Make a MONTH of meals in ONE night.

That's right, people. I made a month of meals in a single night... My friends and I started a little FREEZER MEAL group last month and dinner time has never been better (or more cost effective!) If you're interested in starting your own group, this is what you need to do (in a very simplified explanation.)

• Gather a few friends who want to make their busy, complicated lives a little easier. (Our group has 6 people.. but that's not necessarily a special number.)

• Meet together to discuss a menu. Decide on the meals you want to make. Multiply the recipe ingredients by the number of people in your group.

• Make a master shopping list... (our list included TONS of gallon zip lock bags, disposable tin casserole pans, and other necessities for our meals.)

• Assign a person to host the freezer meal making party.

• Assign a grocery shopper (or 2 or 3 because it's a lot of groceries!)

• Divide the prep work (like chopping onions, browning the hamburger, etc.) among the members. The prep work takes about an hour or so of time. (For instance, last month I shredded 15 pounds of chicken for everyone's chicken enchiladas. Someone else chopped the onions :)
  

• Set a date to prepare the meals. We like doing it on a weeknight. It takes a couple of hours to assemble the meals, but let me tell you, it's a good time!

• Bring your prep work to the meal making party --along with your cooler and fill it up with lots of good, healthy meals!

• Divide the costs. We paid a little over $100 each for our meals.. this included all the tin pans, baggies, etc. Very cost effective and no dinner dishes!
  

• Take home a months worth of meals for your family and stop stressing about what to make for dinner!

We made 14 meals total, but the recipes are about 2 meals each (at least for my family.) Most of the meals are great for crockpots and lay flat in the freezer in a zip lock bag. We originally thought we were going to have to purchase a freezer for our garage, but there is plenty of room. For December, our menu includes lots of yummy soups to keep us warm in this COLD Vegas weather!

If you want a list of several recipes we've used, leave a comment with your email address and I will send it to you.. A big thanks to my friend Stephanie who gave us great instructions and got us going!

Also, if you live in Vegas and are feeling left out, I am sorry. I tried advertising it the best I could and went with the first 5 people interested. There are enough people who want to start another group. Talk to me and we'll get something going..

For other WFMW tips, check out Shannon's blog.