Cooking for the freezer

I decided to cook for an army the other day. I picked two recipes that I love, my family's lasagna and Chrissy's Chicken Pot Pie. I thought it would be quite the undertaking but it was actually quite simple. I made enough lasagna for 2 pans and enough pie filling for 2 pies. I bought a bunch of those aluminum mini loaf pans from the store and set out to fill them. 

I didn't take many photos of the Lasagna since that is a family recipe and I have to like you a lot to share it. And with how simple Lasagna is you can easily guess the recipe just from pictures. But after boiling the noodles, cooking the meat, spreading the cheese and filling the pans, here is the result. 

One pan for dinner

And 8 single serve pans for the freezer. 

Now onto the Chicken Pot Pie. Chrissy's Chicken Pot Pie is one of the tastiest I've ever had. But a whole pie is way too much for a two person meal. So...single serve!

You'll need an onion, some chicken broth, veggies, milk, butter, pie crust....and of course chicken. 

Chopped onions with the broth in the back. I added extra broth because I had read that the freezing and then baking process takes some goodness out of the pie and adding some extra broth helps. 

Melted butter to saute the onion. mmmm buuttteerrr... Just call me little Paula Deen...without the accent...

Everything in the mix now. This smells like childhood. 

Since I was prepping these for the freezer instead of the oven, I cooked the chicken thoroughly in the pot. 

After letting the filling cool a bit I loaded up the tins. I did my best to cut lots of rectangles out of the circular pie crust. It wasn't pretty so I didn't photograph it. 

And thats how you turn 3 hours of cooking time to weeks worth of food. 

Now that's domesticated...

Liz DiNatale