My afternoon of freezer meals was a last minute event that came about after I found 8 packages of ground turkey (1 pound each) marked down at the grocery store. At $3 off each, I wound up getting the meat for $1.59/lb! So I grabbed it all and knew I had to freezer it or prepare it right away. So I wound up making these three recipes and it took less than 2 hours:
- Clean Eating Cheeseburger Turkey Meatloaf (2)
- Clean Eating Meat Sauce (4)
- Clean Eating Italian Style Meatballs (2)
The grocery list looks like this:
- 8 lbs of ground turkey
- 1 medium bell pepper, finely chopped
- 2 large onion, finely chopped
- 1, 8oz package of mushrooms, chopped
- 1 small cup of plain Greek yogurt
- 1 package of shredded cheddar
- 4 eggs
- 4, 29 oz cans of tomato sauce
- 4, 14.5 oz cans of fire roasted tomatoes (Muir Glen Organic)
- container of panic bread crumbs
- 1 bottle of red cooking wine
- 1 bottle of Worcestershire sauce
- garlic powder
- italian seasoning
- sea salt
- First I got all of my ingredients out and ready. I got mixing bowls, pots, and measuring spoons out. I also chopped up all of the vegetables so they were ready to go.
- Second, I made the meat sauce in a HUGE pot, the biggest that I own.
- While that was simmering, preheated the oven and combined ingredients to form my meatballs. *At this point you either put your meatballs in the freezer or bake them. I chose to cook them now so I put the meatballs in the oven and set the timer for 20 minutes.
- Then I gave my sauce a stir and mixed everything together to make my meatloaf. I formed the loaves and had them ready for the freezer by the time the meatballs were done.
- I took the pot of sauce off the stove to let it cool a bit. I also let the meatballs cool.
After about an hour, I came back and put the meatballs into 2 freezer bags and into the freezer they went. I then scooped the meat sauce into 4 bags *IMPORTANT: Don't put the sauce in plastic bags while hot or you will melt the bag! I let the sauce cool the rest of the way before letting it join the meatloaf and meatballs in the freezer.
It's nice to know I at least have the bulk of 2 meals a week already done and out of the way! Even if I hadn't found that really AWESOME deal on the ground turkey, I figured that just by catching a good sale I could have made all of these meals for around $65 simply from shopping at my regular chain grocery store.
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