5 Amazing Freezer Meals for your College Students. Comfort food freezer meals for college students that bring home to them. Being away from home is hard. On days that your college student wishes they could sit at the dinner table and enjoy a home-cooked meal, these Comfort Food Freezer Meals will be perfect for them.
You know your college student better than anyone so, make a list of the special meals that they love and tweak them to work as a freezer meal.
Mental Connection with Food
Freezer meals will help with mental health
The mental connection between food and your emotions is amazing. A simple smell of a dish can make you feel close to home, warm and fuzzy, and even be an emotional boost to your day. I know when I smell a pot roast cooking, I automatically think of my mom’s kitchen and know alongside the roast, there are carrots, potatoes, and green beans that have been cooked all day long with bacon. Even the bean texture that has been cooked soo long that they are flat. It lifts my spirits, draws me close to home, and comforts me.
Kentucky Counseling Center has a great article on How food affects your mental health and your mood.
5 Amazing Comfort Food Freezer Meals
Here are 5 Amazing Freezer Meals for your College Students that are easy. As well as easy to adjust to fit the taste and needs of your college student. Each one is linked to my Pinterest board that I started when my children were in college. There are several more ideas on that board. Be sure to follow the board as I update it often with ideas. Now, my children are post-college now and loving cooking in their own kitchens now. I still do freezer meals often for guests that come through our home that maybe don’t have a mom or dad that can send home-cooked meals. College students connect to home. You can be that gap mom or dad for someone.
Freezer food options
Pot Roast, with Mashed Potatoes I have two recipes pinned in my Cooking Up Meals for college students for this one. One is for the mashed potatoes and one for the roast. I love how you freeze the potatoes in servings. once frozen, you can place it in the same container as the pot roast.
Baked Ziti with Ground beef There are several pinned recipes for this meal. I usually will make a large casserole of this and break it into single-serving containers.
Chicken Alfredo. This is probably my favorite freezer meal for college students. It is easy to fix as well as easy and yummy to warm up. Adding broccoli to the dish is great also.
Chicken enchilada This Chicken Enchilada freezer meal is a great meal that can be paired with a salad and chips.
Easy Tortellini Soup. You can freeze soups in mason jars. Yes, mason jars. That makes it so easy for the college student to reheat in the microwave and eat out of the jar. There are instructions on how to freeze soup in jars on this Pinterest board along with the soup recipe.
Bonus!!
Freezer Breakfast Burritos. These are amazing. I actually make these for our home.
These 5 Amazing Freezer Meals for your College Students plus the bonus will keep your college student fed as well as feeling like they are close to home with a home-cooked meal.
Easy Preparation freezer meals for you College Student
College students rarely will go the extra mile to make a meal.
Having meal prep containers in my kitchen allows me to make the freezer foods listed above and place in uniform-sized containers for my college student as well as if we have a meal that I think would be great for the freezer, I can put it in one of the prep containers and pop into the freezer easily.
My favorite containers can be used in an oven, toaster oven, and microwaves. It is also best if you buy the same containers to where they all stack well together for easy storage in the freezer, refrigerator, and cabinet. This makes the freezer meals for your college student more organized too.
I have a great article on how to prep and send freezer meals to your college student that will give you more ideas on packing and sending. Click here
Freezer meals for your college students keeps them close to home
This is just one way to keep your college student close to home even if they are 100 plus miles away.
Plan a night to where your college student can warm the freezer meal that you sent them and you can have the same meal at your house. Open up the computer and place it on the table where they normally sit. Share a meal over video. A good conversation and sharing the same meals will make the miles between fade away.
It is so easy now to connect with people over video. FaceTime, Zoom, Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. Technology has made the world smaller.
A friend of my mine says over and over, “Food makes Friends”. I agree with him but I would also say, “Food connects people in a deep way”. So keep your connection strong with your college students by keeping them connected with the Comfort Food Freezer Meals that you send with them.
For those of us that do not have college students…
My kids are grown and post-college now but I still love caring for them from time to time with freezer meals. Now that you have had the experience of your children being away at college, you know the stress, mental toll and the value of a home-cooked meal brings to the college students. Have you thought about being a Gap Mom or Dad to a college student? What a great way to show hospitality to a student who maybe lives many miles away from their home. Check out ways you can be that Gap Mom or Dad HERE.
