I’m taking the week off cooking. I truly enjoy making meals, but it’s a really crazy week – scheduled activities each day plus I’ll be gone two evenings doing fun stuff with friends.

So I’m not cooking. I looked in my freezer and calculated that my stockpile of meals will keep us well-fed for a week with little more effort than thawing and re-heating. Some of the stuff has been in the freezer for a while anyway and needs to get eaten.

Our menu:

• BBQ chicken and veggies
• chicken enchiladas with black beans (also from the freezer)
• baked (whole wheat) pasta (recipe from More-With-Less cookbook)
• Moroccan stew
• beef and cabbage soup

I’ll just get some salad and bread to go with the pasta and soup, and we’ll be good! That’ll be great for the grocery budget this week, too. I like to freeze recipes that can be a complete meal in themselves like soup or casseroles that have protein and veggies. And all these meals were made from scratch, taking only a little extra time weeks/months ago to prepare.

So this busy week I am thankful for my freezer – it’s putting something on the plates so I can take something off mine.