Slow Cooker Freezer Meals

I recently found this http://whoneedsacape.com/2012/11/crockpot-freezer-cooking/ on Pinterest.  It was a bit of a new concept to me and grabbed my interest.  Years ago I participated in a meal swap group with women from church.  We would all cook a dish times the number of ladies in the group and then get together and swap all the freezer meals.  One problem was that our family did not always like all the meals we received.  I gave up on it after awhile.  It had its pros and cons.
  However, this idea of Slow Cooker freezer meals grabbed my attention.  The main idea is that you dump all the ingredients for a main dish into a large zip loc bag and freeze it.  Then you take it out and let it start thawing in the fridge the night before you want to put it in the slow cooker.  Then the next morning you take the thawing food out of the fridge and plop it into your slow cooker.  Then the food cooks all day and dinner is ready that evening.
  In the pinterest link above this lady shares how she doubled twenty recipes to make forty meals in one day.  There is a link on her site for a shopping list as well.  So last Saturday I shopped until I dropped buying a massive amount of groceries.
  My sweet husband let me take my Bed Bath and Beyond coupon and purchase a food processor to help slice up the onions, bell peppers and other veggies needed.  That saved me a ton of time using my new power machine.
  Then I began going recipe by recipe and dumping all ingredients into labeled zip loc gallon sized bags and freezing them.  I was on a roll and pretty excited.  I did not get them all assembled the first day, but once I make another trip to the store I will continue on the other recipes.  Last night we tried our first slow cooker freezer meal of orange chicken.  Much to my delight my family LOVED it!  Next time I need to dump more into a jumbo size zip loc as my family gobbled up every last morsel and still wanted more.  I am super excited to try the other meals in my slow cooker in the near future.

  I have been a fan of slow cooker cooking for a good while as dinner preparation is a real challenge for me in the late afternoon.  However, if I am preparing everything in the crock pot in the morning it interrupts our school morning.  So, I am thinking that stocking my freezer with freezer meals makes a whole lot of sense for our family.  I am really excited about this and hoping it will help me provide more variety and tasty meals for my family.  Last night I prepared rice on the side and some baked broccoli.  The dinner was easy and a huge hit.  That makes a Mama happy!