Freezable Meals Day 1: 2 soups

Yesterday, I got very organized here is a mini break down:

• narrowed down my recipes making sure I had several recipes for each type of meat and that included lots of vegetables
• then catorgized them by type of meat, as of right now I am going to have 4 big days of cooking, but I will add more if I have time and freezer space. 
• Beef-ground and cubed:  Santa Fe Soup, Zesty Beef Veggie Soup, Shepherds Pie
• Chicken Breast: Rosemary Chicken, Cream Cheese Italian Chicken, Chicken Tortilla Soup 
• Spiral Honey Glazed Ham: Ham and Hash Brown Casserole, Corn Flake Hash Browns, Corn Chowder (any left overs will be frozen seperatly and are GREAT for a quick pre-cooked meat)
• Ground Turkey:  Turkey Chilli (I would like to find another recipe to add to this day.)
• printed all the recipes or pulled out of my go to recipe box
• made a HUGE grocery list divided by each meat category. To keep costs down I am buying in bulk where possible, but I am also just buying right before I cook those meals so that the fresh food won't go bad. 
• Double checked my pantry for items: found a quite a few things!
• Looked for coupons in my coupon file and online
• Headed to Walley World

Here are all the items for the first 3 recipes!

The first two recipes that I did are the Santa Fe Soup and Zesty Beef  Veggie Soup.

I have cooked the Santa Fe Soup many times and I have forgotten how freaking easy it is to make and so yummy!!!  Right now it is cooling before I put it into the freezable containers.

Santa Fe Soup  

Since you cook the ground beef at the beginning you only have to let it simmer for about 30-45 minutes.  Here is the recipe if you are interested; I have no clue where I got it from as I have been making it since early in our marriage.

Ingredients:
2lbs ground beef: (I usually get the lowest fat percentage I can find at the store)
1 onion chopped (I usually use white)
2 cans, 11oz, of white corn (I had yellow in the pantry so that's what I used this time)
1 can, 16 oz, of pinto beans (ops forgot to buy them, but luckily had red kidney beans to substitute!)
1 can, 10 oz, of Rotel tomatoes with chillies (I used mild)
1 can, 16 oz, black beans
2 cups water (ended up adding more b/c I wanted it more soupy which will be better for freezing)
2 packages of taco seasoning
2 packages of ranch dressing mix (or about a half of cup if you have the big bottle like us!)

Directions:
Brown ground beef with the onions.  Throw in the rest of the ingredients, draining the corn and beans.  Simmer 30-45 minutes.

Either serve with Fritos, sour cream, cheddar cheese or in a bread bowl or like I am doing freeze in containers that are the correct proportions for your family.

Next, I made the Zesty Beef Veggie Soup.

Zesty Beef Veggie Soup (before)

Here it is in raw form, it needs to cook in the crock pot for next 6 hours on high.

Recipe: (somewhere off line, I hope this is good)

1 lb beef stew meat, cubed (I bought almost a 1 1/2 because my husband likes eating meat)

1/2 cup white onion chopped

2 tsp garlic, minced (or garlic powder that I had on hand, starting off a little at a time)

2 cups shredded cabbage (I bought this pre-shredded in the bag and it had white and red cabbage and some carrots, but I figured it would still work, more veggies the better!)

2 cups frozen corn

2 cups frozen green beans

2 cups carrots, sliced (I used baby carrots so I didn't have to peel them)

4 cups V8 Hot and Spicy tomato vegetable juice (used almost the whole container)

1 can, 14.5 oz, Italian diced tomatoes (never used these before, but they smelled good!)

2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce (we buy the low sodium)

1 teaspoon basil leaves

1 Tablespoon sugar (thought about using splenda, but then didn't)

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Add all ingredients into the slow cooker, stir.  Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 6 hours.   Taste to make sure its good before letting cool and freezing in serving sized containers or freezer bags.

*I have an awesome husband who is great at seasoning and he ended up adding the following:

Here is our final Zesty Soup!

By this point my feet are killing me and my belly is hard as a rock from all the running around today.  Did I mention I did laundry, dishes and general picking up around the house before the shopping trip?  Thankfully, Chris worked from home on paperwork and was able to help me get the groceries in the house.

Whew!  If you made it this far WOW and thanks for reading!!