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.
