Has anyone done a "eat out of your freezer" challenge?

I eat out of the freezer or cupboard as a way of life, due to budgetary constraints.
Eating out, drive thru, and take out expenditures quickly add up.

I hate cooking every day, for me it's a tedious chore.
I much prefer already made and in my freezer frozen meals, that just need to be reheated.
I do multiple meal cooking about once or twice a month. I usually cook 2-5 hours making several meals (of which I get many portions, that I freeze in individual servings). Sometimes, I do a couple meals choices, sometimes more hence.... the difference in times.
I buy premade food (Sprouts has a container of shredded chicken in the ready made food section, I buy that and portion it individually and freeze, it costs less than buying chicken breast and cooking and shredding them myself).
I also buy premade muffins that I freeze individually, so I can take one to work for lunch if I want to.
I love the mini brown bread from the OutBack restaurant, so I stop by the takeout every few weeks and buy several loaves (.50cents each loaf + the tip)...and I get it unheated...if it's heated then frozen then reheated it gets hard) and freeze it, so if I am not that hungry I will have a loaf for dinner or one for lunch.
I am an extremely picky eater, so my menu choices of what I like to eat, is much smaller than the average person, and I am very okay with that.

I would recommend, that you take inventory of what you in the freezer and cupboards, and figure out what meals you can make out of what you currently have (you can purchase any of the other needed ingredients to complete a meal).
Make a list of the meals that you can make, and start making meals from the list. You can either make them as you go or spend a few hours cooking and freeze several meals that can be reheated.

For the future >>> make a list of meals that you want to make (you could use an index box and index cards, make categories "chicken, beef, no meat, Italian, BBQ, soup and sandwiches, casseroles, pasta dishes, etc...), and that your Family likes to eat. That way prior to grocery shopping, you can looking through the index box, pull the card with all the necessary ingredients listed for the meals you want to make for a week, a couple weeks, a month, etc... and then purchase the ingredients to make those meals, and you won't end up with a random assortment of food (none of which is a full meal).

That’s how we normally cook. We tend to buy 1/4-1/2 a cow or pig at a time plus we get bulk packs of chicken thighs or breasts from Costco so we always have a freezer full of stuff. We also tend to stock up on frozen veggies so we have an assortment to choose from. DH pulls out a couple things at a time. We cook that stuff up over the next few days and usually pick a frozen vegetable to go with it. Sometimes we get a few bagged salad kits or some seasonal fresh vegetables and we add that into the mix.

I'm definitely the kind of person that should never eat from MY freezer. :::: I'll add this to my list of 2023 goals.

We have a chest freezer from 1985 in our basement. I cant dig through it and I certainly cant reach the bottom. We need to go through it and make a list of what we have. The issue is maintaining that list, but I like the idea of noting how many of each item with a symbol that can be crossed off.
Once we have the inventory, I'll start using things up. I dont do "challenges" because I think that it has become a silly, overdone thing. It's just something Im going to do.

I do it frequently. I only have the freezer drawer on the bottom of my fridge and there just isn't a ton of space and there's no way to keep it organized. So a couple times a year I pull everything around and rotate the stuff that's fallen to the bottom up to the top so it's visible again and then every few months I try to power through a bunch of freezer food and only supplement with fresh fruit and veggies as needed.

I do this all of the time, and I say that we're having SURPRISE for dinner. 

It may be easier than you expect.

Think protein, vegetables, and carbs (rice, pasta, bread, etc). See what you have and what goes together pretty well. 

If I've picked out a few things but I'd like some ideas, then I just google those ingredients together and see what comes up. For a recipe person like yourself, there it is. For me, a good general idea may be all I need.

The closer you stick to the typical way you prepare things at first, the more comfortable you'll be and the better your results will probably taste. For example, cook your meat/poultry/fish/seafood a way you already know, but maybe add a seasoning or sauce that you picked up on a whim to try and now want to get rid of.

Casseroles or stews/soups are great ways to use up a bunch of random foods and have something that ends up tasting pretty decent.

Give yourself permission to fail. Tell your family it's SURPRISE night, and they just might surprise you by helping you pick out ingredients to try. It makes it more fun and takes the pressure off. No harm, no foul if someone doesn't like the results. 

Once in a while you may hit it out of the park, and then you've got yourself a brand new recipe. 

Almost every night since groceries went crazy. We have a ton of venison, and I am heartily sick of it. Thank god we bought 5 pounds of boneless chicken tonight!

This comment interests me - so does that mean when you purchase meat, you put it in the fridge and use it soon after buying? I only do that if I am going to use it that night or the next night (like a pork roast or package of ground beef or something). Otherwise I am scared it will go bad! Mostly, we buy a big package of chicken breasts and split them into smaller 1 lb bags, and then put in the freezer. Or we'll buy a 12 pack of hamburgers and split into 4s (we are a family of 4) and then freeze them that way.

(We don't have a costco, but we do have a BJ's).

We eat a lot of salads for lunch, I'm pretty much the only one who likes frozen veggies so we dont have a ton in the freezer.

I'm getting ready to start this as xh will be taking the freezer at some point.

Thanks so much those both look good