I'll Be Making My Own "TV Dinners"

OneEyedDiva said:
Prepared single serve meals such as those by Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice are lacking IMO. Since I hate to cook and often find myself wondering what to make while simultaneously not feel like making anything, I decided to cook and/or buy enough to freeze. We get these dinners from a local restaurant that gives very large portions. Mine is the vegetable platter. There's enough rice and veges for 3 or 4 servings. So I freeze half of that and add meat or fish. I recently got Chinese food from my favorite halal Chinese restaurant. Yep, more rice and I froze part of that. I now have these in the freezer:
~Vegetable egg foo young with fried rice
~2 homemade (imitation crabmeat) crab cakes dinners with rice and veges.
~Barbequed chicken with rice
~Homemade chili

It's easy to steam broccoli or boil green beans (both frozen) to have with all of the above. I also have easy prepared foods to turn to, like Marie Callendar's chicken pot pie, Prima spinach-mozzarella ravioli, frozen turkey burgers, Gorton's fish fillets, Nathan's onion rings and Alexa sweet potato puffs. In addition, I can make Hungry Jack instant mashed potatoes taste like homemade by using almond milk and adding cream cheese and butter.

What if anything are you doing to make meal time easier?
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I love cooking and putting together platters and salad bowls.

For me, it is kitchen gadgets which have made cooking and preparing food easier - no more pots and pans on the hobs or in the oven - today it is just popping food into an air fryer, slow cooker, microwave etc. Actually, the air fryer is our most used gadget and, these days, I rarely use the oven.

I know people who order meals on a weekly or monthly basis - not meals on wheels - they choose their menus and the food arrives, everything they need and minimal cooking/preparation. It's great for people who either do not like cooking or are unable to. I like the idea of ordering from a restaurant :)
 

I make a lot of food with the intention of freezing most of it.

After big pizza bake where I make 16-24 pies, I cut the leftover pies in quarters. Let them cool, separate with parchment paper and freeze 8 quarters per heavy 2 gallon freezer (ziplock-type) bags. I generally only eat pizza that's crust and sauce these days. (I love making salad pizza with them.) My body's dairy tolerance is even less as time goes on. DH and my kids/grands like the ones with cheese and assorted toppings.

I also make big batches of cocktail size Italian meatballs (made with Beyond Beef or Impossible burgers) and freeze those for future use. Same with soup and tomato sauce.

For various grains: I instant pot a couple of rounds of a pound of garbanzo beans. Cook them until they're nearly mush, break them into one pound of cooked beans per ziplock, freeze and use later to make hummus.

The instant pot is also wonderful for making big batches of brown rice, quinoa, millet, and barley. I fill zipper sandwich bags with 1 to 1-1/2 cups of a cooked grain, then put them in large freezer ziplock bags that identifies what grain is inside (sometimes it's hard to tell one from the other when they're frozen).

When making grains, I tend choose a day when I don't have much going on, so I can instant pot 4-5 different ones on the same day and replenish my freezer stash.

The only frozen entrees we buy are Trader Joe's macaroni and cheese, because DH and 3 year old grandson love them.
 
I like to make batches of different soups & then freeze them in containers, especially for fall & winter. I make extra mashed & au gratin potatoes along with baked beans that I portion out for later meals. Right now for mains I have Salisbury steak w/gravy, chicken noodle casserole & a few other things that I froze the leftovers after dinner. I also have frozen chicken pieces packaged individually so I can pull out what ever we want to eat at that time. And we always have salad in the fridge for a side.

It's always handy to have something that would be pretty quick to fix if we've been busy that day. There really isn't too many fast food restaurants that we care for anymore.
 

I make big batches and freeze in individual portions. Favorites are my mom's chicken spaghetti recipe and Cajun red beans and rice. For the red beans and rice, I freeze leftovers without the smoked sausage. The smoked sausage is easy to brown when reheating the red beans and rice and just tastes better not frozen.
 
@MACKTEXAS @Aunt Bea @IrishEyes @JBR @Knight @Veronica
Smart moves!
Mack, Costco has maintained it's $4.99 price for their delicious rotisserie chicken and it's huge. I haven't bought one in a long time though, because I don't like breast meat. There's is moister than most though.

Aunt Bea..I used to buy the manicotti or stuffed shells from Costco until I "discovered" the spinach-mozzarella ravioli, which has less of something (calories, I think...maybe sodium too). I've also had cold cereal for dinner.

@jujube Thank you for that tip!

@JustDave Too bad those "dinners" were so meh that you had to toss them. I don't have MC's pot pies that often because of the sodium content, but they are so good.

@IrishEyes I make pizza using naan bread and my sauce has to be Francesca Rinaldi traditional. I use shredded mozzarella, dried basil, a little I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spray and sometimes broccoli and/or mushrooms. So good!

@JBR I guess it's a matter of taste, but I've bought Ragu twice and each time I threw it away. I thought I could "doctor it up"...didn't work. No one could give me a jar of Ragu now.

@Veronica I love your wording "I tend to expand" :D For someone who doesn't like to cook, seems like you wind up doing a lot of cooking!

@Lawrence00 Well...that's an interesting combination! :p For the past month or so, I've been into yogurt with dried cranberries and chopped walnuts. Even before that I was eating yogurt daily.
 
MACKTEXAS said:
I accidentally hit quote when trying to reply, and something came up on the screen saying "added to multi-quote" and I don't know what that means.

But, yes - it is definitely a motivation when there is more than just one. I lose interest in food at night, ad sometimes I almost forget, and don't make anything, then just have 4-5 crackers with peanut butter, or some cottage cheese; maybe a bowl of ice cream. That's not good.
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That's "sounds" good to me Mack. Sometimes I do the same thing...not the cottage cheese though (unless it's in a Golden cheese blintz). 😛
 
OneEyedDiva said:
@Veronica I love your wording "I tend to expand" :D For someone who doesn't like to cook, seems like you wind up doing a lot of cooking!
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If I dont keep a very close watch on what I eat I really do tend to expand. A lot. When the husband was sick I over medicated myself with desserts and carbs and gained a whole little person Im ashamed to say. Ive lost 65 of it. I still have 30 to go. I havent been that motivated lately though.

I guess it does sound like I cook a lot but I dont cook on a daily basis. Sometimes I make a batch and eat it for 5-6 days.. I dont mind eating the same thing everyday. Other times I nuke premade things from the freezer. Those are my "TV dinners". Pick a meat, nuke a frozen vegetable. Thats dinner. Its nice not to have to think about it too much. I do indulge and cook my favorites for each holiday. Especially desserts. :D
 
With the body problems I have and teeth that don't do crispy :p I cannot do too much stove top cooking.
Pots of stuff too heavy , too risky etc., etc. so I use microwave quite a lot now and sometimes my small toaster oven.

Some of the frozen foods normally done in the oven like cooked pork sausage links , hamburgers, straight cut french fries etc., heat up quite well and with your favourite topping/sauce can make a reasonably tasty meal.

Heinz now has ketchup with pickle and other additions which makes it a great topping for these foods.

I also use my small vintage crockpot for 1lb minced beef with a tin of vegetable soup and a splash of Lea and Perrins 'Wooster' sauce.
Cook for a few hours and it freezes very well. That gives me four meals. I Just reheat in microwave and sometimes throw in some frozen fries chopped before hand.

Not gourmet cookin but does the job!

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Mizmo said:
With the body problems I have and teeth that don't do crispy :p I cannot do too much stove top cooking.
Pots of stuff too heavy , too risky etc., etc. so I use microwave quite a lot now and sometimes my small toaster oven.

Some of the frozen foods normally done in the oven like cooked pork sausage links , hamburgers, straight cut french fries etc., heat up quite well and with your favourite topping/sauce can make a reasonably tasty meal.

Heinz now has ketchup with pickle and other additions which makes it a great topping for these foods.

I also use my small vintage crockpot for 1lb minced beef with a tin of vegetable soup and a splash of Lea and Perrins 'Wooster' sauce.
Cook for a few hours and it freezes very well. That gives me four meals. I Just reheat in microwave and sometimes throw in some frozen fries chopped before hand.

Not gourmet cookin but does the job!

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If I cook on the stove I have to watch stuff. And clean it. The only thing I cook on the stove is eggs. Most of my little bit of cooking is done in the oven or the crockpot. This is mostly for when I do freezer batches. Like you I use my toaster oven and my microwave a lot for single meals.

If you want an easy meal try mini meatball subs. For each sub toast one hotdog bun and precook 4 frozen meat balls.
I use turkey ones. Less calories. Top with pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese and cook till cheese melts.
I use pizza sauce cause I make mini pizzas. You can use salsa or whatever. I find that if I have too many things open some of them will go bad. Oven works better but microwave works too.
 
Veronica said:
If I cook on the stove I have to watch stuff. And clean it. The only thing I cook on the stove is eggs. Most of my little bit of cooking is done in the oven or the crockpot. This is mostly for when I do freezer batches. Like you I use my toaster oven and my microwave a lot for single meals.

If you want an easy meal try mini meatball subs. For each sub toast one hotdog bun and precook 4 frozen meat balls.
I use turkey ones. Less calories. Top with pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese and cook till cheese melts.
I use pizza sauce cause I make mini pizzas. You can use salsa or whatever. I find that if I have too many things open some of them will go bad. Oven works better but microwave works too.
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What brand of frozen meatballs do you use or do you make and freeze your own? 🤔
 
I just finished off a Stouffer's chip beef on toast. That was trip down memory lane. My mother used to make that. I haven't had it in years. It was pretty good.
 
JustDave said:
I just finished off a Stouffer's chip beef on toast. That was trip down memory lane. My mother used to make that. I haven't had it in years. It was pretty good.
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I buy those and the individual lasagna. Mine is better but I dont have to cook these. So theres that. :D


Aunt Bea said:
What brand of frozen meatballs do you use or do you make and freeze your own? 🤔
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Its been years since I made them from scratch. I used to be a scratch cook but Ive gotten over that. :D
I buy mine at Krogers. Farm Rich Flame Broiled Turkey Meatballs.

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