Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Getting near max in my vacation bank again so had to burn a day, and I'll likely have to do it a couple of times more over the next month (I get 2.5 vacation days per month). Gave me the time to finish this project.

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Chairface Chippendale’s got a gun!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The daily need to make dinner when you are working out (otherwise why even work out?!) has to be the most annoying part of adulting.

At least work gets me paid.

Learn to make bigger meals and how to love* leftovers. When I was in law school, I’d typically cook 4 servings of a dinner type meal, and eat leftovers for 3 days. The casseroles, chicken or fish dishes worked out great, but doing a big pot of red beans and rice involved…unpleasant externalities.


* or at least tolerate

 

[Scribe]

love* leftovers.

This has been my problem my entire life.

I just hate it, every time.

 

[dragoner]

Have you ever read the Thieve's World short story the Vivisectionist?

They were awesome books, and the boxed set was very cool.

 

[overgeeked]

This has been my problem my entire life.

I just hate it, every time.

We were the same for years. The trick that worked for us was instead of storing leftovers in the fridge, store the cooked components in the freezer. Defrost and reheat the individual bits and combine them.

For example, we do a chicken tinga with rice. Make the tinga and freeze pre-measured portions. Make the rice and freeze pre-measured portions. When we want it again, defrost and reheat the portions. It's almost indistinguishable from freshly made 90% of the time. Only works for certain dishes, of course. This also lets us make big batches and space out eating the same thing so we don't get sick of it and toss the leftovers.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Another freezer trick:

Buy your ingredients (esp. veggies) in largish batches. Dedicate ONE day to prep the freezable ones for future use, storing them in small containers like rolled up chubs in ziplock freezer bags.* That translates into one day of cleaning up knives, cutting boards, and your kitchen in general.

Then you can cook a lot of things on a daily basis, saving time by just grabbing stuff from the freezer and throwing it in a pot. I could start a “Bachelor’s Gumbo” started in 30 minutes pretty easily.

Spoiler: BACHELOR GUMBO

An okra-based chicken & sausage gumbo. It got its name because I streamlined & simplified the process for people who don’t cook often. Essentially, it’s a “dump” dish, in which you’re throwing cans of stuff in a pot:

Canned chicken stock

Canned stewed okra (has okra, tomatoes & onions)

Canned chicken

Smoked or Country style sausage

Seasonings (as mentioned above)

Cooked rice

Basically, start cooking your rice in one pot. Then slice your sausage, brown it in your gumbo pot, then deglaze with the chicken stock. After that, just start dumping stuff in and season it.

The hard part is getting your preferred seasoning right.Everything else- besides slicing sausage- is open a can of ______ and dumping it in a pot over medium heat, no special skills required.

So, I have 2 freezers: one is dedicated primarily to leftovers, the other is at least half ingredients (cooked and uncooked) like sliced green or yellow onions, minced garlic, sliced mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, homemade sausage, meatballs, and so forth.









* I like chubs because I can easily break off chunks off of them when I don’t want to use the whole bag.