We are close to the final countdown! From the very beginning, we were told our goal for this pregnancy was 34 weeks (delivery after this mark will be bonus). We’re also preparing for the potential of bed rest, but who knows if and when that’ll happen. Well, here we are EIGHT weeks from that goal…TIME TO START FINAL BABY PREP!
For us, Baby Prepping involves food! We like to eat out on occasion, but really love home-cooked meals. We knew that planning some breakfasts, lunches, and a lot of dinners would keep us fueled with food we know that we like, allow us to grab and go, and really give us time to just focus on our new little family without needing to think about shopping, cooking, and cleaning/preparing meals.
Like the title says, this is Part 1 of the Baby Preparation/Freezer Meals series! Stay tuned for more posts following how I buy, cook, and store these items.
The first thing we did was make a list of meals/dishes we like to eat and knew would freeze well and could be easily reheated (stove/oven, crockpot, toaster oven). Fish, chicken bakes, chilis, pizzas, stir fry, pasta dishes, egg bakes, and muffins!
We then went through and decided how many of each dish we’d create. We figured a good guide would be to have 3 dinner meals per week for 6 weeks. This would allow for leftovers, lunches, and/or extra for when visitors stopped by. We also are making enough food for 3 weeks of lunches for Mike to bring to work and about 3 weeks of warm breakfasts for both of us.
After deciding on what we wanted to make and store in the freezer, we made another small list for each meal time. This list consists of quick, easy, non-(or not as)perishable items that can be made into single-serving or family-sized dishes. This helped us to decide what we wanted to slowly stock (and then keep stocked) in the house.
The final pre-prep box to check off was making sure we had the non-food items to help cook and store the food. For us, this meant buying a chest freezer (we bought this one over the weekend while it’s on sale), different storage containers (foil pans, plastic bags, aluminum foil, plastic wrap), and cooking trays (muffin tins).
All of this pre-prep work will help us to buy the correct ingredient amounts, purchase the food when on sale/with a coupon, and to cook and store efficiently in the coming weeks!
Don’t forget to join me on Instagram to follow the cooking adventure in the coming weeks! You’ll see it on Instagram, as it’s happening–the good, the bad, and the messy!
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