Help with Freezing Meals

[capsgirl08]

Hello, mamas.  I am due with #2 in March 2011, and as embarrassing as this is to admit, I have never frozen any of my meals before.

DS, who is 2.5, has severe FAs to the following: dairy, egg, nuts.

As a family, we also try to completely avoid soy because we all seem to act/feel icky after consuming it...

We also limit wheat and gluten, in general.

There are a few other foods we avoid (coconut, chocolate, avocado) because I have reactions to them, but I'm guessing there are a lot of meal ideas that don't include these things.

Sooo, given our restrictions, my questions are:

1. I'm sort of paranoid about using plastics, and have only been using glass, then covering it with safe-ish parchment paper before sealing it with a plastic lid.  Will this method work when I'm freezing?  Is there a safe alternative?

2. How long in advance can I/should I start making frozen meals?

3. Any tips as far as what does *NOT* work well as a reheated meal?

4. Any tried-and-true favorite recipes, and would you mind sharing?

Thank you very, very much, everyone.  I am just now realizing how quickly time is passing and how much more we still have to do, lol.  Hope everyone's enjoying the holidays.

-A

[bodhitree]

You can definitely use glass to freeze your foods. Just make sure you leave some room when freezing foods that have a lot of water in them, because they do expand in the freezer and glass is not as forgiving as plastic.

Personally I find it really convenient to just pull something out of the freezer for dinner even when I don't have a newborn, so I'd start freezing stuff now and not even wait until March to start eating it. I do think quality tends to decline after a few months, so if you're not going to eat any of it until March, I'd maybe start feeding the freezer in late January.

As far as what does and doesn't work, I find that bean-based dishes and soups work really well. I also make gigantic batches of tomato sauce (for pasta) that I freeze in small separate containers.  Lasagna (with GF noodles and no cheese) works well, as do other casserole-style dishes. The only thing I've ever tried that absolutely did not work was a tamale pie that I didn't prebake before sticking it in the freezer. I thought the cornbread topping would just defrost and bake like normal, but after baking I ended up with cornmealy mush on top instead of the light yummy cornbread I was expecting. So stuff that has any kind of dough or batter in it, I always bake now before freezing.

Most of the recipes I use are from cookbooks (or made up out of my own noggin ), but here's the one I use for lentil sloppy joes. The only change I usually make is to use less tomato than it calls for. We usually have this dish with brown rice, but you could also use GF bread if you felt like it.