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I’m not sure if this thread is about leftovers or whether it’s about preparing recipe ingredients in advance.
Everyone has leftovers. If you’re not going to finish them before they spoil, you freeze them.
That’s different from making cooking ingredients in advance. I occasionally make brown sauce from roasted veal bones. It mostly becomes Bordelaise sauce at some future time. My sister pits and freezes sour cherries for baking desserts. Personally, I don’t do many things in advance like that. Leftovers? Sure.
Usually on Fridays I try to cook enough food to last me until Monday and the rest of the week it is daily meal preparation. I remember growing up my mom would do cooking for a whole week on Fridays, freeze the extra food and then defrost and reheat during the week.
Since there are only two of us, anything that’s made by the pot or casserole dish gets packaged up for the freezer. All the goodness and none of the work.
Things that come to mind are lasagna, chili, spaghetti sauce, cheesy hash brown potatoes, and wedges of chocolate cake.
ZERO meal-prep..........I like eating different foods each and every day.
Actually, i do this so that I can have different foods every day. Right now, I've got a stir fry, a ratatouille, veggie burgers (black bean and garbanzo bean), a saute, soup and beans to choose from. I can dress the beans and veggie burger up any way I want to.
I've also got salad fixins (including the bacon crumbles I froze), bread for deli-style sandwiches or grilled cheeses, snacking cheeses and fruit. Between that and the frozen meals, I have plenty of variety. I just don't make too much of the same thing.
Took a while to find a happy medium on this. All of the stuff in my freezer can be easily used in 3 months' time, which falls within the max how long most stuff should be frozen. The intent is to do a big round of batch cooking every quarter.
Just before summer one year, I made one holy mess in the kitchen (I lived alone) and I quadrupled 5 different recipes, made 2 crockpots full of food, and I froze most of it, so I didn't have to cook for 2 months, just pull plastic containers out of my stand up freezer, with 7 choices of food. I made a stock pot full of sloppy Jo mix and another stock pot full of spaghetti sauce.
Every week I make a huge salad to lasts me 5 days or more, Argentine style, everything cut up really fine, fit for a spoon.
I'm big on making quadruple batches of various dishes and freezing a lot of it. In other words, make one big, big mess and no cooking for awhile.
If I had to cook every day, I'd starve to death!
Same on the bolded. The problem was that I would just go out to buy some fast food or hit a fast-casual restaurant, so I was dooming myself to obesity and penury, lol.
I'm curious about your salad. Do you mix the fixings together and add the greens later? Because I've found that greens get wilted or even slimy after 3 days in a container. I used to do an antipasto salad though, where I chopped up the lunch meat, the olives and roasted peppers and just added the greens later.
I’m not sure if this thread is about leftovers or whether it’s about preparing recipe ingredients in advance.
Everyone has leftovers. If you’re not going to finish them before they spoil, you freeze them.
That’s different from making cooking ingredients in advance. I occasionally make brown sauce from roasted veal bones. It mostly becomes Bordelaise sauce at some future time. My sister pits and freezes sour cherries for baking desserts. Personally, I don’t do many things in advance like that. Leftovers? Sure.
It's not about leftovers, really. It's kind of about avoiding leftovers, actually. I make a batch of something and put everything in single-serving containers before I freeze it. My problem was that if I cooked a big dish, I'd just let it go bad in the fridge because I didn't want to eat the same thing every day. Now I'm planning out my options and there's much less waste, much less bad choices when it comes to food and much less money spent (hopefully).
Over the years I've found that much of what I freeze for later doesn't get used as I'd intended.
I plan and shop for meals for a week ahead. I usually plan about 3 - 4 dinners and lunch for 4 days. I often will plan a larger meal (more leftovers of protein) earlier in the week so the protein can be included in my lunch or used as dinner for in-between days I have not planned to cook. The key I think is rather than simply reheating last night's dinner -and thus eating the same thing - is to repurpose the food. Costco rotisserie chicken one night, yields a couple of slices of chicken for my lunch salad next day then becomes chicken ramen another night. Leftover cornbread from chili becomes cornbread pudding. I have found that googling "what to do with leftover (fill in the blank)" is helpful when I'm stuck.
I have also found that avoiding the snacking or temptation to just hit a fast food (or whatever) place had less to do with having an abundance of mostly prepared food choices at home, and more to do with having a planned meal. No aimlessly pondering "what sounds good?" and succumbing to whatever fit the bill. I know what's for lunch/dinner and plan to eat it. For me, the planning/deciding while I'm hungry was the biggest problem, not the preparing of it.
This works well for me, but I enjoy cooking and the challenge.
Last edited by maciesmom; 02-18-2019 at 08:24 AM..
Actually, i do this so that I can have different foods every day. Right now, I've got a stir fry, a ratatouille, veggie burgers (black bean and garbanzo bean), a saute, soup and beans to choose from. I can dress the beans and veggie burger up any way I want to.
I've also got salad fixins (including the bacon crumbles I froze), bread for deli-style sandwiches or grilled cheeses, snacking cheeses and fruit. Between that and the frozen meals, I have plenty of variety. I just don't make too much of the same thing.
Took a while to find a happy medium on this. All of the stuff in my freezer can be easily used in 3 months' time, which falls within the max how long most stuff should be frozen. The intent is to do a big round of batch cooking every quarter.
We eat leftovers, I rarely freeze cooked foods. I do cook extra chicken, & eat it cold later in the week. Yesterday I cooked up a tray of skin on chicken, we had it warm, last night with squash & broccoli w/cheese sauce. Tonight it will be cold chicken, with cabbage & yams, tomorrow it will be chicken with a large veggie stir fry. Any left after that will probably be made into a burrito.
When I make soups, stews, or pork lion, I do make enough, for several meals, but we eat those within a week, I do not freeze them.
Right now I do not have the freezer space, & it is no harm to cook a few times a week
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