Freezer Cooking (with friends!)

Awhile back, I hosted a Prep.Freeze.Cook party with some friends.  It was super fun, but at about $12 a meal, not something my budget could do every month.  Enter: my friend Amy.  She decided to take the concept and adapt it for a smaller group of friends and do the shopping/prep ourselves.  This month I invited myself to her house for the “party.” :)  William held down the fort and Miles and I headed over on Saturday morning. How it worked was a week before the party, Amy sent us an email with different shopping lists divided up.  We each picked a list to buy.  It also had a few items that needed to be prepped ahead of the cooking day.  Here’s what my list looked like:
SHOPPING LIST E

• PREP ITEM - 32 medium sliced green peppers
• 64 oz white vinegar
• 4 bottles (16 oz each) zesty Italian dressing
• 8 limes
• 7 jars (4.5 oz each) or 28 oz of minced garlic
• 1 bottle (12 oz) of ketchup
• 64 freezer bags
• 8 cans pinto beans, rinsed and drained
• 8 cans black beans, drained
• I also decided to pre-label all the bags to save us some time on the morning of

Every arrived and unloaded all their goodies.These 2 guys were adorable together and were so great throughout the morning.
Again, each group of ladies tackled one meal at a time.  We simply found the indreitent on the massive table of food and dumped it into a gallon freezer bag.  Once all the bags for that meal were done, we sealed them and put one meal in each lady's laundry basket.

Here was our list of the 10 meals that we prepped (can you tell we're big chicken fans?):
Taco Chili
Black Bean Chicken 
Meatballs
Coconut Lime Chicken
White Chicken Chili
Chicken cacciatore
Creamy Italian Chicken
Italian Buffalo Chicken
Crock Pot Aloha Chicken
Crock Pot Philly Cheese Chicken
All in all, it took us only about an hour and half for everything.  And even better, the total was $89.52 for all of it!  Definitely worth doing a little of our own prep work to get our cost down.Amy has a full run down of the meals with links to the recipes.  I can’t wait to make this a monthly (or bi-monthly) tradition!