Tater Tot Casserole

This week at Food Lion there is a GREAT sale on ground beef.  It's a value pack on sale for $2/lb and there's a Food Lion coupon which I've given you the link below to print.  Combined with coupon, it comes to about $1.30 or  so a pound!!  It is a 73% beef, but I always drain the fat off anyways so it doesn't make much of a difference for me!  This sale ends Tuesday, so make sure to get some before then!!

Print your Food Lion Coupons to use on the ground beef.  You can print more than once, but you can't use more than one meat coupon at a time.  I've gone to the store a couple different times to get more than one pack to stock up.  It's a great price to stock up for at least 3 months.  After tomorrow I will have 14 lbs. of beef in my freezer.  :)  I'm excited, so I thought I'd share what I've done with the meat to make my life easy.

First, I cooked each pack of beef, about 4 lbs. at a time, in my crockpot. (Learned that from my friend Anna, over at SmartDollars.  I bought packs that were pretty close to 3 or 4 pounds so I could evenly divide it after it's cooked.  After it's cooked through, I drain it in a collander and dump it onto a cookie sheet covered with foil and spread out to cool a bit.  Then, separate it into 4ths or 3rds, according to however many pounds I got.

So, here's what I did....my first pack of meat was 4 pounds, so I took two separate pounds and put them into freezer bags to have on hand to make life easy when it comes to adding it to spaghetti sauce, or lasagna, quick tacos, anything really.  It will make those dinners that much easier, not having to cook that meat first.  Then, I made two casseroles to keep in my freezer.  I mixed all the ingredients into two separate freezer bags and then laid flat in my freezer.  I also wrote the directions on the front of the bag to make cooking easy.

Now, I have two meals that I pull out of my freezer to thaw, and then throw into my crockpot.  I'm cooking another 3 pound pack as we speak and I'm just going to put those into one pound increments and freeze, and I'm using one of those pounds for dinner tonight.  Here's the best part.... 7 meals, 1 mess!!  Woohoo!!  I'm heading back to get one more pack tomorrow, which I'm going to be making some baked ziti with to  stock my freezer.  I'll post that recipe later in the week.

Here's the recipe for my Tater Tot Casserole.  I have made it before and we really like it!!

Tater Tot Casserole Recipe

32 oz bag tater tots

1 lb ground beef, browned

½ t. salt

¼ t. pepper

2 cans green beans

1 can cr. Mushroom soup

½ chopped onion

¼ c. milk

Cheese (optional for sprinkling over after cooked)

Freeze all but tater tots & cheese in freezer safe bag.  Try to thaw the bag in the fridge, the night before cooking so it will spread out over tots easily.

(Write on bag) To cook, line crockpot with tater tots, cover with bag of ingredients.  Cook on low for 6 hours or high for 3.  Sprinkle each serving with cheese.