Here’s How 2 Smart Parents Made 25 Freezer “Dump Meals” in Preparation for Their New Baby
The days and weeks before a baby arrives are a flurry of “hurry up and wait.” As the nesting instinct kicks in and bassinets are set up, there’s also the little matter of making sure that the family gets fed once the baby is born. One Redditor and his wife made a plan to keep dinners on the table without spending too much time away from the baby by meal prepping 25 “dump meals” that they can keep in the freezer until they need them.
The early days of bringing a new baby at home — especially, as in the case of this family, where it’s the second kid — tend to be a chaotic flurry of crying and adjustment, so making actual food can be hard. The dump meals are each frozen into individual plastic bags, then get removed the night before and thaw through the night, ready to be dumped into a pot for dinner. The poster says about half of them are made for the slow cooker and the other half for the pressure cooker.
In one post, he shows the “before” picture, a table full of cans, chicken breasts, ground beef and turkey, and vegetables. In the second one, he shows the final product, which doesn’t actually look that huge and space-consuming, although he does say that they have a chest freezer to keep it in.
He also shows off how they were able to pull this meal prep feat off! He posted the grocery lists and recipes that they used — both of which say that the meals come in under $5 each, which is fairly impressive for feeding a family of four. But it doesn’t necessarily seem easy: “It took three of us working at it about three hours to put it together,” he explains, adding that the worst part was one person had to spend the entire three hours just trimming the 50 chicken breasts involved in the meals.
Get inspired: These 5 Slow Cooker Dump Dinners All Make Themselves