Thursday, November 25, 2010

We Love Our Freezer!

When Lisa and I began our new lives together we were both working as stockers in a supermarket in Llano (Texas). The store had a deli and most days there was cooked food left in the warmer at closing time which was distributed among employees. As often as not, we took home a few pieces of fried chicken but there was seldom enough for a meal and Lisa couldn't eat the breading anyway so I pealed off the breading, pulled the meat from the bone, put it in a ziplock bag and put it in the freezer. I added to the bag each evening until it looked like there was enough in the bag for a meal at which point I'd start another bag. Having little packages of cooked chicken in the freezer lead to one of our favorite recipes, "Apricot-Chipotle Chicken", and gave birth to an idea. These days we have thaw-heat-and-eat packages of cooked shrimp, sausage, chicken, turkey, beef and pork in the freezer along with a collection of really good recipes which are quick and easy to prepare. We can have a terrific home-cooked dinner on the table in a half hour or less. We have to cook our meals, due to Lisa's food sensitivities (hybridized wheat, corn and milk), but we've learned how to make that an asset instead of a liability.