Meal Planning

Ever since we had our quadruplets, I've realized I'm a pretty good cook. I became a stay-at-home mom and found myself with time to actually make dinner (after the first year of raising quads, of course, because nothing was getting accomplished in year one). But now that Hubby has a whacked-out work schedule, things went back to our BQ (Before Quads) Days.
BQ, we both worked full time. BQ, we ate a lot of frozen meals or food from a box. BQ, we usually had one "good" meal a week (either Hubby grilled or I experimented with a new recipe).
PQ (Post Quads), I, amazingly, had time to cook: casseroles, lasagna, lots of new recipes and tons of acorn squash on the side. A side note: acorn squash is my favorite vegetable. I could eat it every day. It's easy to fix and it's yummy.
Anyway, now that Hubby is only home two nights a week for dinner, we're back to the BQ meals. I started out making a casserole once a week, but we got tired of tuna casserole, lasagna and Mexican chicken on a rotating basis. I wanted to make things that would generate lots of leftovers for both of us to eat during our solo dinners... me at home, him at work. When we became bored, our "leftover meal" became Hamburger Helper. There's nothing wrong with HH, but it can become monotonous.
And then, a mom of triplets told me about Don't Panic, Dinner's in the Freezer. She lent me the cook book and it has been wonderful. The book is full of recipes for meals you can make ahead. It gives you the measurements to make it in large quantities, as well as the measurements to simply make it tonight's meal. The book even walks you through which freezing method works best for which recipe. The nice thing is that you only do the prep ahead of time. The actual baking takes place on the night you're going to eat, so you don't end up thawing out a soggy meal. You still have to take the time to thaw out the meal, but it's worth it. So far I've made two meals from the book. I made the "Cheesy Chicken Bundles" in bulk. I only made the one-meal serving of Sloppy Joes, but it still lasted all six of us for a week. (This is partly because only three out of my four girls liked them. The fourth referred to them as "Slimey Joes.")
I hate constantly turning to store bought meals or food that comes out of a box, so I'm very excited to experiment with more of the recipes in the cook book.... and in case you're wondering, this is not a sponsored post. No one compensated me for writing this post... but I highly recommend you take a look at this cook book if you have a chance.