Fresh Frozen Dinner, Meals on the Go

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

With the air not quite so warm and the sun not shining quite so bright, the nice thing about fall is that you get a lot more done on the weekends. Good or bad, it is somehow a relief to wake up to a cool fall day and the knowledge you have a full day in front of you with nothing but the four walls surrounding you.

On an autumn day you can get all caught up on your TIVO, you can finish the book that has been lingering on your nightstand, or maybe you can make friends with your kitchen again. In fact, a weekend fall day in the kitchen could be the antidote to a week of kitchen boredom. A little extra culinary time on the weekend can provide a freezer full of goodies waiting to be made up into a variety of fun meals for weeks to come.

Freezing food to be reheated into meals later on is not a tactic to be relegated to lasagnas and other such casseroles. Breakfast foods can be the best friend of the freezer, just look at the Eggo waffle. Everyone knows that by the time you hit snooze three times, get the kids up, shower and dress, there is virtually no time left for a proper breakfast.

Even faster than a run through the corner drive-through for breakfast meat on a bun is pulling some of the same things out of your freezer that you made on an earlier occasion. A few seconds in the microwave and you have a hearty breakfast on the go, courtesy of your forward-thinking self.

Rather than just hitting up the breakfast sausage aisle at the store, try making your own breakfast meats. Ground turkey is an improvement over the typical super fatty fast food or pre-packaged sausages. And in a nod to the ubiquitous chicken-apple sausage, I like to give my ground turkey some pear chunks in small dice. An egg to add moisture, a bit of sage and seasoning, and the sausage patties are ready for the pan. Fry up a whole bunch on the weekend, eat a few right there, then freeze the rest for later on. In the time it takes for your English muffin to toast, your homemade breakfast sausage will be defrosted and you will be out the door in less time than it takes to say McDonald's.

What about after work? When a lot of people think about how to get dinner in a hurry, they reach for the drawer with the Chinese take-out menus. An order of dumplings, some Won-ton soup, some General Tso Chicken, and 30 minutes later dinner is at your door.

Few people know that most of those same things can be yours with no more than a little weekend prep and the convenience of your freezer. Wonton wrappers come pre-made in the refrigerator section of most markets. Making a filling out of ground pork, shrimp, chicken, or a combination of all three takes no more than your own two hands. Add minced garlic, fresh ginger, finely diced onion, and a splash of soy and a basic dumpling filling is yours in a matter of minutes.

A teaspoon of filling goes in each won-ton square. Moisten the edges with water using the tip of your finger then fold over and seal to form a triangle. Moisten the tips of the triangle and bring them together to form a pouch looking dumpling. You can make as few or as many of these as you want at a time. At this point they can be used fresh, or laid out in a single layer in a freezer bag and frozen for a later use.

Then when you get the Chinese food craving, heat up a steamer basket over boiling water (preferably a bamboo steamer) and add the frozen dumplings. 12-15 minutes later steaming Chinese dumplings are yours for the eating. Another option is to make a quick broth out of chicken stock, ginger slices, onion, and garlic cloves. Add the frozen dumplings to the boiling broth along with sliced bamboo shoots, spinach, and maybe some Chinese mushrooms. Ten to twelve minutes later you have a piping hot bowl of wonton soup--that's less than half the time it would take for your take-out to arrive.

As much as a good home cook should try to steer clear of the pitfalls of frozen food, when it is frozen food made by you then it is perfectly acceptable. With a little leisure time on the weekends to make breakfast sausage or form dumplings, many a creative breakfast, lunch, or dinner can be both had by you, and more importantly, made by you, from freezer to table.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/2 onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 piece (1-inch size) ginger
• 8 cups chicken stock
• 1/4 cup sliced bamboo shoots
• 2 cups baby spinach leaves
• 20 pork and ginger dumplings
• soy sauce
• chili garlic sauce

Serves/Makes: 50 pcs

• 1/2 pound ground pork
• 1 piece (1-inch size) ginger
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/3 cup finely minced onion
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 egg white
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 package (12 ounce size) wonton wrappers