Freezer Meals Continued

I went grocery shopping today and then came home and started my meals for the week.  We had hamburger buns to eat up, so my husband requested Sloppy Joes.  Those are easy.  For this week's meals, I thought I'd make stuffed shells and enchiladas.  I came home and started cooking two pounds of sausage for the spaghetti sauce for the shells and four pounds of hamburger for my enchiladas and sloppy joes.  I chopped up and added two onions to each pan and four cloves of garlic to the sausage.  When the hamburger was thoroughly browned, I seperated out one-quarter of it to another pan and added the sloppy joe mix, tomato paste and water and heated it up.  Dinner was ready to go!  I added taco seasoning and a can of refried beans to the rest of the hamburger and let it simmer for a few minutes.  I turned everything off and ate dinner.  One hour down.  I came back a little later and added all the ingredients to the spaghetti sauce and started it simmering again.  While it simmered, I filled tortillas with the meat/bean mixture, sour cream and cheese, and made three pans of enchiladas (two with whole wheat tortillas and one with regular wheat).  Then I took a can each of cheese soup and nacho cheese soup and mixed these with the remaining sour cream and spread over the top with a sprinkling of shredded cheese.  One of these went into the refrigerator for Monday's dinner and the other two into the freezer to save.  This took roughly about another 45 minutes.  I decided my knees had had it by this time and my kidney started to hurt again, so I quit for the day.  The pot of spaghetti sauce is done and in the refrigerator.  I'll make my stuffed shells tomorrow.  The sauce doesn't need to be hot when assembling, in fact, it will freeze quicker since it's cold.  It shouldn't take more than an hour tomorrow to cook the pasta shells, mix the ricotta mixture for the filling, and assemble the three cassaroles.  So, for about three hours time, I'll have made six cassaroles and one batch of sloppy joes.  Actually it will work out to at least eight meals for us (since we'll get at least two meals off each of ours and two of the sloppy joes), two frozen cassaroles to give to Elsie, and probably some leftovers for lunches.  I love bulk cooking of freezer meals.  The past couple of legislative sessions I haven't had my usual stash of freezer meals.  For next year, I want to have a nice variety of at least 24-30 meals ready in the freezer.

~Jane