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Thanks!

Thanks!

People are conditioned to think cooking food is to time consuming therefore we can’t do it. Nice post.

Becky, yes, beans are GOLDEN — nutritional super stars (high in fiber and protein, and naturally fat-free) but incredibly inexpensive.

Tip on beans to help reduce the potential for intestinal gas: with dried beans, I do a “quick soak method” 1) rinse and sort beans. 2) cover with water. 3) bring to a boil and boil for 1 minute. 4) cover, turn off heat, and remove from burner. 5) After 1 hour (60 minutes), pour off water and continue cooking beans as per your recipe with fresh liquid. By doing the quick-soak and then pouring off that soaking water, you reduce the potential for intestinal gas.

When I use canned beans, I always drain and rinse them — this not only reduces the sodium, it also, once again, helps reduce the gas-causing tendencies of the beans.

#2: a little harder bc you need to live near an Ethiopian restaurant: buy extremely cheap injera, made of teff (high in protein, fiber, calcium, etc). Eat with potato/carrot/cabbage/onion/spices mixture. A couple of bucks for 6 people.

Oooh, I love this topic. SO many more!

If the quantity and type of food is enough to fill a Tupperware-type container that I have (such as, say, a soup, stew, lasagna, rice, whatever), then you can put it in s container like that. I usually add some plastic wrap on top, as well, before putting on the lid, just to make sure it won’t be exposed to air.

Quart and gallon-sized freezer bags are also very handy for many items, from cooked rice, soups, stews, meatballs (I often will make up a batch of meatballs from a pound of meat, then freeze half for another meal in the future), etc. Once again, I’ll often wrap it snugly in cling wrap (e.g., Saran) and then place it in a freezer bag.

I do the same thing when I purchase meats in bulk or on sale — if I have to divide the meat up, I’ll wrap it securely in cling wrap and then put it in freezer bags.

As for thawing and reheating, it depends upon what it is. For example, when you freeze a hearty casserole (such as lasagna or potato casserole or some such), you don’t have to thaw it first — you can cover it with aluminum foil and pop it in the oven frozen; it’ll just take it longer (up to possibly twice as long as if it were thawed) to heat all the way through. To reheat things such as soups and stews, I’ve found it works best if I add a bit of liquid to a pan and then dump in the soup or stew and let it reheat slowly on the stovetop, checking on it and stirring as necessary, until it’s heated through and bubbly. You can thaw it out in the microwave, too, but I’ve found that seems to take forever; I’d just as soon let it simmer on the stove! Also, I’ve never tried this, mind you, but I’m betting that if you have a CrockPot, you can put a frozen soup or stew in the CrockPot (no need for added liquid — the CrockPot creates its own liquid through steam), turn it on to low, and you’d have hot soup or stew when you get home.

Frozen cooked meats — such as chicken breasts, say, or whatever — I usually try to thaw either overnight in the refrigerator or in the microwave. Exception would be something like meatballs, which I would put in a sauce still frozen, letting them thaw as the sauce simmers.

With frozen rice (and I’ve also frozen pastas, such as spaghetti and such, as well), I put a small amount of water (2 to 4 tablespoons) in a pan, bring it to a boil, dump in the frozen rice, cover the pot, reduce the heat, and essentially steam the rice.

I’ve always loved your blog — I got my son to reading it, as well, when he started college — but as I said, you really hit one of my passions with your post about healthy, affordable eating

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