Cooking Ahead

[conradd]

theworm said

I get hiccups when I eat hardboiled eggs, so not a good lunch food.

Me too! I get them when I eat bread without butter too - never have figured that one out.

[emeleel]

Cold chicken, here, especially nuggets/strips. Go figger.

[magenta321]

For the next six weeks, I have six days off from work. Three of those days, I will be participating in charity events (Avon Walk for Breast Cancer and Alzheimer's Association's Memory Walk). So I really have 3 free days for the next six weeks, and I'm technically on call for those three days, and might have to work anyway.

So... planning ahead is going to be the only thing that saves me.

I woke up early yesterday, grocery shopped and realized I was going to be late for work. I threw all the perishables in the fridge and freezer, still in the grocery bags. I sorted it out after I came home

Last night I made vegetable samosas and mini burgers (the mini burgers were inspired by too much time looking at bento sites). This morning I made baked beef empanadas. Now I'm working on baked ziti. Friday I made chicken noodle soup.

My freezer is very full right now. I still have some meatloaf in there and some sweet potato fries that I made previously. I hope that food shopping will not be a very necessary event, and neither will cooking, for a bit ^^.

[magenta321]

My little bento box came in the mail today.

All my food is frozen solid so I wasn't really able to fill it up tonight. I put something in the fridge to thaw a bit so I can squish it into the container tomorrow morning. I arranged the top tier of the box though. I have a small baked empanada, a baked veggie samosa, and a pice of cheese. The bottom portion is going to be my chicken soup that is now stew disaster. It tastes great even if it's all wrong.

Sugarcharms threw in a little bento grass and a fish shaped soy sauce bottle. I'm very excited. I have great joy just looking at my bento. I pulled out the chop sticks. I haven't tried to use them since I was in 3rd grade. It didn't seem as hard as I remembered it. Maybe some day I'll try them out. I don't think tomorrow will be the day, however. Orzo and chopsticks on a first attempt sounds like suicide

[magenta321]

I finally got a day off so I've been busy cooking. I made individual chicken pot pies using foil muffin cups, so I can just pull out a couple whenever I want. I used the recipe below, except the cooking time was shortened to about 22 minutes because of the individual containers they were cooked in. I also didn't have Bisquick, I had Aunt Jamima. It worked very well, and my individual pot-pies are cooking right now before I put them in the freezer.

CHICKEN POT PIE WITH BISQUICK

1/3 c. butter, melted
1/2 c. Bisquick
1/3 c. chopped onion
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/8 tsp. thyme

Combine the above in a saucepan to boil. Add:

1/2 c. chicken broth
2/3 c. milk

Heat to boil, constantly stirring, boil 1 minute and stir. Add:

1 3/4 c. chicken
10 oz. frozen peas & carrots

Mix well with spoon, turn off heat.

TOPPING:

1 1/2 c. Bisquick
3 tbsp. hot water
3 tbsp. softened butter

Form dough and put on top of above mixture in a 9 inch square dish.
Bake in a preheated 375°F degree oven for about 45 minutes, or until crust is golden and lightly browned on edges.

[frazzledspice]

I love those new Ziploc Freezer bags that can get all the air sucked out of them by the little battery operated appliance (I forget what they're called.)

They're great.

You can do some things to cut down on your prep time without going the entire OAMC route.

You can brown mass quantities of ground beef or turkey, for example, and save them in units, taking them out as you need them for tacos or spaghetti sauce or sloppy joes.

[emeleel]

To revive this topic briefly: Lunch In A Box now has a "Bento Store Locator" on-site. It's still being filled in by readers, but maybe someone will be able to find a store if they're interested:

New Bento Store Locator with Google Maps | Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento


Also, she recently had a great tip on freezing portions all in one bag so that you can later break off just the amount you want without using multiple bags:

Speed tip: Make individual portions in freezer bags | Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

I just freeze things on a cookie sheet and put 'em in a bag after they're frozen.

[Helen_B[$]]

That works well with a lot of things: blueberries, meat balls, whatever. I sometimes cook up a lot of bell pepper strips (also red and orange) when they're cheap, and bag them up to add to chili or spaghetti sauce. Once I kept a ziploc bag of discs of frozen hot pepper puree for the longest time, just taking out a disc or two to throw in soup. (I had made a sauce to hot to eat by itself, so I poured it into muffin papers, set them on a baking tin, froze them and bagged them up.)

[pluckyduck]

This thread has taken so many turns, I'm not entirely sure if I'm on topic or not....but when does that ever matter here?

I am fascinated by freezer meal cooking and would love to do more of it. It's so efficient. I love the systems. As I can only cook on the weekends, not the work week, it would be perfect for the weekends I'm up to cooking up a storm....except..... the family is sure they will be poisoned by any home cooked meal that has been placed in a freezer first. (Where do they get it? Their father! Where does he get it? Mental instability, I dont know.)

Anyway, any cooking ahead I do for meals is just refrigerator cooking...say a pot of chili that the family will eat on Monday or Tuesday. Fine. Up to the husband to feed us the rest of the week, thankyouverymuch.

Here's something I make for me.

I love steel cut oatmeal. I often eat crappy, out of the snack machine breakfasts, unless I have prepared my oatmeal patties ahead of time. I just made a batch and will eat well all week. Happy me!

So, I make a big pot of steel cut on a Saturday morning. (3 cups of oats will make about 10 patties, after you have your Saturday AM breakfast out of it. ) Flavor it however I like. Brown sugar, or today was honey and vanilla.

Just like MJ said, I take a big cookie sheet and after the oatmeal has cooled, spoon out and form patties. (Make sure they are kind of high and not too wide, keeping in mind the container you are going to use to reheat them in.) Flash freeze them.

When they are frozen solid, take them off the sheet, put them in a big ziploc bag and remember to take them to work. (The remembering to take them to work part is key. I know.)

Reheat in the microwave for about 2 minutes, mush up a little stir, about another minute and -- voila, healthy, hearty breakfast! No snack machines.

You now have 10 breakfasts or, if you are like me, 7 breakfasts and 3 emergency lunches, all safe at work where the worst thing you can do is forget you have brought it in in the first place.

(takes up very little office freezer real estate, packaged that way, btw.)

[mtomm[$]]

(Where do they get it? Their father! Where does he get it? Mental instability, I dont know.)

From several of these types of posts I'm convinced that we may be married to brothers!

[pluckyduck]

mtomm said

From several of these types of posts I'm convinced that we may be married to brothers!

What is it? In another guy it would come off as demanding, but he does more cooking than I do, so it's just highly annoying.

There have been busy times we've lived off way too many Stouffer's Red Boxes, no problems with that, but the idea of cooking something good and then putting half of it in the freezer, you'd think I'd suggested we all turn Communist, jump in a time machine and live in Soviet Russia.

And I did try it. And he wouldn't heat it. And if I heated it, he made a sandwich instead. And I ended up eventually tossing the few meals I had frozen.

Exasperating! But not worth fighting over.

edit ps, and the 14 and 16 year old model him completely. The boys nor he grasp how closely they are modeling his everything. Which is mostly an *excellent* development, except hopefully they won't be marrying a woman who has freezer cooking as a passion.

[conradd]

This is a wonderful idea - I'd never thought of freezing oatmeal. Ted just microwaves oats and water until it's congealed but it doesn't taste that great. I saute thick rolled oats in a bit of butter until they smell toasted, then add milk and simmer until cooked, about 20 minutes, adding brown sugar and dried cranberries. THAT is oatmeal and I'm going to freeze patties the next time I'm down there. He also likes rice, so I cook up a huge pot of rice and bag it in serving sizes, but I hadn't thought about freezing it. We've got two full size freezers - one in the kitchen and one in the pantry - so freezer real estate is not the problem. And, I can make sure that he eats well when I'm not there.

Speaking of freezer space, I'm ordering a set of these:



for the extra juice that I seem to end up with each morning. I tried a combo of orange and pineapple juice frozen in dixie cups last weekend and when Ted and Shane came in from working in the shop, they were parched. I gave them each a slushie made from mixing up the frozen orange-pineapple juice with a splash of light cream and it was very well received. Not sure how it will work to freeze the cream with the juice, but I'll try it.

[pluckyduck]

I love the plastic popsicle makers! Maybe I should get some. Although the pieces would be missing in this house after one or two rounds.

re: oatmeal, it's especially convenient for workplace eating. I broke my rule one time, and instead of frozen, brought a container I made on a Sunday evening for the refrigerator. Ended up throwing half of it out bad. Don't know why.

Got the idea from Trader Joes. They sell steel cut patties. I never had them, but somebody at work had a box in the freezer and I thought, "I can do that", and darn it, I actually could.

My guess is that it's better for short term than long term. I think the oatmeal loses flavor after more than a few weeks in the freezer. Never had a pattie that was frozen longer than a month, but I suspect it's not the best choice.

[Helen_B[$]]

What a terrific idea! Cooked grains freeze well, so I don't know why steel cut oats wouldn't be the same. I'm going to pass this on Gary and Sandy (DS and DIL), since a trip to Scotland made them fond of steel cut oats.