Thursday, November 16, 2006

Freezer meals, part 2

I've gotten a lot of traffic on my post about Let's Dish, so I thought I'd do a follow up. Realizing that they are a little more pricey than I'd like, I ordered a freezer cookbook from Amazon, and it came in the mail recently. I ordered a book called "Don't Panic- Dinner's in the Freezer: Great-Tasting Meals You Can Make Ahead" by Susie Martinez, Vanda Howell, and Bonnie Garcia. My method for picking this book basically had to do with reading reader reviews on Amazon.com of several freezer cookbooks. Many of the readers said this was their favorite, so I bought it used from a Amazon marketplace seller. I haven't had a chance to try any of them, yet, but I have gone through and put check marks by several that I'd like to try. Most of the recipes use what I like to call the "marinate and freeze method." You make up some sort of sauce, and you freeze meat in that. You may have to do some amount of cooking before you freeze as well. The recipes give you the regular portioned ingredients and servings, and then they give you the amounts to double or triple it beside that. It looks pretty easy. I'm personally looking forward to trying the orange glazed beef lettuce wraps, the beef chimichangas, and the chicken in raspberry sauce. I was hoping for a few more casserole style dishes, but that doesn't seem to be a hallmark of their freezer cooking, though they do have some that include flour tortilla wraps, including breakfast burritos. They also had a section of pastas and soups, so if you like those, they're there. I'll try some of these recipes after the Thanksgiving holiday and let you know how it goes. I'm also going to try to keep track of how much I spent on the meals to figure out how cheaply I managed to do it. And if you try your hand at freezer cooking, let me know how it goes!

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