Freeze!

Why?
If you've got the extra freezer space, then perhaps you should consider freezing meals in advance. Doing this could help prepare for unseen emergencies [like you hit traffic on the way home/needed extra time for visiting family all day/your oven doesn't work]. If there's one thing I've learned in the past two months, it's that, "In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has,"[Prov.21:20]. Basically, if you know you'll be in a spot where you'll be unable to cook a meal, it can help to be prepared. I personally like this method only because I would rather spend a large chunk of time cooking more/larger meals, than spend lots of small amounts of time cooking less/smaller meals [and it's a lot easier to come up with creative meals to cook in advance than right on the spot].

There are a lot of different methods people use. You can freeze meals to fit your needs depending on how often you eat at home, how many people are in your home, and what your long term goal is.

Some Methods/Timing
OAMC - Once A Month Cooking - This first method seems to be pretty popular. In theory, you would take two days out of the month to shop, prep, cook and freeze a month's worth of food. I think this method works if you shop at a certain time of the month for all your groceries. A cool article I've found on how to organize, plan, and prepare for a large project like this is HERE

Weekly Cooking (Whether it be once a week, twice a week, etc.) - For me personally, I can't always afford to spend on a month's worth of food at one time. This method of freezing meals is to make double of what you normally cook weekly (the number of times per week depending on your needs), and freeze the second half. For example, if you are pregnant, and you froze a meal once a week, over time you'd end up with thirty frozen meals.

OAMC Modified - Lastly, sometimes people cook and freeze a large amount at once in pairs or groups so the work and cost is more spread out. Even though you might only get fifteen or ten meals in one day [instead of 30] it helps!

Uh Okay, so How?
Flash Freezing - I've learned from older ladies at our church that things like bread, pancakes, cake, chips, and cookies can be frozen as long as they are flash frozen [meaning put directly in the freezer on a cookie sheet, then moved into a zip loc bag later]. This type of thing is practical if you've made too many cookies, bake your own bread, or you know you can't eat all of the product before it goes bad. Defrosting time is much quicker, you would leave the item out for maybe half an hour (?)
Marinated Meats - Exactly how it sounds. If you marinate meat, you can freeze it. To defrost, you would just leave it out in the morning, or defrost in the microwave before grilling/baking it. [Jennie's done Teriyaki Chicken and Curry Chicken MMMMmmm ^.^]
Container Freezing - This one will be done a majority of the time. Basically cooking the meal fully/partially, then placing it in a freezer-safe container. Once you want to warm up the meal, you can add other elements [see below].

What NOT to freeze:
Granted, there are things you can't freeze, or that will need to be reworked later.

[either avoid these, or add to the dish after it's been defrosted].
Note: A good rule of thumb is avoid anything with a high water content
○ Cooked Potatoes
○ Rice
○ Pasta (The exception is if you under cook the pasta and freeze the pasta in a casserole-type dish. If the dish has a lot of moisture, it will be cooked when baked.)

○ Cream Sauces/fillings in cakes/custard fillings [anything with milk]
○ Cheese - cubed and shredded yes, sauces no
○ Vegetables - Raw no, steamed yes [ the raw vegetables have too much moisture]. This means no salads, chopped fruits are tricky as well.
○ Mayonnaise
○ Sour Cream
○ Soft frostings
○ Seasonings may change after freezing, and if possible, should be added later

Anything else Thickened or separated can be thinned and blended later [For example, gravy].

Handy tools
[For cooking] - Crockpot - If you are cooking lots of meals in one day, or one double-sized meal in order to freeze half of it, this can save you time
[For Freezing] - Ziploc Bags ,Food Saver, cookie sheet

As for the meals themselves, you will have to be creative… or you could just check out Jennie's Blog ! I hope that this helps you to be like an ant in the bible, "It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest," [Prov. 6:7-8]. Experiment, and have fun! Happy freezing ^0^ ♥