Food, Glorious Food

[jadesfire]

Oh wise and wonderful friends-list, if I give you shiny links, will you help me out? Please?

We do pretty well for variety when it comes to dinners. We try new recipes all the time and I enjoy having the leftovers for lunch the next day. But on days when there aren't leftovers, I do get kind of fed up of jacket potatoes.

My staple freezer-dinners are moussaka and stoo, and I'd really like to have some more variety in there. It's my chance to have things that don't really do anything for J, so Shepherd's pie is on my list, and I'm thinking of trying to make meatloaf, which I was fond of as a child.

What do you make for the freezer? Our lasagne attempts have been mixed (the pasta doesn't freeze very well), and the chip experiment was a failure due to sogginess. We already eat things like chilli and bolognese. Is there anything I'm missing?

In return, I promised you links:

For the typography fans out there, you can now get your own alphabet soap

The Chile earthquake may have shortened Earth's day

This will be irrelevant to many of you but I couldn't resist a link to the London chocolate tours

Bored with your screensaver? Set fire to your monitor!

This would take more paper and patience than I possess, but how much do I want to make this rhombidodecadodecahedron?

I'm not entirely convinced that vandalaising your home fixtures is the way forwards...

This might be a library joke, but it made me smile: If OCLC controlled hashtags...

And finally, check out this artist: Mark Evans: etched leather

Comments

[caersmane.livejournal.com]

One thing mum and I do is keep rice, veg leftovers, any good parts of veg (like broccoli or cauliflower stalks), pasta, left over meat, and throw them in the freezer until there's enough, and then toss all the veg in a pot with chicken stock, cook it for several hours, blend it smooth, then cook it longer with the rice and pasta and meat. I know it sounds a little weird, but it really tastes unbelievably good. Esp if you have some nice rolls.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

It does sound a little odd, but I can see how it would taste yummy. One of the things we don't do enough is eat fresh vegetables. I'm thinking of doing the whole 'box on the doorstep' thing to force us into it!

Thanks - that's just the kind of thing to keep me going on a lunchtime at work!

[caersmane.livejournal.com]

We eat a tremendous amount of fresh veg. There's a market not far and we buy ours every week, or couple of days. If we didn't save the stalks and leftovers we'd be throwing away an enormous amount of food, and that's not really acceptable.
Hope you like it!

[tiggothy.livejournal.com]

We generally make lots of different kinds of curries. If you like fish, you could try fish pie too (like shepherd's pie, but with fish-in-white-sauce under the potatoes).

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...we make lots of curries and generally eat them all. I hadn't thought of adding more for taking for lunch - I can think of a couple that would be good for that.

Fish pie is another one that J isn't keen on, so that sounds perfect, thanks :)

[tiggothy.livejournal.com]

Since we got a freezer we've got in the habit of making enough curry for 4 or 5 portions so we can freeze at least half of it - it's so much easier to make a big one than a small one (provided you have a big enough pan, of course!)

[white_hart]

We seem to be incapable of cooking curries and so on in sensible quantities for two people - hence lots of leftovers for lunch!

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

We eat a lot of rice at our house (husband is allergic to wheat products), so there's almost always a little leftover rice. I like to top it with bits of leftover pork or chicken, add a handful of frozen veggies, season, stir, and freeze in lunch-size portions. Rice, plain roast chicken, a dollop of hunan sauce from a jar, plus frozen peas, and it's a kind of Chinese lunch. :)

I also like to make chicken and black bean burritos to freeze. If you don't have fajitas (the bready wrap part) to make them, you could put the seasoned chicken and black beans in pita bread halves.

My favorite frozen lunch is one I cook from scratch just for myself: dried pinto beans cooked with a bit of ham, sweet potatoes with cinnamon and a drop of maple syrup, cooked mixed greens, and a piece of cornbread. It's a Deep South favorite.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Wow, that ham and beans dish sounds good. Also, I don't think I would know a burrito if it bit me (or I bit it, for that matter ;)) so I'll have to google that one.

Overdoing the rice is looking like a firm favourite all around. I never really think about it, or rather I think "there's too much rice and we ate all the curry". Time to start re-thinking that one!

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

There's a video in this blog on how to make burritos:

http://britburrito.blogspot.com/

What they're making are the big restaurant-style burritos. I make small ones with fajita-size flour tortillas. Two of mine (chicken, beans, salsa and cheese) make a very nice lunch and can be frozen and heated up for later.

[liz666.livejournal.com]

I like freezing kedgeree when I make it although it's best to freeze a batch without hardboiled eggs as they go a bit blackish. Stews and soups are my all time freezer favourites. There's a tuna dish that I make called tuna rice pie which is awesome and I'd love to know how it freezes but sadly I never can as I always eat it all first!!
Curries are also good for freezing. There's a community you might find cool-it's called kitchenny_bits and peeps over there may have some useful suggestions/recipes for you :-)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Ooh, kedgeree! I would never have thought of freezing that, thanks.

And now I'm intrigued - I belong to kitchenny_bits (but didn't think of posting there *facepalm*) so will post there, but the tuna rice pie sounds yummy. Do you have a recipe?

Thanks :)

[liz666.livejournal.com]

Kedgeree is homnomnom :-) I think I posted the tuna rice pie recipe over on kitchenny_bits, I'll go check and give you a link!

[liz666.livejournal.com]

Here you go :-)

http://community.livejournal.com/kitchenny_bits/1890.html

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Yummy! Thank you :D

[liz666.livejournal.com]

Hope you like it! :-)

[white_hart]

Soup? (Having a vegbox comes in very handy here, because there are always things that we can't think of any other use for.)

Quite a lot of our leftovers end up in the freezer, because I don't take lunch every day - Wednesdays I eat at Blackwells, and I often end up having lunch out on another day in the week too. We have curry on Fridays and that often ends up frozen.

I also have several standby 10-minute lunch recipes for when there's nothing in the freezer and no leftovers - pasta salad with pesto and tomatoes, pasta puttanesca, couscous salad, tuna and cannellini bean salad - although recently I don't seem to have had much need of them!

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

One thing I'm noticing from people's suggestions is that we don't really eat many fresh vegetables. I think a box might be a good plan, as I'm sure it would do us good!

Soup isn't something I've ever really mastered. My ministrone came out as pie (seriously, I had to slice it) and my harira rotted before I could eat it. Also, I only really like thin soups, not thick ones, but in the warmer weather, that might be better.

Do you have a tried-and-tested soup recipe, or is it a 'what's left in the vegbox' job?

[white_hart]

Mostly we make one-or-two-vegetable soups: leek and potato, carrot and coriander, carrot and red lentil, pumpkin, rather than minestrone-type things which always do turn out a bit like stew. It depends what we have a lot of that we can't think of any other plans for.

We get our box from Riverford and are very happy with them. They email the predicted box contents for the next week every Thursday or Friday so we can have a look and decide which box we fancy and avoid the things we really don't like (basically Jerusalem artichokes!) or are absolutely sick of (you do get rather tired of root vegetables and cabbage in the winter!). Also you can manage your account online which we like.

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

I say soup as well.

Salmon croquettes/salmon patties seem to freeze well. And my dad used to make a salmon loaf that was basically the same thing, but baked in a pan like meatloaf. Then he sliced it up, individually wrapped the slices in plastic, and could just take one out and heat it up for a meal or part of a meal.

ETA - sliced, not "slicked."

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I've never got the hang of making soup. Maybe I need to give it another go.

The salmonloaf sounds great, and not something I would have thought of. I love fish cakes, so that's definitely a natural extension. Out of interest, would your family use tinned or fresh salmon? I lean towards the former for price, but suspect I might be missing out...

Thanks!

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

I prefer soups you can drink from a mug rather than soups you have to eat with a spoon, so I usually end up blending mine anyway. It covers a lot of mistakes. :)

The freshest salmon we could get here would be frozen, and it's definitely superior in taste to the tinned stuff, but if you're going to mix it up with cracker crumbs and herbs anyway, I would use tinned. That's what my mom has always used. It's fine. Really, the only time I think I've had non-tinned salmon was in restaurants.

(I've been hearing more about mercury recently, though, so I would limit salmon and/or tuna to twice a week.)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Okay, cool. I love tinned salmon - my nan used to make sandwiches with it, and she'd mix it with vinegar because she grew up when it tasted...not so good ;) But it's a taste I always associate with my grandparents.

Cracker crumbs? I think might have to ask for an actual recipe at this point! Having salmon slice for lunch would be awesome, and make such a welcome change :)

[itsychick.livejournal.com]

Tamales freeze pretty well, and you can make the filling in mini batches to vary the ingredients. I usually do half of them vegetarian and half of them chicken, and vary the spice level for the picky eaters.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever had tamales - I shall have to google them, thank you!