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I know I owe a security post, but that will take time and thought and tonight's my night to do sonic, so that's not happening. Later in the week.
And a bit of fannish squee before the main post - I got my Hamlet card! The RSC made a membership offer to get the Tennant Hamlet DVD early, and if you ordered via your membership, you got a greeting card. It arrived today, squeeee! I finally feel I'm getting my money's worth out of that membership.
On with the main post:
When 30-Minute Meals Take Too Long
I had one of those *click* moments today, when everything fell into place and I knew that this is exactly how I wanted my life to run.
The problem is, food is rather necessary, but by the end of a working day, when I've got a long list of chores I need to do, websurfing I want to do, things to knit and TV to watch, even a 30-minute meal takes too damn long to cook! And restaurant food is fattening, expensive - and it takes almost as long to get as making your own food anyway.
A steamer helps if you have it, and so do crock pots - in either case, you're throwing in food and coming back later to a meal. But that still requires organization throughout the week to have the ingredients on hand and ready, and knowing on Monday what I want to eat on Friday is beyond the powers of both tarot deck and crystal ball.
So I've finally succumbed to making my own freezer meals. (And all the cooks out there say "Le duh!") I've bought freezer ziplock bags and freezer-to-oven pyrex containers with lids (the advantage being that they're reusable) and frozen up chicken pot pie, lasagna, apple crisp, even cheese-on-toast kits. (Which have never ended up being cheese on toast; they're usually cheese omelets with bread. But whichever way, the cheese is never green and the bread is never fuzzy!)
Sometimes I can combine the ease of prefrozen food or a crock pot by crocking a vat of, say, pot roast and freezing individual portions, or by buying, say, fish sticks and fries and making individual portion bags. Zero effort: sweet!
The great thing about this system is that I don't need to know on Monday what I'm eating Friday, nor do I have to eat what I made on Monday all the way through to Friday. I just grab whatever I'm in the mood for. Almost none of it needs to be pre-thawed.
Doing the big cooking spree was made more attractive by moving an old CD player into the kitchen and using this time as an excuse to listen to Big Finish and BBC. There are few things in my life that aren't made better by listening to Nicholas or Stephen Briggs.
Maintaining the system is nothing more elaborate than a notepad and a pen on top of the freezer. The top sheet is a scribbled check off list: when something goes in I write it down; when it comes out I cross it out. But the *pad* of paper is important because when I get low on anything, I can pull another sheet out from below and write "buy x" or "make y" right then and there when it's at the top of my mind and shove it with the shopping list.
Little effort, lots of variety, reusable components, saves time, gives me complete control over what I'm eating, easy to organize, AND gives me an excuse to listen to audiobooks.
This is EXACTLY how I want my life to run!
And a bit of fannish squee before the main post - I got my Hamlet card! The RSC made a membership offer to get the Tennant Hamlet DVD early, and if you ordered via your membership, you got a greeting card. It arrived today, squeeee! I finally feel I'm getting my money's worth out of that membership.
On with the main post:
When 30-Minute Meals Take Too Long
I had one of those *click* moments today, when everything fell into place and I knew that this is exactly how I wanted my life to run.
The problem is, food is rather necessary, but by the end of a working day, when I've got a long list of chores I need to do, websurfing I want to do, things to knit and TV to watch, even a 30-minute meal takes too damn long to cook! And restaurant food is fattening, expensive - and it takes almost as long to get as making your own food anyway.
A steamer helps if you have it, and so do crock pots - in either case, you're throwing in food and coming back later to a meal. But that still requires organization throughout the week to have the ingredients on hand and ready, and knowing on Monday what I want to eat on Friday is beyond the powers of both tarot deck and crystal ball.
So I've finally succumbed to making my own freezer meals. (And all the cooks out there say "Le duh!") I've bought freezer ziplock bags and freezer-to-oven pyrex containers with lids (the advantage being that they're reusable) and frozen up chicken pot pie, lasagna, apple crisp, even cheese-on-toast kits. (Which have never ended up being cheese on toast; they're usually cheese omelets with bread. But whichever way, the cheese is never green and the bread is never fuzzy!)
Sometimes I can combine the ease of prefrozen food or a crock pot by crocking a vat of, say, pot roast and freezing individual portions, or by buying, say, fish sticks and fries and making individual portion bags. Zero effort: sweet!
The great thing about this system is that I don't need to know on Monday what I'm eating Friday, nor do I have to eat what I made on Monday all the way through to Friday. I just grab whatever I'm in the mood for. Almost none of it needs to be pre-thawed.
Doing the big cooking spree was made more attractive by moving an old CD player into the kitchen and using this time as an excuse to listen to Big Finish and BBC. There are few things in my life that aren't made better by listening to Nicholas or Stephen Briggs.
Maintaining the system is nothing more elaborate than a notepad and a pen on top of the freezer. The top sheet is a scribbled check off list: when something goes in I write it down; when it comes out I cross it out. But the *pad* of paper is important because when I get low on anything, I can pull another sheet out from below and write "buy x" or "make y" right then and there when it's at the top of my mind and shove it with the shopping list.
Little effort, lots of variety, reusable components, saves time, gives me complete control over what I'm eating, easy to organize, AND gives me an excuse to listen to audiobooks.
This is EXACTLY how I want my life to run!
