Full-on Cooking Vs Some Prepared Foods For Dinner, What Are Your Percentages

[Anna N]

@kayb

Thank you.  I need to sit down with pen and paper and my mind engaged to come up with ideas that would meet my likes and needs.  I would love to cook more roasts but have been hesitant because, although I love leftovers, even I can get awfully sick of them. But with some planning and some interesting sauces I can absolutely see the potential.  Even more reason now to get to the bottom of my darn freezer and start using it as a tool instead of a morgue. 

[Okanagancook]

I make TV dinner also.  Especially good when we have leftovers from a curry dinner composed of multiple items.

[kayb]

Curry does wonderfully in a TV dinner. Pot roast I will sometimes shred, and make a brown gravy with the jus. That with some potatoes and carrots cooked around the roast makes a good one. Of course, the other use for that is vegetable beef soup, which gets frozen in reused Chinese carryout containers!

 

Often I'll make a bunch of enchiladas and portion them with some rice or beans or both into a tray. I've done keilbasa and sauerkraut, put that in a tray, and ladled some juice from the sauerkraut over it to keep the sausage moist. 

 

I've even "subdivided" the tray if I want to, say, cover a pork chop liberally with a sauce or gravy, but not soak the accompanying starch or veggie. And I've put veggies I wanted to keep separate into a zip-top sandwich baggie first, squeezing out as much air as I could, and nestled that into one end of the tray. If you wanted to be really meticulous about keeping elements separate while they froze, you could bag individual components, then package them together.

 

H'mmm...taking that a step further...you could package them together, and then use SV to rewarm them just to serving temp....off to ponder that notion....

 

[Okanagancook]

Stuffed zucchini with tomato sauce on the bottom!

Thank god they are all gone now.

[lindag]

On ‎1‎/‎15‎/‎2017 at 6:45 PM, Porthos said:

I have been thinking about this for a while and wondered where I fit on the spectrum which I am sure exists.

 

When I refer to full-on cooking it is taking raw ingredients and preparing them, producing a meal. Prepared foods would be canned beans that have been seasoned and are ready to eat once heated, frozen pizzas, etc. or ordering in.

 

We eat six dinners at home each week, scheduling and commitments make the other day drive-thru meals or such. Five of the six dinners are for four adults, one evening it is just my DW and me. When it is just my DW and me we have simpler meals, but generally from raw ingredients. Of the the other 5 meals I typically cook 4 meals from scratch and about once a week go "I'm tired" or whatever and convenience wins. On those days it is either "i'm picking up a pizza" or something simple at home like cutting up a kielbasa, browning it, and then putting in a couple of can of Ranch Style Beans and ladling it into bowls.

 

So that is my reality. I'm curious about my fellow egullters and the typical amount of "Full-on cooking? not tonight!" versus producing a meal from raw ingredients. Anyone wanna play?

I cook very much like you do.  Although since I'm now widowed and live alone when I cook most anything I end up with massive leftovers.  So I end up only having to cook maybe three times a week.  I get tired of the leftovers after a second time (third, if it's something I really like that holds well), but the dogs get any of the meat, and the rest goes in the disposer.  Summer time I'm more likely to yield to a Papa Murphy pizza.

[Smokeydoke]

I just counted up from last week, ten out of fourteen meals were homecooked. Damn. I'm a bad-ass home cook!

 

I'm being generous, of course. What was homecooked to me might be slop to another (Costco Chili Cheese Hot dogs, anyone?), but to my credit, I never buy frozen pizza (I always make my own), sandwich bread, nor have I bought a frozen lasagna (there's always a homemade one in the freezer).

 

Here's my menu from the last week. I've been keeping track for #Cook90 challenge (which I have failed miserably)! The bold were dinners we really enjoyed.

 

15 - D - homemade stromboli, pork loin, mash potatoes

16 - B - Flour banana bread, L - homemade pizza with Caesar salad, leftover stromboli and chicken

17 - D - Eggplant curry with steak, L - chili cheese hot dogs

18 - L - french toast banana bread, D - spaghetti

19 - L - canned chicken soup, feta dip, D - In and Out

20 - Br - Bacon omelet, banana bread, D - nothing, forgot to eat

21 - grilled zucchini,squash and rice, white sausage, Fukumimi Ramen Restaurant

[Porthos]

2 hours ago, Smokeydoke said:

19 - ... D - In and Out  ...

 

 

Mmmm - In and Out.