Two Chickens, Five Meals

I have really gotten back into cooking again. I think part of the reason is because I have been cooking most of my meats ahead of time. I do have to take a little bit of extra time to cook the meats but it sure does cut down down the time for most meals since I can just add the cooked meat into whatever dish I am making.
I started cooking and freezing meat shortly before Seth was born in hopes to make my life easier once he arrived. I loved how much it simplified my life that I haven't stopped. We are so much less tempted to go out to eat if we know we can throw together a meal really quickly since the meat is already cooked.
I went to the store on Sunday and bought a lot of meat and I mean a lot of meat! I am actually hoping all of this meat will last most of the month if I plan well. I don't take one day to cook all of my meat though. I like to break it up through the week. So tonight I started cooking.
I could just pick up some chickens from the deli at Wal-mart, but I have found that they are sometimes rubbery, so I like to roast my own. If you have never roasted a chicken, it is super simple. I like to put a cut up lemon and some garlic in my standard roasted chicken. I salt and pepper the outside really well, tuck the wings under the body, and tie the legs together to make sure they cook evenly. It sounds complicated but it is really not, trust me. I cook my chickens at 400 degrees for an hour and thirty minutes.

Tonight I needed some chicken for Chicken Pot Pie so it was a perfect time to cook two chickens for future meals. I used one chicken breast and leg meat for our dinner tonight and I removed the rest of the meat and froze it for future meals like Chicken Enchiladas, Chicken and Dumplings, Chicken Tacos, and Poppyseed Chicken Casserole. So the meat from two chickens is going to provide meat for five meals and the nice thing about it is, the meat is already cooked. I put all of my cooked meat in quart sized freezer bags and label each one with what it is and the date that it was cooked.

On the agenda for tomorrow is shredded pork...