So yesterday I tried another one of my freezer meals. It was supposed to be a chicken and rice casserole. Even though I added extra seasonings for flavor and followed the instructions to the letter, it turned out to be a bland mess that looked like someone had thrown up in my crockpot. Even without the visual, I just could not eat it. I am truly glad the pizza shop delivers. :)
I have one more experimental freezer meal to test and I will likely do that sometime next week. I am beginning to think I will just go back to my normal way of cooking. Freezer meals are basically a time saver. I am retired and pretty much housebound. I really don't need to save time. I have plenty of it.
All I have to do is remember to remove my oxygen tube before turning on the gas burner on my stove in order to prevent those annoying 'poofs.'
This and That
15 hours ago
Your chicken and rice dish reminded me of a crockpot recipe I made one time. It was a chicken curry and smelled amazing. The family gathered at the table for dinner. I took one bit and headed for the kitchen with my plate, grabbing the phone as I went into the kitchen. I was calling for pizza! My son asked what I was doing and I said "that's awful, I'm ordering some pizza". I was very proud of the family - they were trying to get through what was on their plates. You know it's bad when the cook won't even eat it!!
ReplyDeleteI cook up a large pot of rice and freeze that in individual glass storage jars. It takes 2 minutes on high to have nice rice for a side dish. That's about my biggest helper that I make for the freezer. Oh, I do the same when I cook oatmeal for breakfast - I cook a large batch and freeze individual servings.
Keep having fun with your experiments!
SJ
SJ...Your story about the curry pretty much describes this chicken and rice fiasco. I'm reasonably sure that Dog would have turned up his nose at it and would have walked away, highly insulted to be fed such a nasty dish.
DeleteThanks for the reminder about the rice. I used to do the same, cooking up a big batch and freezing it in individual portions, but had forgotten about it. As I recall, that worked really well. I need to do that again.
I don't know. I think I may be nearly finished with this freezer meal experiment. I have lots of other things to occupy my time. We are having a mini heat wave with temps in the high 80's. Even with the air conditioning on, it just seems to be too warm to crochet. I think it might be time to tackle the stack of quilt pieces waiting to be sewn together. Or there is that crate of old photos that are waiting to go into albums. At any rate, I am never bored. :)
I read in a cookbook that you could cook up mashed potatoes and then freeze them in individual servings. Disclaimer -I've never done it since one of my 'cheats' is buying the small, flavored bags of instant potatoes when on sale. What I don't eat, I make into salmon cakes.
DeleteTruly, learning to cook for one has been a huge challenge for me. Even 7yrs post divorce, it's tough. I don't have the standing issues you do or, now, the tubing, but some days I just can't face cooking due to fatigue.
Take good care - working on quilts sounds like your kind of fun!
SJ
SJ...I know you can freeze mashed potatoes. Back when TV dinners came out, when they were packaged in aluminum foil trays, my mother would save the trays. Then on Sundays when we always had a big dinner of roast beef, roast pork or roast chicken with mashed potatoes and a vegetable, she would make extra and fill the trays with the leftovers, cover them with foil and freeze them. Ta Da...homemade TV dinners. This was in the 60's before microwaves and she just popped them in the oven to heat. If my memory serves, it always took the mashed potatoes longer to heat through. I don't know why.
DeleteIf I am to be honest, It really isn't so much the problems I have with standing for any length of time, nor is it the tube that tethers me to R2D2. It is mostly because I just don't want to cook. I know how. I cooked for a fairly large family for years. But these days I just would rather not. Laziness? Perhaps. Sadly, I am ok with that. :)
Speaking of lazy, I am having a gloriously lazy day today. Read some. Watched a movie. Took a nap. We had 80+ degrees the past couple of days and this morning it was down in the low 40's. Had the air on and then had to turn the heat back on last evening. Seemed like a good time to snuggle up with that green fuzzy blanket and just let the world go on by without me today.
For me, not wanting to cook isn't so much about laziness. It's more about not being bothered to cook for only one person. Really, why make the mess for only one? LOL.
DeleteGlorious day here. Spent an hour in the gardens. Cheers, SJ
Could you cook up a meal then freeze it. reheat and eat??
ReplyDeleteRob...That's what I did with the pork chop and dressing meal, but I wrecked it in the microwave. Operator error. :)
DeleteI may try some more like that only do a better job of reheating.
If you cook the chicken and only add the rice the last thirty minutes, it won't be so gloopy. Also, add some red, green or yellow pepper strips well into the cooking for a little color.
ReplyDeleteLOL, I could have eaten it!
Did you use a crockpot recipe? I have never used a crockpot recipe except for a cake.
I think you did what I did, cooked rice until it no longer had texture. It was sort of gross because I ate it and let it slide down my throat after I got the pastiness off my tongue.
Don't give up on the crockpot meals.
Linda...The recipe called for mixing all the ingredients together, including the rice, and cooking it in the crockpot. Would have made more sense to add the rice later. I wasn't thrilled with the taste anyway, but maybe another recipe would work better. I use my crockpot often, especially in the summer when I don't want to heat up my kitchen by using the oven.
DeleteI've had a few recipes like that. Makes a person wonder how the recipe ends up in a cookbook.
ReplyDeleteKristina...I got that recipe from one of the many 'freezer meals' blogs. It sounded really good, but in reality, it was nasty. I did leave a comment, in the nicest possible terms, telling the author that I was less than pleased with the final product. Sometimes I think some bloggers just put information out there without actually testing the recipes themselves. Sigh.
DeleteInstead of microwave could you place your bags in boiling hot water?? Or even crock pot the night before??
ReplyDeleteRob...Good suggestions. I will continue to try to find a better method of cooking.
ReplyDeletei know that lasagna is good as freezer food, but it is heated in the oven.
ReplyDeletethe boil in bags sound like a good idea.
meat+microwave=usually pretty bad.
deborah...As luck would have it, I have a piece of lasagna in a small, covered dish in the oven as I type this. I have tried microwaving leftover lasagna before without much success. The boil-in bags sound good, but when I order groceries, I have to stick to the items listed in their catalog and the bags are not on the list. Granted, the catalog contains nearly everything I need, but I would have to ask one of my kids to get the bags for me and, frankly, they already do so much to help me out that I just don't want to ask them unless it is something really necessary. I may just use the oven for the pork chop meals instead of the microwave. The chicken casserole was so nasty I won't be making that again. :)
DeleteI have figured out you have to just use the recipes you would already use. Putting in rice and leaving it long enough to cook the chicken is a disaster. Use the spices you ordinarily would.
ReplyDeleteLinda..Good plan! Thanks.
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