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@KennethT I have a calamondin / calamansi tree; happy to send you some seeds. I'm not sure if they will grow from seeds or if you need to graft. There are a few nurseries in the US where you can mail order the plant and I don't think there are shipping restrictions to New York. https://www.fourwindsgrowers.com/a/blog/how-to-grow-a-calamondin-citrus-tree

I don’t know what possessed me to buy a 1kg tub of Thai green curry paste, but because I have SO much, I always use TOO much. This green chicken curry was Thailand hot. The kinda hot where food cart aunty looks at your pale skin, wags her finger at you and screams TOO HOT FOR YOU !

Very smart to avoid over complicating things! Which makes me wonder why (aside from the presence of a 5 lb cabbage) you want to combine 6 new-to-you recipes into a newly designed and untested creation at what seems like a rather stressful time. Maybe this is a fun activity to keep your mind off of the stress? If so, great. If not, I’m wondering why you’re not leaning into the sameness and freezing batches of old favorites.

If you like coleslaw, I sometimes make this to use up the rest of a cabbage that is languishing: https://www.daringgourmet.com/freezer-slaw/

Thanks, @Smithy. The cabbage I bought is huge, 5 lbs at least. It will be good for more than one batch. So far I have prepared and lightly cooked sliced onion, garlic, sliced celery, cubed potato, gorgeous bacon. I haven't sliced the cabbage yet, because I don't want to slice it then leave it uncooked. So I'm only missing the sauce. (I'm not good at making sauces!)

i would add a tomato sauce of some kind.

Welp. It's another bust, as far as I'm concerned. I bought this with a mixture of misgivings and hope. On the plus side: citrus! garlic! chicken! easy cooking and disposal! On the misgivings side: black beans and plantain...not that I actively dislike either, but they aren't on my list of favorite flavors. I'm sorry to report that the entire dish was on the gummy side. Did I simply overcook it, so the rice was overdone? I don't know. But I didn't especially like the plantains, and black beans are my least favorite of the legumes, and there was the gumminess of the overall dish. Any pleasure I might have gotten from the chicken and garlic was lost. Oh, and I neglected to gussy it up with cilantro as shown in the box photo, even though I just came from the grocery store and have some fresh. I ended up salting it, to drown out the sweetness of the plantains. I'm sure the sweetness would appeal to a lot of people, but it doesn't to me. On the bright side: here's another dish I tried once, for not much money, and won't need to try again. And hey, cleanup is easy!

Dinner was SV turkey breast over celeriac and potato mash with wilted spinach and carrots. The turkey was half of a turkey breast half that was divided length wise after coming out of the water bath. The breast was seasoned with Cavender's Greek Salt, lemon slices with fresh sage and rosemary. I browned the breast prior to serving and deglazed the pan with the bag juices to make a sauce. The breast was seasoned and sealed the day prior to being cooked. I left it in the circulator for four hours at 141F.

Attendees Chocolot Kerry Beal alleguede curls RanaMN Melani RobertM DianaD Lisa M citowolf - Celia D Lambrecht gourmet +1

It is indeed no longer out of town. I myself haven't been to the new one - just the old one you mention.

I suspect you're very good at making sauces! Matching a sauce to the dish in question may be an issue, and I'm not sure I can help much with that. I need to explain that I'm on a crunchy cabbage slaw kick right now, thanks to @blue_dolphin and to my best friend, so cooked cabbage isn't really at the top of my mind. I think I could cheerfully live on a nice, crunchy slaw (cabbage, celery, carrots, radishes, peanuts or walnuts thrown in) with a good dressing for many days. That said, and given that you're looking at cooked dishes to freeze, thaw and reheat, I'd give some thought to flavor compatibilities and personal tastes. Would you like beef and cabbage together? I don't find the idea especially appealing, but if you do then the demi-glace might be an idea. Is the cabbage supposed to be the star, or a supporting actor? If the star, then I think the first two sauce ideas sound like good ways to gussy it up. I do think the potatoes and Gruyere sound more like a way to hide the cabbage than to celebrate it. There are recipes also for braised cabbage, with or without chicken. If that appeals, I'll post the one I have. It takes the dish into the acidic region thanks to vinegar.

Kerry, Put Lambrecht down. Nancy's 70th is the 16th and she said "we are going to Montreal ". Just to clarify location. I took courses at Callebaut many years ago (where I met Ruth) and it was at Callebaut about 45 minutes away. Do they have a facility in Montreal proper now?

@blue_dolphin @SLB and @Smithy Here's why I'm asking about sauces. My usual way is to look at a bunch of recipes then start cooking (mostly without a recipe). The current dish I'm trying to design involves cabbage. I've collected half dozen or so recipes. The sauces are made of: evaporated milk, flour, parmesan, breadcrumbs milk, flour, cheddar, sour cream French demi-glace cream cheese and mustard potatoes and Gruyère I think if the dish gets too complicated, it loses something. Seems the sauce could be simpler. Maybe I don't know how to make a sauce?

In this context, I don’t think the sameness is a bad thing as you probably won’t get tired of having the same thing as often as twice a month or even once a week.

A friend has offered to help cook some meals, so I pinched stuff from that email. 😃 Right now I'm making up dishes with stuff from the fridge, though I do go out and buy a couple of things if it seems sensible. However, there's a certain sameness to what I cook, because I do it the same way. This is how I make a batch so far. (Credit to @patti and her Cooking for a Community Fridge) The pie tin pan is the same size as chicken pot pies from the grocery. For those, DH and I usually eat 1/2 pie apiece, but they are overflowing with pastry. The plastic container is how I got the pies home from grocery. They're handy to stack pie tins in the freezer to freeze. Each pan has been foil covered, then labelled with a printed file folder label. After being frozen, meal is slid into a 8x12 vacuum sealer bag (fits perfectly!) and then vacuumed. Nice little hockey pucks. In case I made the jpg too small to read, this dish has lamb, beetroot, onion, fresh corn (frozen by me), green pepper, tomato, and Rancho Gordo Good Mother Stollard beans. To be truthful, there might be barley &/or mashed potato in there too (because I never remember to put everything on the label).

I share @blue_dolphin's question, but will reply reserving the right to revise upon more information: I would just make whatever regular sauce, leave it on the runniest side (or add water back in if you've boiled it down); and then freeze it in ice cube trays (or, whatever!). A sauce that is constituted primarily of pureed green vegetables is to turn an unappetizing color. It is, however, going to taste great. You might want to boil off any excess water on the reheating side, if it doesn't occur naturally . **[you guys. I am Not a Chef. This is how we do things up in here in this home. I think Those of Us Who Are Chefs may feel differently -- specifically maybe are horrified -- at the notion of adding back in water to be boiled out later, repeated boiling, etc.] I had hoped that the Vivian Howard recipe was actually more like a sautee, particularly since she calls for spring-roll wrappers which are quite thin. But, alas no. She's talking 2 quarts of oil, so you are correct that the intention is to deep fry. I'm taking the Fifth, I mean the rosary, on my intake of the fat in fried food . . . .

Do you have a favorite recipe for the Pavlova base? I've always wanted to try it

I know you didn’t ask me, but I’m curious. Can you give us some examples of casseroles that use a separate sauce? I don’t think I’ve had one with a separate sauce, let alone two sauces.

@SLB, do you do anything special about sauces which go in the freezer? With a casserole, I think there ought to be a sauce. Or maybe two, to add some variety to the batch.

Very gracious (blush). Your post is full of most helpful information, and thanks to the pointer to rutabaga recipe. Sadly, I'm afraid of deep frying – what if I liked it? I suppose the people who deep fry regularly know how to minimize the volume of fat in finished coating . . .

I bought a new pump and motor assembly, as I was unable to get a pump for mine. My machine was made in 2015, at some point between then and now, vacmaster revised the machine, to make it cheaper to produce. Mine had a rather large induction motor coupled to a rotary vane vacuum pump, pretty clearly purpose built. the exhaust from the pump went through tubes, through a couple filters (to capture the oil that's in the exhaust) and out the bottom of the machine. The new pump and motor are a lightly modified HVAC service vacuum pump, which doesn't mount the same way as the old one, I had to drill holes in the base plate to mount it. Also means the oil level sight glass isn't really visible from the outside. It's substantially smaller, much louder, and has a fair bit of vibration. Exhaust is through a pump mounted filter, and into the inside the machine. If new machines are like that, I'd be looking at alternatives. Claimed power is lower, but it seems to be sucking at least as well as it used to. We'll see if I have to adjust cycle times.

Thanks for your generous wishes! No, no diet restrictions. Edited to add: But I do have a tendency to do some sameness. Right now I'm filling individual tin pie plates with a casseroley concoction: cooked meat, starch, garlic, onion, some veg. Sigh.

I also was thinking about dinner x 2. Once upon a time DH was the main dinner cook, but not for some time. Breakfast for me is toast. Lunch is easy if I have homemade bread (machine). 😃

Baked oatmeal feezes well and can be very nutritious. There are tons of recipes out there but I made this recipe when I was on WW but you could certainly use whole milk and 2 whole eggs and even add nuts for extra protein. https://emilybites.com/2013/09/apple-cinnamon-baked-oatmeal-singles.html. Great grab and go breakast or lunch. I used to take them to work and have one with a serving of cottage cheese and some fruit. They are quite filling.

Charred sweet potatoes with garlic & herb labne and Calabrian chile crisp. From Samin Nosrat’s Good Things. I used the purple-skin, white-flesh Japanese sweet potatoes. They’re charred after cooking (I steamed them first) by placing them directly on a gas burner for 5-7 min. Not the same as being cooked buried in the coals but the skin is crispy and the flesh underneath has some of that same delicious roasted flavor.