Freezer Food Co-Op

      Yesterday was an exciting day for me.  I reunited with an old friend to start a new Freezer Food Co-op!  Insert a lot of joy here -



      That's the joy I'm talking about.  This is the friend that I was in my very first Food Co-Op with, which you can read about here.  And I still do that kind of Food Co-Op with my dear friend, Lindsay (we still haven't found that right third person.)  I love having meals delivered to my door step by a smiling friend, and I even love delivering them.  But, since it is just the two of us, that still leaves five nights a week where I have to figure out what we should eat for dinner.  That feels like so many.

       A couple of weeks ago, Allison, who has moved about 30 minutes away was blessedly in Little Rock and we did lunch.  And we talked about the days of Food Co-Op past together and how we miss each other.  And we thought - we can still trade food.  Why should a little distance stand in our way?  It should not.  (A little backstory on my friendship with Allison - we met about 10 years ago while working at Kanakuk.  Never in our wildest K-Dreams did we imagine that we would both end up in Central Arkansas some day.  God sure is funny and awesome like that.)  So we decided that once a month or so, we should get together and trade frozen meals.  Yesterday was our first swap.

I brought some of the Meatloaf that I made the other night.  I froze it in a pan before it was baked, so that it will just need to be defrosted, have the sauce poured over it and thrown into the oven.  I also made Mini-Ham and Cheese Sandwiches - maybe that will be a recipe for another day.  I haven't eaten them yet to know if they are good.  I also froze some of each of these for our family.  I included a side for each dinner as well - fruit salad and corn muffins.  And, I included instructions for how to prepare everything.




As much as possible, I freeze things so that they will be flat in a ziploc bag.  That makes everything easier to store and find - it works especially well for soups.  I usually just stick something on top of a frozen pizza in my freezer to get it to stay really flat.  I loaded everything up in a thermal bag.



Then I headed to Chick-fil-A in North Little Rock, since that is the best in between place for us to meet up.  We traded food in the parking lot, with all of our little friends helping.




I should have had Allison take a cheesy picture of me with my food - next time.  This is also great, because it means Allison and I have a reason to get together every month.  So fun.  I have realized that for me, the hardest part of preparing dinner is that I have to think about it.  It is so nice if there is something that just tells me what to do and is all ready to go.  Insert delicious freezer meals from a friend into that void.  Perfect!  Here is what I got in return.




I came out ahead, because she included a dessert - sorry, Allison - next time, I will do double dessert for you, because we all need more dessert in our lives.  I am thrilled about this new adventure in food sharing!