co-op has pre-made hummus tubs. Traditional tastes pretty good. been eating it raw while recovering from wisdom teeth, which is a little hard to choke down but otherwise okay.
100 calories for 2 tbsp!!!
1600 calories for the whole tub. maybe the most calorically dense food I’ve stocked to date
it sounds ridiculous, but I bought 7 dozen eggs and 3 bottles of grated parm and ate them over the course of the week while getting wisdom teeth pulled - and it was awesome. scrambled eggs is such a reliable meal, tastes great, can cook a large amount very rapidly
so one big problem with cooking huge batches of e.g. soup or stew is that it has to be frozen, and it is impractical to thaw so much water content. Soup kitchen mealplan are made with a different goal - feed many people
aha! what I should figure out is a strategy for thawing meals (especially soups &c) just in time for eating. I’ve been taking them out of the freezer into the fridge overnight, but they’re typically still frozen inside
two blocks of spinach, pre-frozen cooked ground beef, put in a pot and boiled, then a few teaspoons of seasoning salt (with MSG). that was a great meal!
I want to avoid having too much spinach though, I understand there is risk of kidney stones.
thawing and cooking Frozen veggies has always been a snag. used to do canned peas, veggies, but kind of want more volume. microwaving takes a long time and it’s uneven enough that I don’t find it works great.
I can put them all in the big stockpot, but then I need to add water and it’s just become a soup.
In some sense the frozen veggies don’t actually need to be precooked - I’m invariably freezing and then microwaving each portion anyway, I could mix it in frozen. and some frozen veggies, like Co-op, come pre-cooked.
filled 5L pyrex pan to the brim with broccoli.
added a generous amount of olive oil
drizzled a little seasoning salt - maybe 2 teaspoons for the whole
set Quick Bake (convection), 400 F.
Cooking on the second shelf from the bottom.
Set a timer for 15 minutes. Took it out, mixed it around.
another 15 minutes, stirred.
15 minutes, stirred.
So 45 minutes total + preheating.
Tastes decadent. Added some italiano spice, even better. Love it.
Mixed in a little rice.
Yield is roughly 2x 8 cup containers. Checked if I could fit a second roaster pan, doesn’t look like it. they shrunk quite a bit; I think I could have piled it even higher.
Monosodium glutamate (MSG) decomposes and releases toxic fumes when heated above 232°C (450°F). The toxic fumes contain oxides of nitrogen and sodium.
Most dishes have layers of flavor, after all. Adding a touch of bay leaf can help give things some depth, make things less one note. It’s not the only way to skin that cat, but it’s one way.
to turn to Francois Chartier from the book Taste Buds and Molecules :
ou might’ve seen Harold McGee (probably the best food writer alive today)
to try to get into a regular schedule of defrosting food from the freezer. Dry erase marker is great for this. I’m marking the day of week and day of month that I moved it from freezer to fridge, so that I can reliably eat it 2 days later.
I’ve had more time in the mornings since switching my routine, and I’ve started pre-preparing scrambled eggs. Do three servings at once, 5 eggs each serving - only takes a few seconds per serving, the cleaning of everything is what takes time.