My stepdaughter found her fiancée in their kitchen already passed away on Thursday morning. I am going to make her a bunch of food that she can keep in her freezer and heat up so she doesn’t have to worry about cooking and she eats.
I’m already going to make her some lasagna wrapups, chicken croquettes and some mini cheesecakes. Anyone have any other recipes you want to share?
TYIA. 2022 has been the year from hell.
Please accept my condolences for the loss you have all suffered.
Jack Monroe has written a lot of recipes for cheap nutritious meals, many of which can be batch cooked and frozen. I’ve not tried any as yet, but they do sound very nice.
Here’s one for Minestrone soup, which could be a meal in itself, or just some warming comfort nourishment.
Frozen homemade pizza:
Start with the crust.
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon yeast
2 3/4 cups flour (bread flour works best)
1 teaspoon salt
Mix all ingredients together. If you have a bread machine with a dough setting, this works with that. Otherwise, knead until smooth, then roll into a ball and let rise under a moist towel for about an hour. Once it is risen, punch it down. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Cut the dough into appropriate amounts. This amount of dough can make one very large pizza, two medium pizzas, or four small personal pizzas. Two medium pizzas will fit nicely into gallon freezer bags. Then spray some oil on cooking pans and spread the dough out. Keep in mind that the dough will shrink slightly when you bake it.
Then, without putting anything else on, put the crusts in the oven for 2-5 minutes. It should be firm to the touch. Then put the sauce, cheese, and toppings on. Once you’ve put them on, put the pizza in a freezer bag (or thoroughly wrapped in foil and then in a regular plastic bag) and let it lie on a flat surface in your freezer until frozen solid.
To reheat, leave the pizza out while you preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Once it’s heated, bake on the bottom rack of the oven for 15 minutes. If the center of the pizza is warm and the cheese is melted there, then it’s done. Cool before serving.
It might help to write the instructions on the bag with a permanent marker before freezing. You can do it after, but the bag will be moist and the marker won’t work very well.
Also, if you want to make the recipe without freezing it, preheat to 500 (or the max temp of your oven), put all toppings on, and bake for 10 minutes on the bottom rack. Cool, then serve.
Additional notes:
If you’re putting fruits, vegetables, or fungi on, it will probably help to cook them beforehand. Mushrooms and bell peppers, for example, are very juicy and leak after baking the pizza. By cooking them, you get the liquid out so that it doesn’t dampen the pizza. Just stick them in a pan on high heat until they’ve shrunk.
For cheeses, mixes work well. I’d recommend mixing about half mozzarella with an italian blend, if you can find one in your grocery store.
Thank you. We’re so concerned about her eating properly you know? We’d offer to let her come and stay here but she’s got three cats and she has three cats and I don’t know how well it will go. Her moms got a dog too so that wouldn’t work well either. But she’s surrounded by love.
Soup! Chicken and rice is a good one, rice freezes well, and doesn’t go funky in the same was as pasta (absorbing liquid). Or a nice split pea.
As for recipes for those, well, those are more personalized. I make chicken soup weird. But basic ingredient list would be chicken (I use breasts, but some people use thighs or even a whole bird) whatever cut you prefer, vegetables, basic onion and carrot for me, but most folks like celery as well (I don’t like the taste so don’t use it). A starch, some people go for plain egg noodles, some pasta of some sort, and rice is a nice alternative if freezing is the plan. Since I use plain chicken breasts I use bouillon for flavor (Better than Bouillon is my go to). A bit of garlic adds some nice flavor, and I generally limit my herbs to some simple dried parsley.
I got this recipe for Katsu Curry sauce from a Cook and Eat Well course i did a few years ago. The quantity here will serve 3 or 4 people (if they don’t want too much sauce on their food), but what i did was multiply the quantities up a LOT and then batch froze them.
After freezing, just heat in a saucepan until boiling, and serve with whatever youve stir fried. Or serve with anything you think a curry sauce will go well with!
• 1 diced onion
• 5 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 diced carrots
• 2 tbsp. flour
• 1 tbsp. curry powder (i use medium strength, but choose according to your taste)
• 600ml veg stock
• 1 tbsp. soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp. garam masala
Meatloaf! Freeze in microwavable portions if needed. It makes a good sandwich too.
Thank you for reminding me. I actually have a pan with four mini loaves in it.
This sounds good. The thing that’s good about her is she’s not real picky.
Soup is awesome especially with fall and winter coming.
I make this a couple of times during the cold months. With only two of us at home now, we have enough left over that I freeze, and it seems to reheat well. We never use the jalapeno or the cilantro (we like both, just never use them for this), but we do top ours with shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream (or plain greek yogurt), and Fritos corn chips (or some combination of those).
And let me add my condolences to you and your stepdaughter and the rest of the family. 
It looks like no one has breakfast, so here I go
12pack of eggs
at least 16 oz thick-cut bacon
any veggies you like (I usually use red and yellow peppers, onion, sometimes a bit of shallot if it’s in the fridge)
cheese
shredded potatoes, chopped potatoes, hashbrowns, etc.
You basically just cook everything up, a quick fry to the veggies so they’re still a little underdone (because you microwave these) and then just use an 8 pack of burrito shells to wrap everything up! Most of it will be eggs and hashbrowns, to give you mornings of carbs and protein with some yummy vitamins strewn in.
You can wrap in tinfoil and freeze these for at least 30 days, then take out, defrost for ab 2 minutes and cook for another 2.
Lasagna is also a good freezable meal. I make a dish of it and freeze most of it so I have a no effort meal in minutes. I’ll provide the recipe I’ve been using for more years than I care to admit 
I batch of spaghetti sauce. Personally I would brown up approx one pound or 500grams of ground beef. Add in a diced onion to the meat, soften. Add one can of sliced mushrooms. When the meat is cooked and the onions are softened remove from pan and drain on paper towel (this step is dependant on the type of ground beef used, if extra lean you can skip this step). Simmer a jar of pasta sauce (used to be Ragu, but that is discontinued here now) with the meat until it is at your preference.
Now for the lasagna itself I use 1 1pound container (454g) of low fat cottage cheese. Some people prefer ricotta, just pick the one you prefer. I mix in an egg to the container of cheese. Grate one block of low fat mozzarella (400-454g depending on what sizes are available locally). Last ingredient needed, lasagna noodles, I use catelli oven ready.
First, spread some sauce on the bottom of a lasagna dish, preferably more liquidy. Then put down a layer of noodles (for me it takes not quite 4 to cover my dish). Add half the meat sauce on top of the noodles. Next spread half the cottage cheese on the sauce, feel free to just spoon it on. Next add about half the shredded mozzarella.
Add another layer of lasagna noodles and follow with the rest of the spaghetti sauce. Top with the rest of the cottage cheese, and then sprinkle the remaining mozzarella cheese. (I know people use 3 layers of noodles alot, but I’ve never made it that way).
Bake at 350, check anytime after the 45 minute mark. I find it can take from 45-60 minutes to cook, depending on personal preferences (nice and golden and bubbly). Tastes even better day two. Cut in 8-10 slices (or to whatever size you prefer), wrap in saran wrap and freeze.
To server frozen portions remove from plastic, place on dish or deep bowl, cover and zap for 2 minutes. Cut in half, recover. Zap 2 more minutes. Piping hot lasagna.