It seems that the younger generations have just discovered that you can prepare and store meals by freezing prepped and/or cooked food in silicon molds that create bricks you can nuke and eat. They're calling it the "Lego Brick trend" and marveling over how wonderful, convenient and time-saving it is.
My generation is just watching this and chuckling fondly.
I have always frozen foods that are prepped or cooked for later use. My mother did and my grandmother did. Now granted, mine are in reusable containers and not silicon molds, but that's the only difference. My small freezer is full of them.
Here I pulled four at random to show you. I use masking tape and a Sharpie to label the contents and the date I froze them (or the date to use them by, depending on the contents.) I usually label soup or stock with the use-by date because that I keep for a while. The rest I use the date I froze it.
The lemon juice on the left is 4 tablespoons (I will measure things I need for recipes) and comes from the last of our lemon crop which I juiced back in December. The bigger container is two cups of chicken stock leftover from another recipe. I never throw out chicken stock, which I make myself now.
The chicken and wild rice soup is my lunch today; I took it out and put it in the fridge to defrost overnight (this is a gentler method than nuking everything from frozen.) The Game Stopper chili is a one-portion leftover from the last time I made a big batch.
Here's that same chicken and wild rice soup the next day, when I heated it up and had it for lunch. Just as good as when I originally made it.
Some thoughts on the trend: it's nice that the youngsters are thinking about meals in advance -- this curtails overspending on take out or fast food -- but you can do this literally all the time. If you make a big batch of pasta sauce, chili or soup, freeze the leftovers in containers with how much you would eat of it in one sitting. I deliberately make huge batches of foods we like all the time and freeze most of them to eat later.
If you have a family freeze your prepped food in larger family-size containers, as that way you can feed everyone.
Most vegetables (in my opinion) are best fresh. I don't care for frozen corn, green beans or peas in particular, and would rather eat canned versions of those three. If you must freeze your veggies, you might cook them first to avoid the dehydrated effect the freezer has. Noodles you should make fresh everytime, as they get soggy or even disintegrate after being frozen in any liquid.
Freezing is diabetic friendly, and how I manage to eat potato dishes; chilling or freezing converts the carbs to resistant starch and helps me avoid blood sugar spikes. Same thing with rice, which is why I freeze my chicken and wild rice soup before I eat it.
Making food Legos could be a fun way to get into cooking and preparing your meals in advance. Just be practical and don't worry about investing in the pricey containers. I got my food storage containers at a bargain outlet that had twenty of them for $5.00.
Image Credit: frozen raspberry image by deluxtrade from Pixabay
Comments
The store bought frozen veg, I think, are better than the produce I freeze. I think it's because they're flash frozen and our regular freezers can only go so low in temp.
The only exceptions for us are tomatoes and berries. They're fine frozen as is. I always use frozen tomatoes in cooked meals, and any berry thaws out fine in minutes.
I had a recent revelation with canned beans. I was getting tired of the rising prices of canned beans so I bought a big bag of dried beans, and cooked them myself. OMG! They were tiers better than the canned stuff. Greg couldn't get enough of them. It is more time consuming since you have to soak them overnight and simmer them for several hours the next day, but they were worth it. I will cook all my beans this way from now on.
Ironically, this was the way my mother and grandmother always made beans, yet I shifted to cans because it was faster. No more. I can can (or freeze dry) my own beans.
I have no problem freezing scallions, bell peppers and tomatoes, as long as I'm going to cook them in a future recipe. Fresh is just the best of all whenever possible.
Btw, the pole beans you sent me are popping up in the garden already. :)