Something weird happens when you prepare one recipe for ten families. You hit a rhythm. Your eyes sort of glaze over… cranberry sauce, onion soup, pour the dressing, mix it together… until you make a mistake and dump the cranberries into the wrong bowl. Then you halt, figure out what’s what, and get back to the business of making freezer meals.

Several years ago my friend Carrie read a book about cooking a whole bunch of meals in one day—30 to be precise—and them freezing them. It’s a lot of work up front, but incredibly helpful in reducing meal prep time for future dinners. Carrie invited a bunch of girlfriends to Cooking Day and we worked, side by side, on our feet for hours on end to fix those 30 meals. We divided the costs and went home that evening with achy calves but feeling like queens with freezers full of meals.

Fast forward a few years. Carrie is keeping tabs on her husband’s cholesterol, which means a whole lot of lean chicken meals and not many casseroles at her home. So I’ve started a new freezer meal coop where all the chefs prepare two meals at home… ten times over. In this post I’ve included a few shots of one of my meals, Cranberry Chicken, and one of my dog, who stays oh-so-faithfully at my side when I’m cooking. I like to pretend he enjoys my company but I know better. He’s the dog equivalent of a Hoover vacuum cleaner so all in all, he earns his keep and keeps the kitchen floor spotless.

The recipe for Cranberry Chicken can be found at my (our) recipe blog, Needs More Butter.