From the depths of my Freezer

At any given point in time I can usually dig around in my Freezer and find a bit of awesomeness.

Because I freeze EVERYTHING.

What I had in the fridge were some baby carrots, celery and onions, which by itself meant I could pretty much do anything I damn wanted.

Got some plain white rice to steam, sucker-punched my veggies in a tiny food processor, set everything aside for some stir fry I plan to whip up with some beef from... The Freezer. I usually buy a few extra packages of stir fry beef from the store, get home, wrap the entire package tight in a couple of layers of Saran wrap and forget all about them (in The Freezer) until they sound like a good idea again. They freeze well, and defrost remarkably quick.



But that's for dinner tonight. Later.
In the meantime, I could go for some soup.

Simmer some more of those chopped veggies with some chicken broth (I don't have any at the moment, so it was water and chicken bouillon), a good clove of minced garlic, some herbs (thyme, parsley, cilantro--my folks always say it's pointless to use those last two together, and I disagree), and added lime zest from The Freezer... I left that on the stove for a good 40 minutes or so, then dug around The Freezer for some more stuff.

Frozen corn.... what's this, a baggie of shredded beef? Alright... this kinda looks like an ice-cube shaped lump of blanched spinach... yeah, I think I remember doing that, okay... Sweet.

Bowl: beef, some of the cooked rice from earlier, broth. Sprinkle of lime juice. If I had avocado this would be perfection. Daughter's vs. mine: mine has the spinach and cayenne pepper. YUM.

Lunchbox

Every now and then the Daughter gets more than a sandwich to take to school for lunch. Some time last week she took some tuna sushi rolls, which I'm happy to report she loves. The thing with something like sushi is that you have to keep it cold, and those blue ice block things take up too much room in a little girl's lunch box.

That's when a snack like grapes comes in handy.

Place grapes in a single layer in the freezer until solid - you don't want one big block o'grape. Once they're frozen you can put them in a ziploc bag and they'll keep your food cold until lunch time arrives.

I cut her sushi rolls real thin, so they can go in a regular square sandwich container and leave plenty of room for the baggie of grapes in there, too (I use parchment paper as a divider).

The Carnivore Agenda, Spaghetti edition

Make no mistake: When given the chance, time, ingredients and caffeine, I would much rather cook pretty much everything from scratch. It's hard to tell from nearly every entry here, but I am ALL for spending 8 hours in the kitchen working on two or three dishes.

That is not the case, today.

An 8-item grocery list turned into a full cart, and in the interest of coming up with a quick dinner we decided on Spaghetti, the Faking It version.

1 box spaghetti noodles
1 lb ground beef
1 jar spaghetti sauce of your choice*
Roughly chopped spinach
Chopped parsley
Garlic
Grated ginger
Oregano
Chipotle (powder or en adobo)
White pepper
Bay leaves

The most pain-in-the-ass part of making spaghetti is getting that huge pot of water to BOIL ALREADY. Huge pot of water, some sea salt and a few bay leaves thrown in. While that's taking its sweet time, brown the beef and drain all the fat. Lower heat to a simmer, pour spaghetti sauce in (*I like the mushroom or meat ones). Add spinach, a clove of crushed garlic, some ginger, oregano, as much chipotle as you think you can handle (I add just a dash for flavor, not heat), white pepper, a couple of bay leaves. Simmer that until your water FINALLY BOILS, and leave it on there through the 9-11 minutes it'll take the pasta to cook (watch for the splatters). Just before the pasta is done, add the chopped parsley and another clove of crushed garlic into the sauce.
Drain pasta, remove sauce from heat and stuff your face with awesome.

Now, the garlic toast thing really works better with a baguette or something to that effect, but I don't have that kind of foresight when I do groceries. Soften some butter in the microwave (soften, not melt), add salt to taste, crushed garlic (because there just isn't enough garlic in this post already) and whatever herbs rock your boat. Spread over some bread and put it in the oven at 300F for some 10 minutes or so.

If you're worried about the garlic, that's what wine is for. Tomato dishes = red wine.

Pozole

I should make it a point to ALWAYS have pozole in my freezer, ready to defrost at the earliest sign of a craving.

All I had was a salad mix instead of plain lettuce, and I had no radish, and the only lime juice I had was frozen (Mexican grocery store sells limes at 10/$1. Sometimes I use 10 limes in one DAY, sometimes they sit in my fridge a while. If they start looking like I need to use them up, I juice them and freeze the juice in handy, single use ice cubes). And no salsa, so I had to use chipotle powder.

Not bad, though.

Chicken and rice

I have a thing for roasted chicken, and it borders on "unhealthy obsession."
Roasted chicken is pretty much perfect. A whole chicken costs barely more than a sub, and you can get something like 3-4 meals out of it (more like 2 meals for me, because, seriously, I LOVE roasted chicken).
We went to Kroger tonight and they had this huge 16-piece chicken thing for 8 bucks. Add to this the recent acquisition of a toaster oven, and dinner was on its way.
Chicken was baked for about 23 minutes at 325F (so the package instructed), and while that was happening I made some white rice with frozen corn thrown in. Since both of these things sort of cook themselves, I busied myself with making an onion cream sauce.

There are things I keep in my freezer to make lazy meals even easier than they already are. For example, I love parsley with a passion, but I never use an entire bunch before it starts going bad. So I dry it up as much as possible using paper towels, then finely chop it, blot out more moisture, and then store it in an airtight container in the freezer. When I need some, I bang the container on the counter a few times, shake it up, and it goes straight into whatever I'm cooking. Better than dried parsley.
(I also do this with cilantro)

Another thing I keep in the freezer is cubes of chicken or beef broth. The chicken ones are usually a result of a roasted chicken binge, when I take all the meat off the bones for the 2 picky eaters in the household, throw the bones in a pot with whatever peels/stems/leaves I have leftover when cleaning up vegetables for storage, and simmer over low heat for about an hour. The beef ones happen as a side effect of shredded meat for flautas or salpicon (which I'll probably post about eventually, but tonight is not the night).
I have 2 ice trays specifically for the purpose of freezing broth.

So, this onion cream sauce.
(I may or may not also have a thing for cream of-'s)
Roux drill - melt about a tablespoon of butter over low heat, add equal amount of flour and whisk until it dissolves, allow to cook for a bit until thick.
Then I started playing with it--added some milk... a few beef broth ice cubes, about half an envelope of onion soup/dip mix, some parsley from the freezer, some thyme (chicken + thyme = OTP). I just messed with it until it was the consistency and amount that I wanted.


I wish the end result had looked as pretty as it was tasty. For a half-assed meal thrown together out of things in my pantry/freezer and an impulse buy at Kroger, it was much better than it had any right to be.

Unhealthy love for Ginger, brought to you by poor grammar

Powdered ginger has its place (the store's shelves), but nothing compares to the taste and smell of the fresh, grated, Real Thing.

That said, as much as I love the stuff, I just don't go through it quickly enough before it starts going South. And you know what I hate? The actual act of grating it, because my grater is tiny and lame, and more gets stuck in the little holes than what comes out through them.

Alas, not anymore.

I freeze my ginger. Shave the peel off, wrap it in a couple of layers of plastic wrap and a couple of layers of aluminum foil, and freeze those suckers. Then, when I need it, it's like shaving ice, and nothing gets stuck to the grater. In fact, I can even grate it with a butter knife.

This was one of the better epiphanies I've had while Not Spending Time In Barcelona.

And now, a picture of awesome ginger that does NOT belong in the freezer: