Stupid blog thingie

I had a whole post typed up and everything. And it ate it all. So now it's just highlights.

Got grill. finally in stock and was 25% off the old price. Yay! Grill much expands my food and cooking options.

Now that I can make waffles up on the weekends I'm going to want a toaster. I want the famous egg mcmuffin toaster but it's not cheap. I may look at a regular toaster and pre make the mcmuffins on the weekend and then get a microwave to nuke them during the week at breakfast time. Either way I'm going to look at making my own sausage patties. Doesn't look that hard, some ground pork and the right spices basically.

Big news, I'm saving for a Europe trip which means no eating out at all. I'll have to shop and cook wisely to make this happen.

While at Canadian Tire for a block heater cord I came across a Hamburger patty maker. I always make my patties too thick and too small a diameter. This may help me. Since I just got the grill I had to get this and hamburger fixings to try this week.

Also, I wanted to make cheater Dolce de Leche by boiling a can of condensed milk for 8 hours. When I went to get some I found out they had already done it for me. Man, this stuff is amazing. I'm going to use it on Dairy Queen take home soft serve. It's the best caramel sauce I've ever had.

TV dinner results

So, the turkey dinners are great. They heat up nicely and texture and flavour are great. I may need to add more water to the gravy , it sorta turns to gel.

The Shepherd's pie unsurprisingly takes some time to heat up. It's a solid mass of frozen food with now spaces. Once it's headed up it does taste excellent.

Both experiments are a great success. I'll  be trying some more this week, as it's payday tomorrow. I really want to get a lasagne dish working. I do loves me some lasagne.

Shepherd's Pie

So, got a batch of Shepherd's Pie done up last night. Went with one pack of ground pork and two of ground beef. I know that there is no sheep in the pie and it isn't technically Shepherd's pie with no sheep in it. The meat sauce really turned out great this time.

It took over five pounds of potatoes to make the four pies. They may be more than a single meal. They fill the cake pans right up and only barely fit in the bags.

Here's pies!

Here's the pies in the freezer last night

 And here's the pies after freezing and packaging. That's eight full meals frozen and ready to go in the oven.

Man, I love the food sealer. It's amazing.

So, after getting those packaged up I'm going to see how the turkey dinners turned out and have my first one.

I'm pretty happy so far. I'd like to try a lasagne casserole inspired by the tasty one that Tim Horton's serves. I'd like to give it a shot after next cheque. Also, hope to get my phone's camera cleaned too.

Turkey Time!

So, the turkey tv dinners are finished. The food sealer worked great, I'm glad Walmart had them on so cheap. However, loud food sealer is loud.

So, here's the food sealer and the rest of the cake pans.

Here is the turkey after roasting. I just thawed it in the fridge for three or four days, put it in the oven for three hours. There were all kinds of fancy ways to do it, but in the end I couldn't be bothered. It turned out pretty decent regardless.

Here's the turkey after roasting, deboning and portioning. Also freezing. I may have skipped pictures of a few steps. And a bunch of the turkey is still in a ziploc in the fridge. Sandwiches for later this week. I'll have to portion some of the rest and probably freeze it.

Out of the pans and sealed in the bags.

And stacked in the freezer!

All in all the whole process took a bit of time, but we'll see how worth it it was when I try the first one. It was certainly cheaper than buying a tv dinner. I don't know if it would be if the turkey wasn't on sale or free. Also, if I skipped buying the stuffing it'd be cheaper too. I guess the main benefit is that it shifts the prep time to times when I'm feeling fine so that on days when I'm not I'm not as likely to eat out. When compared to that pricing, it's much cheaper.

 Planning to do a batch of Shepard's pie tonight. We'll see how it goes.

Free Turkey!

So, it seems that Overwaitea is just giving these things away!

And free is what I can afford. So, it looks like next week will be "Turkey cooking experiment week." I've heard about brining turkeys, but I don't think I have anything big enough to put it in. This will be my first time cooking a turkey. I may pick up a roaster for it. For now it sits in my freezer while I do a little research.

TV Dinners!

So, the mac and cheese experiment is on hold until next paycheque. Turns out the recipe uses ten pounds of cheese.

But the TV dinner experiment had a successful test run so far. I'm going to try preparing meals in a 9' cake pan, freezing it overnight and then putting them in the food sealer for packaging and freezing. Walmart has a food saver thing on for $50 last week. If they still have it in a week I'll pick one up. There are a ton of recipies that should be amenable to this method. I'm looking forward to trying a lasagne casserole.

So, here's pictures (yes, my phone takes terrible pictures):

I didn't buy a full set of the cake pans for this run. I picked up some disposables to fill out the numbers. Judging by how well this seems to have worked I'm picking up a full set next cheque.

First I fried up the steaks and put them in. I tried to mostly just sear the outside and not cook them all the way through so they wouldn't get too tough and dry upon ovening later. We'll see how the taste test works out when I try the first one tonight.

And there's the potatoes. I do loves me some potatoes. I did not have enough on hand for the fourth one, it's very sad.

And there is the vegetables and gravy, The gravy is important, it adds structural integrity during the overnight freeze for transfer into the final packaging. I have been using the chicken gravy mix from a place that's not too far from Edmonton. It's been amazing, so I thought I'd try their roast beef mix. I don't think I like it as much, it seems a lot more like a generic brown gravy mix. We'll see my final vote when I try the meals.

And here is the final package after freezing. I just took the cake pan out of the freezer, set in a pan of hot tap water for a few seconds and it came out as a big disc. I popped it in the freezer bag and voila! When it comes time to reheat it, I put the disc back in the cake pan, cover it and put it in the oven. I'll be trying the first one tonight.

I figure once I get pie production running again (again, next cheque) I should easily be able to have decent meals ready for when I don't feel like cooking. The whole process didn't take much longer than just making one meal and was pretty easy.

Starting up

I've been wanting to get more involved in cooking, but it's been difficult without a real kitchen. I have a decent, if small, kitchen now and I'm going to be trying stuff out.

My pictures will suck for now as my phone camera suffers from a significant design flaw that lets dust check in but not check out.

So, up next I want to try Alton Brown's stovetop mac and cheese. We'll see how that goes.