Those Nights You Can’t Cook Much

We all have them: those nights when getting dinner on the table is difficult or you’d just rather be doing something different! A friend said “That’s why you should keep some frozen Lean Cuisine’s in the freezer.” Well, no. That’s not my answer. I do keep some dinner “starters” in the freezer however. This might be meat frozen in a marinade, which makes for quick grilling or broiling, homemade casseroles, meat loaves, or even just cooked diced chicken, which can quickly turn into chicken quesadillas, or diced ham, which can quickly make some scrambled eggs a bit special.

Tonight, I pulled out out a bag of chicken pot pie filling and a frozen pie crust. When I make chicken pot pie, I make a double batch, hardly any more effort, and put half in a quart-size freezer bag for another night. When I mix up a pie crust, it’s just as easy to make two and throw a ball of dough in the freezer for something like this. If I hadn’t had the pie crust there, I might have just mixed up biscuit dough instead.

I don’t like to do the full “cook for a month” style of freezer cooking. I do like having starters in there though. Cooked ground beef or diced chicken or ham, raw marinated meats of some variety, twice baked potatoes or even mashed potatoes for a nice side dish, quiche in a bag if you’re faced with a ton of eggs and need to use them up somehow (just scramble them with your filling of vegetables and/or meat and freeze in a quart bag)… stuff like this is definitely an aid on a busy night.

And if you’re really stuck and need dinner in a hurry, think about:

• scrambled eggs and fried potatoes
• Pancakes
• Quick Beef and Rice
• Chicken Baked with Rice
• Macaroni and Cheese
• Easier-Than-Stir-Fry Chicken
• Welsh Rarebit / Rabbit