Money Saving Mondays {#2}

I feel a little less like I am running 'round in circles, running 'round in circles (sorry slipped into a little Soul Coughing-esque moment there) today than I have for the past week or two. With my piano guy off entertaining ritzy spring breakers on the beautiful gulf beaches, I am left to the packing of the house and wrangling of the child. And trying to keep the fibro at bay as best I can. Focusing on packing has left my upkeep on the den quite lacking, today I had had enough, and now ... I can breathe again! Whew. Now if only this beautiful two-year-old of mine would just allow it to stay this way for more than an hour ...

So I am back at the keyboard, and hopefully I have gotten enough done that I will be on track enough to keep up with this blog through all the crazy of this move! This week will bring not only the return of my Money Saving Mondays, but also the debut of my Toddlery Tuesdays where I will share with you and review my crafty finds and other fun (and sanity dependent the occasional not so fun) toddler related business.

Without further ado ...

Freezer Cooking-Part 1

As promised, today's money saving topic is Freezer Cooking (also called "Once a Month Cooking.") And as you may have noticed, I added on "Part 1" with plans of bringing you tips and tricks as time moves forward and as I venture further into this wonderful new aspect of my life, and believe me this is now entrenched as a full aspect of my life!

The key to freezer cooking to save money is to buy meat in mass quantities at really good sale prices. For instance whole fryer chickens were $0.79/lb at Albertsons a couple weeks ago (oh how I will miss this store when I move!!) with the coupon in their weekly store ad. Now let's say you eat chicken twice a week, wouldn't it make sense to get 8 or so of these bad boys at this price? I say yes! Then you have 2 chickens per week for a whole month! Obviously you will have to freeze some of them so they don't go bad before you are ready to eat them, but then you will need to thaw them before cooking, and if you have ever thawed a whole chicken you know that it doesn't always thaw in the time-frame allotted, especially if you have a temperamental fridge at all. So thawing those chickens twice a week seems like a bit of a pain, right? Solution? Cook it all! Then freeze ... hence freezer cooking. With the whole fryer example there are many options for preparation, but I am not going into all of those right now, rather I will get back to the main focus of this post... 

The first topic in freezer cooking I would like to discuss is individual servings and "flash freezing." Do not be confused, I do not--nor do I expect you to--have a cryogenic freezer on hand. This "flash freezing" is just so individual parts can be stored together without freezing to each other. Let's use one of the ways I prepped those chickens as an example, Pulled BBQ Chicken for sandwiches. I love to have bbq sandwich meat on hand for a quick snack or dinner option, but I hate having to thaw an entire tub or batch of it just because I have a hankering for a sandwich so I decided to freeze individual portions to make it easy for me to grab out just what what is needed for 'right now.' And here's how I did it ...