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Frozen Food
Here it is, the list of the things I have come to rely on in the last month for fast meals. I have never stocked or relied on so many frozen things, and even now, I don’t think I have enough, but my erratic schedule, deadlines, and many evening events have meant a lot of paring back.
Because I haven’t been to the farmers market much lately, and when I have the fruit has been largely last fall’s apples and loads of citrus, I’ve bought a lot of frozen fruit. Between our orange tree and the following list, we’ve avoided scurvy:
- frozen mango
- frozen blueberries (eaten nearly daily for breakfast)
- frozen mixed berries
- frozen pineapple (used largely in smoothies)
- frozen chocolate covered bananas (a treat, yes, and full of sugar, yes, but also a banana for dessert. could be worse)
- frozen edamame (for snacks, lunches, side dishes with storebought sushi)
- frozen french fries
- frozen green peas (kids hate these, but I use them for somethings)
- frozen corn (K & I eat this on herbed pizza dough w/red peppers)
Sadly, I’m the only one who will eat garden burgers, but I’ve kept on hand:
- frozen middle eastern flatbread (nothing beats falafel mix for a quick dinner)
- Frozen, breaded, pre-cooked tilapia (great for fish sandwiches, crumbled for fish tacos, or eaten whole with fish and chips)
- Frozen pre-cooked, batter-fried cod (see above, I don’t buy this oftens since it’s less sustainable than the tilapia)
- frozen pie shells (quiche can nearly make itself, and it keeps well & can be served at room temperature)
- frozen, pre-cooked sausages (great baked with apples and potatoes. Mess free and fast.)
- frozen crab cakes
- frozen ravioli (even easier if you just serve with butter and cheese)
- lots of breads: tortillas (for fast bean and cheese tacos); pizza dough (for fast pizza); hamburger buns (for fish sandwiches or panelle); italian bread (because sometimes just a little bit of warm garlic bread makes a boring spaghetti more palatable)
I’ve made other fast things, too, and as you can see–not a whole lot of range in ingredients, but from one kind of fish, I can get three different kinds of meals. We survived.
I’d love to know what frozen foods you rely on. What do you love? Your family? What’s healthiest, fastest, most satisfying? What do you splurge on?
Cooking under deadline
Since 2009 Pete Wells has been writing a column in the NY Times magazine about cooking with his family. This past Sunday, he wrote his final column.
In it, he confesses that he never really figured out how to cook dinner after working full time–and get it on the table in time for his young children to enjoy it. It’s an honest column about the dilemma many parents face. If you don’t work full-time, chances are you have volunteer obligations, a sick child, or after-school activities and car pools to run. It’s certainly next to impossible to involve the kids on a weeknight if there’s homework and sports or just some much needed playing to be done. It can be downright hard to get a homecooked meal on the table.
I work mostly from home, so I’ve written about how prepping at lunch time, or in a quick few minutes after school can make the evening run much smoother. But lately, my book launch has brought a million moving parts to my life, and I’ve been scrambling up to the very last minute I have before picking the kids up from school, supervising homework, gettin them to their activities. I’m exhausted at the end of the day. I have a freezer full of food and a refrigerator full of fresh produce, and yet, I have little energy or time to cook. It’s almost like having a newborn: if I have to do one more thing (i.e. prepare food) I just might fall apart. But still, we still have to eat, so I’ve gotten by on very easy things like fast pasta, easy fish tacos, a few more dinners out on weekends. And last night…I took a page from Wells’ wish list (healthier frozen food that goes from freezer to oven to table) and pulled out the frozen breaded tilapia filets. The kids had fish sandwiches and fries and a big side of steamed romanesco. Kory & I had a pot pie that I had made the day before from a frozen pie crust and the leftovers from Sunday’s roast.
We got by. Tonight, I’m making this fish soup, from homemade broth, also made on Sunday from that Sunday Roast Chicken (which makes 3 meals total from one bird). It sounds fancy and tastes fantastic, but it takes only about 15 minutes to cook and much less time than that to prep.
I know this will pass, and I also know that I am not the only one who faces this issue–whether all the time or just periodically. Like Pete Wells, we’d love to know what you do when you’re truly too busy to cook, and eating out is not an option.
Thousand Island Dressing
by Lisa
It’s a snack food, a packable lunch dish, a side dish, an appetizer, an all around helpful thing to have in your kitchen. It’s lightening fast to make. It’s completely addictive. It’s a way of getting your kids to eat more raw vegetables. And even you won’t be able to stop eating it with salads, with crudite, for lunch, before dinner, after school. Even if you don’t like the bottled stuff, try this. There’s no comparison. And there’s nothing like having a big batch of something healthy to pull out and feed the kids when they’re begging for food and dinner isn’t quite ready.
I dug up this recipe a few years ago, and while we don’t always have it the refrigerator, it’s the kind of thing that the kids suddenly remember and beg for. Last week it was Finn’s turn to remember that “pink dipping sauce” and so I made it. I had half a head of iceberg lettuce in the refrigerator, left over from fish tacos the night before, and we whipped up a batch of dressing, and it has lasted us all week. I served it to them first over wedges of lettuce, which Finn thought was just about the best thing ever.
The recipe makes a lot, but it keeps really well (even gets better as the flavors blend), so we portion it out all week long, mostly with carrots and celery, which I precut and keep in the refrigerator.
The original recipe is here. My only change is to substitute ketchup for chili sauce and add a dash of tabasco (or more or less to your taste). I usually don’t have pimentos, so I often leave them out, but when I’m short on pickles I’ve thrown in a few pimento stuffed olives; you can leave out the egg, but it’s much better with it in.
Homemade Thousand Island dressing
- 1 1/4 cups mayonnaise
- 1/3 cup ketchup
- 1/4 cup chopped drained pimiento
- 1 large hard-boiled egg, shelled, finely chopped
- 3 tablespoons finely chopped dill pickle
- 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 2 tablespoons drained capers
- 2 tablespoons chopped green onion
- Tabasco or other Hot pepper sauce
Finely chop the green onion, capers, pickle, egg, and pimiento in a mini-food processor or by hand. Add ketchup, mayonnaise and hot sauce and blend (in processor or with whisk) well.
Fast-Slow Roasted Garlic & Tomato Sauce
by Lisa
My quest for fast, delicious, from-scratch weeknight meals continues. There’s the night I teach and I have to prep dinner at lunch, and there’s the afternoon soccer practices when we spend a lovely hour at the park, and a ballet night that doesn’t get us in until after 6 pm. So prep time is greatly reduced, and some nights, dinner needs to be on the table in 10 minutes or less, otherwise, bedtime is hopeless. I need food that gets to the table fast; I need food that keeps at room temperature, or that won’t be compromised by the refrigerator.
Here’s what I’ve learned: planning is vital.
Fish tacos work, all kinds of eggs work, so does a roast chicken (if you’re home to cook it early), and quiche. Then there are all the things that you can prep on the weekend and transform over the week. When you can get 2 different meals out of one thing, it’s also economical.
This weekend I brought home a few pounds of Roma tomatoes from the farmer’s market, spread them on a baking sheet, sprinkled with olive oil and salt and threw in a few sprigs of basil just because I had it AND two whole bulbs of garlic. I roasted the heck out of them in a 200 degree oven. After several hours they were totally deflated-looking. By then, it was 8 or 9 o’clock at night, and I didn’t want to deal with them anymore, so I stuck them in a covered dish and stuck it in the refrigerator.
A few days later, I remembered the tomatoes when I needed dinner. I dumped them in a pot, squeezing the roasted garlic out of its husks, added a little salt, about a 1/4 cup of white wine and after simmering for a few minutes to blend the flavors, I used an emulsion blender to smooth it out. You could easily blend everything in a blender and then heat it slowly after. Also, you can use any kind of fresh, flavorful tomato. Early girls are good if you can still get them.
The result was a creamy, garlicky, deeply flavorful sauce we ate over pasta. The kids loved it.
Two nights later, the same (leftover) penne, mixed with extra sauce and baked with a topping of fresh mozzarella and grana, made a faux, super-fast, what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-cook-tonight lasagna, which I think they liked even better.
We’re still at the very end of tomato season here, any maybe you are, too. If you can find good fresh tomatoes anymore, you can still roast the garlic and blend it into a can of good San Marzanos. But if you can still find some tomatoes, load up, slow roast, and freeze the tomatoes whole, right off the tray once they’ve cooled. Or make this sauce and keep it in ziplocks next to your frozen pesto. You’ll thank yourself on one of those cold dark nights that are just around the corner.