Toddler Freezer Meals

When I first became "mommy" I had glorious plans of cooking all of my own baby food and saving tons of time and money and giving my little one the healthiest food possible. Well, DS started eating solids and I faithfully began pureeing various fruits and veggies, pouring the mixture into ice cube trays, and then transferring the frozen morsels into zip-loc baggies. That lasted a grand total of about....3 weeks.

I'm not sure why I failed exactly. Here are some thoughts though:

Maybe it was because getting the food out of my ice cube trays was so darn difficult and I was too cheap to spend the money on the good silicone ice cube trays online (looking back it would have been worth the money - so if you're thinking about it - do it!).

Maybe it had something to do with the depression that occurs when you dump a whole batch of wonderfully pureed frozen peas into the trash because DS simply will not eat them. 

Maybe it was because I wasn't packaging my food properly so it would stick together and get freezer burnt.

Maybe it was the fact that traveling with your baby and needing a meal on the go was not very convenient with frozen morsels.

Or maybe it was because I realized how much easier and more convenient it was to simply plop a few containers of baby food into my shopping cart while I was already at the store.

There's also that little bit of me that thought it was fun to try out all the new flavor combinations on young DS that I would never have made at home, like mac n cheese with carrots or beef vegetable stew. Come on, is that something I really would have pureed on my own? And if I did attempt such a feat would the consistency have turned out so delightfully creamy and easily spoonable? I doubt it.

Regardless of the why, the fact is that my glorious plans of me dancing around in the kitchen in a frilly apron and pearls, whipping up gorgeous pureed portions of homemade healthy baby food and spooning said creations into a delighted DS's mouth went right out the window....along with about 100 other things I thought I would or would not do when I became a mom.

So DS and I plodded along eating the stuff that comes in little glass jars and plastic containers. I felt a little guilty that it wasn't the most nutritious stuff on the planet, but consoled myself with the idea that many other mothers out there were doing the same thing. Anyways we continued plodding along in our dream land of pre-made baby meals when one day it hit. Toddlerhood. Which meant no more baby food. Now what? Dinner was easy, DS just eats what we eat. What about lunch and breakfast though? I'm not the type of woman to whip up a batch of pancakes and scrambled eggs every morning before hubby goes to work, and then pop a souffle in the oven for lunch. I turned to the pre-made stuff again. Only pre-made stuff for kids who are eating more adult food just isn't as good. Chef boyardee, spaghetti o's, mac n cheese, cut up hot dogs....yah, we did that for awhile. It just seemed so unhealthy and so much more processed than I was willing to overlook. I quickly turned to my lovely Internet and began googling for toddler meals and quickly stumbled on a fantastic notion: Freezer meals for Toddlers. What a splendid idea! But what about my experience with DIY baby food? Not so great. Still I decided to try it anyways.

I found a site called Onceamonthmom.com where the site owner and a few friends make monthly meal plans for adults and children. She had a special toddler meal plan for a month of food so I though I would try it. The theory behind her meal plans is that you buy all of your ingredients at once then on the first day of the month you spend an entire day cooking your freezer meals and then you're done for the next 30 days. So I jumped in. and tried it for the month of September. Oh boy.....It literally took me ALL day to finish cooking. it was after 9pm by the time I'd finished cooking and cleaning and I was completely exhausted. In the end it was worth it though.

Having homemade meals on hand to serve to DS for breakfast, lunch and snacks turned out to be such a blessing. It was so easy to get his meals ready and it actually saved me a lot of money. I spent about $70 on the ingredients when before I was spending about $150 a month on his food.

The only downside to this was that he didn't like some of the menu items in the line up. Plus some of the menu items just weren't feasible for his age. For instance, he loves to feed himself (actually he refuses to let me feed him) but he just isn't coordinated enough yet to handle getting a spoonful of potato soup to his mouth without spilling it all down his front first.

So, the moral of this story is that cooking freezer meals for your toddler's breakfast, lunch, and snacks for a month really saves time and money. I would recommend it and I plan on continuing to do so.

Two things I have changed though. For the month of October (post coming soon). I did not cook all of my meals on one day (WAY too much work in my opinion). Instead I spread the cooking out over several days. I would cook one or two breakfast items and lunch and snack items per day. Then freeze. This way I only spent about 1-1 1/2 hours cooking and DS could just eat whatever I had made that day before I froze the rest. It worked out really well. My second change is I created my own meal plan. One that included foods I knew DS would eat and could handle feeding himself. This is saving me even more money because a) I could design his meal plan using items we already had on hand b) I didn't end up throwing out a bunch of food that he simply didn't like. For the month of October I think I spent a total of $30 on groceries. Thats $1 a day to feed DS breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. Definitely worth it.