I haz a plan. A Soup Plan.
I hate that part where you get to the middle of the week and you can’t think of what to make for dinner.. or you get to that lunch where you just don’t have any leftovers from dinner the night before so you end up buying something out like pizza.. or ugh.. just stuff… bad stuff.
So I have a plan. I want to make a soup/stew at least once every other week.. and to make a double portion and to freeze portions for emergency lunch/dinners. I started on this plan last night. I made a double batch of Lentil Stew. Now normally I’d throw the leftovers in the fridge and portion them out over the next week for lunches.. but I wanted to freeze them and keep them longer and intersperse them with other lunches.
If I freeze it in one huge chunk then I’ll never portion it out. Add to that, the “Glad” plastic containers don’t freeze well and I don’t have enough of the Rubbermaid containers to work well. So I grepped the Intarwebz and came up with a reasonable alternative. I stopped at the store and bought paper cups (like you’d use at a picnic). After dinner was done and had cooled off sufficiently I filled these cups with about a scoop and a half of the lentil stew (that should be PLENTY for a lunch meal) and then set the cups on a flat surface in the freezer to freeze.
This morning I checked on them and they’re all frozen solid. I’ll pop these frozen cups into a gallon ziplock bag, mark it with a label (Lentil Stew made 11/22) and viola! instant instant lunches/emergency dinners. Being sure to remove the soup from the cup BEFORE I microwave it since I’m relatively certain the cups won’t work well with hot soup.
I plan to do this with several other soups/stews like the following:
Hearty Lentil Stew
Chilli
Chicken pot pie
Chicken and rice soup
Beef and barley stew
I’ll have to spend some time thinking of (or grepping the internet for) other soups/stews that will work well. I like this plan. It works for me.