Request

By Alissa -
I have been making a lot of meals for a meals-on-wheels type of thing. Sometimes I make the meals at my house and freeze them before they get delivered. Other times I make a big casserole, which I drop off at the church where they portion it out before it gets frozen in the individual containers.

Basically, everything will get frozen at some point, and then delivered to people who can't get around real well or leave their houses. All the containers come with instructions as to how to reheat the meals.

I was wondering if anyone had any good ideas about what else I can prepare for these meals. When I make the individual dishes at my house, I usually just do whatever we're having for dinner and put the left-overs in the freezer containers. Sometimes I make quiche and divide that up. For the big casseroles I have made several trays of baked ziti, chili with cornbread topper, chicken-broccoli-rice casserole, and tuna noodle casserole.

Any other suggestions? Something that doesn't cost a ton of money would be great. The church ladies will add side dishes (usually a veggie and a starch) to every container, so I really only have to worry about the main entree.

Thanks!

Comments

Unknown said…
How about soups? Take your pick -- lentil soup, split pea soup, minestrone, beef vegetable all freeze well. Chicken vegetable freezes well, you could put the noodles on the side in case they want noodles. Paired with some nice bread and/or a salad, it'd be a good meal. And inexpensive.
Chicken cacciatore (there's a recipe on our site that is good) also freezes well.
8:53 PM
Alissa said…
Yeah, I thought of soups, but I'm not sure if that would work well with the containers they use. The containers are basically like the old-school TV dinner trays from our childhood - aluminum foil trays with 3 compartments. They're pretty shallow. I'm wondering how something sloshy would work in a tray like that, especially if it's being maneuvered by older hands. Perhaps a thicker stew would work a little better.... like the chili I made once. I'll check out the chicken cacciatore recipe. I don't think I've ever made that.
11:23 PM
gwen said…
Hm... lots of slow-cooker thick stew-type stuff sounds like it would work -- maybe some of the stuff with meat that the Crockpot 365 woman talked about? I would bet that the elderly people aren't crazy about hippie-dippy chickpea curry whatever, but she had a lot of what I would consider more traditional food that you could make cheaply.

This could be another casserole-type option, if you haven't tried it yet:

http://foodgoodness.blogspot.com/2009/02/chicken-noodle-broccoli-casserole.html
8:38 PM
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