Freezing Meals

I was browsing through thekitchn.com when I found this interesting question -- which gave me the mood to blog-hop all afternoon based on the google search, "freezing meals" (ever had those days?! haha!). I then bumped into this interesting blog post about making 50 meals in one day (wow!!!).

It was an epiphany. Freezing meals is something I have to learn for our baon/packed lunches, NOW!

As expected, Lou's reaction was kind of violent - here you go again, stressing yourself out over another packed lunch algorithm! (hahaha!) ... but that's the thing, preparing our lunch every morning has always been a tedious task for me, because it means waking up earlier than usual to cook 2 more meals, apart from breakfast. And what stresses me out is not really the shortened sleep ...but the thought of not being able to do it everyday, resulting to sooo many expensive and/or unhealthy* restau meals for me and Lou.

After I explained the idea of easily grabbing cooked meals from the fridge at any time of the day, Lou eventually got excited over the idea as well (After all, I am the QUEEN of our kitchen! hehe!). SO yesterday -- Sunday -- we set aside the entire evening for our freezer meals: I planned 5 freezer-friendly bento recipes, detailed from ingredients down to the sequence of cooking, then we went to grocery to buy everything we needed -- including containers**. By 830pm, I asked Lou to do anything he wants for the next few hours (of course, he chose dota. haha!), as I'll be VERY busy in the kitchen. I finished everything by 1030pm! Total of 2 hours!

5 types of bento meals for us both, or 10 meals in 2 hours 

...or 2.5 hours, including the dishes/POTS, which was Lou's part.

Everything was so amateur though - All meats (chicken or fish) were either pan fried or sauteed with salt, pepper, and different spices. All veggies were just boiled, drizzled with different sauces, and there was just one carb type - combination of brown and white rice. But I'd like to think that was a good start. If we just continue to set aside a few hours of our weekend for this, I'd be able to master efficient cooking sequences, along with freezer-friendly, healthier, complicated dishes ...and to -- maybe, eventually -- make 10 meals in just an hour!

Others make 20-50 meals in 2-5 hours, but we don't have to go for that since we're just 2,

AND we have a limited freezer space. hehe!

* I read a lot of resources saying that generally, frozen meals are less healthy because freezing actually destroys some nutrients. But for me, as long as I prepared them with all natural ingredients, and as long as they're not packed with sodium (unlike commercial freezer meals) then they are still healthier than fastfood. Actually, any home cooked meal -- frozen or not -- is healthier than fastfood!

** Freezer meals are oftentimes kept in vacuumed, airtight plastic containers (like ziplock) to avoid freeze burn, and to maximize freezer space. Since we think that that's not environment friendly, we opted to use microwavable containers ...for now. We'll shift to glass lock n locks once we are able to sustain this thing. :) Just a quick note on frozen microwavable containers: do not open them unless well thawed, or you might break the cover!

Now I can sleep longer on weekday mornings! Best of all, I don't have to worry about junklunch. :)