If you happen to be nearing the end of your pregnancy and you are also in a mood to nest, one great thing that you can do to give yourself a head start for when your baby arrives is making and freezing some nutritious meals. Sure, there’s always the nursery to decorate and all of those adorable onesies to wash, fold, and put away but those may not take up all of your spare time. What’s more, once baby arrives, you are going to need to eat and you may as well have something healthy and easy to prepare on hand.
Many meals can be frozen for up to three months, if they are packaged properly to avoid air coming into contact with the food. While you are creating your grocery list with ingredients for the meals themselves, don’t forget to add your packaging materials – freezer bags and freezer safe plastic containers with tight fitting lids. Many great recipes for stew, chili, and lasagna can be found online in addition to recipes for your favorite ethnic foods like curries, burritos, and meatballs and sauce. Oh, and carnitas. Lets not forget about carnitas – that is my favorite thing to make in the crock pot, it freezes well and you can eat it on its own with veggies on the side or as a part of burritos, tacos or other dishes. In fact, many meals that you can make in a crock pot freeze well, so you can prepare food for your freezer (and your dinner) without standing in the kitchen all day long.
If you start now and make double batches of your dinner every couple of days, by the time your baby arrives you will have a freezer full of options for those times when you are hungry and cooking a meal from start to finish is just not an option. Of course, having access to a wide variety of good takeout and friends bearing casseroles are also very helpful. If the takeout selection in your area is limited, be sure to whip up a bunch of freezer meals. Trust me – the selection in my town is limited pretty much to pizza and Chinese food, and after about a week of takeout every night I was ready for something different.
Photo by ronnieb on morguefile.com.