Meal Swap at Chili's

My 10 Bags of Tamale Pie - I set them on the counter and dumped all the ingredients in the bags. Pretty easy! The "hardest" part was browning the 10 pounds of beef! AHHHH! That's a lot of beef! :)

I bagged the pie mixture and then bagged the cheese in a snack baggie. I put the pie and cheese into another bag with the recipe facing up so they could see what meal it was.

Here is my cooler, ready to go. They each needed to grab one bag from the cooler and one box of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix.

So I've been doing this kind of cooking for a few years now, batch cooking and then freezing it. We've tried to cook as a ladies event with our small group from church every so often and it's been fun but this time we decided we would make 10 meals of the same recipe and then we would meet at Chili's for dinner and swap meals before we left. It was GREAT and so fun! We must have looked a sight laying out our meals on the curb at Chili's! ha ha!!! I can't believe that NO ONE in our group had their camera! The picture would have been priceless! I loved assembling the meals at home, I loved getting to go out to eat with some great friends, and most of all...I LOVED coming home with 9 different meals that we will be able to enjoy this month (left my meal I made for our family at home in my freezer).

If you haven't tried cooking ahead like this you really must try it...just once!!! It is a life saver as a mom. That 4-6pm time frame for most families with kids can be a little scary and if you haven't thought about dinner until then you are probably going to end up ordering pizza or eating something not so homemade or delicious! You've been there, I know! :) Try it, you'll be hooked and you won't want to go back to the old way! :)