to work on an empty stomach and through a Chick-Fil-A/Hardee's/McDonald's drive-thru I would go. So tonight, I made a breakfast casserole that I can eat on the remainder of the week and freeze in containers for next week. Kalyns Kitchen is my go to South Beach recipe site right now and below is the link to her basic breakfast casserole. Tonight's creation was turkey Italian sausage, fresh spinach, canned mushrooms and reduced fat Italian blend shredded cheese. And I can attest to its tastiness since I have already cut it up into servings for the week and of course enjoyed a little knife nibble! 

http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/2006/01/breakfast-casserole-many-wayswho-knew.html