Except for a couple of big bags of Turkey Sausage that I made and froze recently, my freezer holds nothing of convenience. (Unless you count a few packages of soy free chocolate chips convenient. I could conveniently eat chocolate chips for lunch sometime.)

If you’ve been reading here long, you know that I love creating healthy convenience foods for my freezer so that when I’m facing a busy day, my family still has healthy food to eat. You can scroll through this series of posts entitled Make Ahead Meals to learn more about how I make food ahead for the freezer! I can’t say enough about how wonderful it is to take the time every once in a while to work ahead in the kitchen. 

Because my frozen Turkey Sausage (and chocolate chips) are lonely, and because I’ve been working on a big project for Heavenly Homemakers which is taking a lot of my time (yes, I’m going to leave you hanging on this one for now), I’m anxious to spend a few hours this week putting some extra food in the freezer. 

This time for my freezer cooking endeavors, I am very excited to be teaming up with Tricia from Once a Month Mom. Have you been to the Once a Month Mom site? If you’re interested in doing some cooking and baking ahead for your freezer, you MUST take advantage of all the free and wonderful information you’ll find at Once a Month Mom. Her site is full of great tips and recipes that are perfect for making food ahead and freezing it for future convenience.

Once a Month Mom has great menu plans each month all laid out and ready for you, complete with recipes, grocery lists and freezer instructions. You’ll find a plan for Whole Foods Cooking, Gluten Free/Dairy Free Cooking, even a menu for Baby Food Freezer Cooking. 

I have had a lovely time clicking through all of the recipes on the Once a Month Mom site, picking some new and fun recipes to try for my family for my freezer cooking plans this week. Here are the recipes I chose this time:

• Baked Chicken and Artichoke Penne with Sundried Tomatoes
• Tacos in a Sleeping Bag (using my yogurt pizza dough instead of the crescent dough called for in the recipe)
• Ham Broccoli and Cheddar Roll (again using my yogurt pizza dough)
• Homemade Cheesy Rice
• Strawberry Orange Smoothie

I can’t wait to start playing with these new recipes (yes, because for me, trying new recipes is like playing with new toys!!). I was hoping maybe you’d all like to “come over and play” along with me this week. Want to?! (Yes, you do. You want to. Say yes.)

For those of you who are new to freezer cooking, or for any who might just need a little motivation to get some extra food in the freezer, I thought I’d extend a little challenge of sorts. Here’s how it will work:

1. Pick a recipe (or more) from Once a Month Mom or from here at Heavenly Homemakers.
2. Find some time this week to make the recipe(s) for your freezer.
3. Blog about your cooking experience, if you have a blog, so that you can come link up with us here on Friday when we’ll all report back to share how our freezer cooking went. If you don’t have a blog, you’ll be given the opportunity to share about your freezer cooking in the comments section of our round up post on Friday, so please join the fun whether you have a blog or not!
4. Each person who links up or leaves a comment on the Friday Freezer Cooking Round Up post will be eligible to win a free recipe ebook of choice ($7.95 or less) from the Heavenly Homemakers Shop.
5. The more recipes you make and share with us, the more chances you have to win! (But don’t over-do…we would like to keep this fun. Please, we don’t want any reports that women across the world fainted from Freezer Cooking Exhaustion.)

Okay…so  who’s in?!  Look around at Once a Month Mom and at all of our Make Ahead Meals to get some new recipe ideas. Get your Freezer Cooking game on and join us for our fun cooking challenge this week!

What recipes are sounding good to try?? Which ebook might you pick from our Heavenly Homemakers Shop if you win?!