hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3923.txt

Episode: 3923
Title: HPR3923: Meal preparation.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3923/hpr3923.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 17:26:07

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3923 for Wednesday, the 16th of August 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Meal Preparation.
It is hosted by some guy on the internet and is about 41 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Scotty Chats with Bumblebee about Meal Preparation.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm your host, some guy on the internet and I'm here with Bumblebee.
And we're here to discuss Meal Prep.
All right, be a while back.
We were talking about Meal Prep and you gave some wonderful details about it and me,
a person who's never done it.
I'm interested in, you know, having these details recorded, especially for others
who want to participate in Meal Prep.
Can you give us like a quick brief on what Meal Prep is?
Meal Prep is basically your prepping for the rest of your week,
especially for people that are parents or people that have very busy lives.
It's really good to pick a day that you're either off or less busy
and prep everything for the week.
Because if you think about just one meal,
if you're making something as simple as let's say spaghetti,
you put onions, ground beef, pasta, maybe fresh tomatoes, whatever you put in it,
you have to cut the onion, cut the tomato.
Just think if you several days prior, you had cut, let's say, four onions,
and now you don't have to sit there and spend, you know, five minutes doing that.
It's already all done.
It sounds like you're getting a lot of the tedious stuff out of the way
so that when you go to prepare the meal, the ingredients is already prepped.
Absolutely.
So Meal Prep and Meal Plans, they kind of go hand in hand.
What I do exactly is before I go grocery shopping,
before I even make a grocery list,
I sit and I make a whole entire list of maybe between 15 to probably 20 meals.
In one month, you'll probably eat at least one thing twice,
whether you're eating it as leftovers or you're just making it twice.
It's really good to make a whole entire list and then from that list of meals,
you then make your grocery list and you always duplicate.
So if you make several things with onions, obviously you don't need one onion.
You need several onions or potatoes or whatever you use for that meal.
For me, I like to, so Sunday is my day that I do food prep, chores, whatever.
That's the day that I do my things.
I will prep for the week and that is the best advice I can tell most people.
If you're not freezing these meal prepped items,
it's best to do for the week because that keeps things from going bad,
it's not easy to be like, okay, Wednesday, I'm making tacos.
Thursday, I'm making spaghetti because you don't know how much you're going to eat that week.
And so it's kind of like you go as you go.
So if you come home and it's really late at night and you want to grab that freezer meal
that you happen to make, then that's great.
But if you want to sit and make, like I said, tacos or whatever,
and everything is already prepped and you just have to either throw it in the microwave
or throw it in a pan, I call those dump meals when you throw it all in one pan and then it's done.
So that's what I do throughout the week to make my life easier throughout the week
when you're working between eight and 12 hour days.
It's really good to have everything planned in advance.
So it's meal prep and meal plan.
Absolutely. They definitely go hand in hand.
Of course, you can just do food prep.
If that's your thing and you don't want to do the whole meal plan,
my personal opinion is meal planning and meal prepping go hand in hand.
Because if you're prepping the food, what are you prepping it for?
You're prepping it for a meal that you have planned.
Cut in vegetables no longer than a week in advance because onions release a gas.
When you cut them, it's best to leave them in the refrigerator.
Don't put them on the counter. Yes, they will be fine.
But they release a gas, which will make them go bad faster.
Same thing with apples.
Apples turn brown, same things with potatoes, they'll turn brown.
So you have to pick and choose.
So I recommend, let's say you're doing a potato casserole, okay?
Unless you're willing to freeze said casserole,
I don't recommend you cutting them for the week because if you cut them
by the time you use them, even though they're technically having gone bad,
who wants to eat a brown looking potato?
Like it's not pretty.
It goes with their feast with your eyes and then with your mouth kind of thing.
Exactly. Like even though there have been tips and tricks,
they say like, oh, if you get the potatoes and put them in water after they're cut
or if you do this, who wants to have a bowl of water with potatoes in their fridge?
I don't. Some people might.
And then that changes the starch and all that other stuff.
So my advice for certain vegetables, you have to do your own research.
Which ones are best frozen?
I preferably don't like frozen green beans or frozen squash or frozen zucchini.
Potatoes do well, very, very well frozen.
So I in my household, we like a lot of like dumb meals for a meal plan.
So I get up in the morning, I have my coffee and then I go to McDonald's.
Is that a good meal plan?
No. I mean, I guess you're planning to go to McDonald's,
but if you're trying to cook at home, not necessarily meal planning is
you're planning several days in advance in my personal opinion.
For me right now in my freezer right now, I have a lasagna that's frozen.
It's completely utterly cooked. It's been cooked.
It's been prepped. It's been everything.
So let's say there's a night where I'm just too exhausted to make a lasagna.
Just the prep time to cooking the meat, doing the cheese it,
doing all of the stuff I put vegetables in my lasagna is like onions and all those things.
It takes time just to prep it and then cooking it because I put eggs inside my ricotta cheese.
So you have to make sure that's cooked because you can't eat raw eggs.
So doing that whole thing, you'll probably spend two hours just making lasagna.
I don't know about you, but if you get home at six, seven, eight o'clock at night,
especially people with kids, they don't want to eat that late at night.
So let's say it's frozen.
It'll probably take 30 minutes to cook, maybe 45.
It already being done.
You literally take it out of the refrigerator or freezer and throw it in the oven.
I cooked a whole bunch of chicken and then I divided it into three sections.
So it's cooked chicken that's frozen.
But all I had to do is microwave it or throw it in a dump meal or stir fry it because it's already cooked.
A lot of meats and stuff when you put them in the refrigerator to these all,
they only last in there for a short period of time when they're raw.
So if you cook it, obviously, that makes the time longer cooked food last longer in the refrigerator.
So it sounds to me like if you were definitely on a diet,
if you have certain health issues and things of that nature,
and you really had to focus on specific foods,
this will be a great way to not only buy those foods,
but always make sure you have a different meal.
So you don't run into that issue of having the exact same,
you know, basically burning out on a specific type of food or whatever.
You could have variety.
Absolutely.
And then on top of that, it's also helped for budget reasons as well.
That's where I started when I was younger.
And then when I moved around being a young college student,
I did that.
That was my thing.
Instead of having to eat like ramen noodles or spaghetti, whatever, all the time.
A lot of people eat the same thing over and over again because it's simple.
It's easy.
It's fast.
All of those things.
Or you have children that are more picky or you have family members that have dietary reasons.
Like you said, either being diabetic or diet or whatever.
For us, we like variety.
We want something different all the time, not the same thing.
You can even make it so if you don't want a dump meal,
like a soup or a stew or a lasagna like that,
because that's considered a dump pan meal.
You're protein, you're vegetable, you're starch, all in one thing.
We'll think of it this way.
If you're, let's say you had fresh green beans,
well, let's say they're already snipped on both ends and cut in half and blanched.
Blanched means lightly cooked, half cooked.
Well, then when they're out of the refrigerator or anything like that,
you can then have them for the rest of the week.
So all you have to do is throw them in a pan and you're done.
Simple as that.
Right now, I have probably a court size bag full of onions that I do.
When I make breakfast for myself in the morning,
I have onions, potatoes, I put them in a pan.
I now don't have to cut my onions.
I just cut up one potato.
Simple as that.
When earlier tonight, I had chicken that I stir-fried,
chicken that was already cooked, I stir-fried onions in it,
and then I put it with some rice.
Rice that I had cooked on Sunday, I cooked some white rice.
It took me on Sunday probably less than two hours
to cook everything for the week.
And when I say week, I mean, all the way until Sunday,
because you still have to eat on Sunday, even though you're prepping.
So Monday, all the way through Sunday, you have to think about what you are prepping
through your whole entire meal plan list.
So if you have 20 items on that list, you're not going to say Monday,
I'm going to have tacos.
Tuesday, I'm going to have lasagna.
Because there might be leftovers, you might not want tacos on Monday
when that day comes.
And my idea that I do is I make sure that I have in my refrigerator
an average of whatever I need that happens to be on that list.
Not everything, because then we go back to the only cut for the week,
have an average.
So right now in my fridge, the onions are probably two to three onions that I cut.
That will be fine for any meal I have on my list.
Do you understand?
Yeah, because that's like that universal item.
So you can always have that prepared.
Absolutely.
What about stores?
Do you select, say for instance, I've seen in movies or like a TV show
or something where a guy opened up his freezer and he'd have multiple containers
with the Monday through Friday or whatever in his freezer or his refrigerator?
You know what I'm saying?
Do you have something like that or do you recommend that type of storage
for the meal solutions?
That's a good question.
So there are devices out here that are food savers.
I never bought one.
It's just not my thing.
Freezer bags are very cheap.
So speaking of freezer bags, just freezer is the block bags.
That's the only thing I buy.
I don't buy the regular storage ones.
I just buy the freezer because it's just easier for me to have one back in bowl blah.
I buy court size and I buy gallons.
So my dump meals are always in the gallon.
I write what is on it.
Normally, I'm the cook of the house, so I just write what's on it.
But sometimes for certain meals that I know my husband prefers,
I will write what's on it, where it gets cooked at,
whether it's the inspot oven, pan, et cetera,
how long to cook it for, and I write the date.
So I write the date of when I made it and how long I recommend it to be in there.
Because we have such a habit of throwing something in the freezer
and totally forgetting it after you went grocery shopping
and just shoved everything else in there.
So before you know it, you have three or four freezer meals in the back of your freezer.
Especially for us, we have a dump chest freezer.
So you have to search for the whole thing.
So organization is really key.
And then I also write down for my food plan list.
I write down the ones that I've already made for my freezer list.
So I'll write down a list of the ones that I have made and put in said freezer.
So then all I have to do is look at this list and know,
oh, I have two pounds of ground beef that I cooked for tacos,
or lasagna, or et cetera, or I have pre-made jambalaya,
something along the lines of that.
So you know what you have. So those things will get freezer burn ruined.
And then you're just wasting money and your time that you took two cook set items.
You said use these freezer bags, not regular ziplock bags,
which means you destroy the planet.
Because these are going to get thrown in the trash.
And then you know, whales are going to eat them and they're going to die.
I have two different types.
I do have ones that are disposable and they are recycling.
So that is another indication.
And two, I have some that are reusable.
They're made out of plastic. They're harder plastic.
They're reusable and they're further freezer.
And I have some that are for regular snacks.
Those are the ones I use.
But they're mine.
I love those reusable bags.
They're fantastic.
And they're gotten a lot cheaper.
They used to be a little bit more expensive.
I bought someone Amazon and I also bought some at Wilmer.
I think for the freezer ones are a little bit pricier.
But I bought eight of them for six dollars.
Which I feel like that's a great price.
Especially for gallon size.
They do take a little bit more space than the regular box ziplock bags.
But what I do to clean them after whatever you have in there is removed.
Whether it's defrosted, removed, whatever I turn the bag inside out.
I do scrub it up and I leave it out like that.
And it dries and it's perfectly fine to reuse.
What I do to write on it.
Exactly.
What I do to write on it is I get a piece of tape.
Because you don't want to write on your plastic bag.
Not like the ones you can dispose.
Those ones are easy.
You throw them away and you don't care.
But the ones you have, I just get up.
Yeah.
And I put a piece of tape on it.
And then I write on it with Sharpie and then I remove it.
So they have at Wilmer and at all these.
Those are the ones that are recyclable.
If you want to get the disposable version.
They are 100% recyclable.
The ones at Dollar Tree.
And I believe Dollar General are not recyclable.
You have to look on the box before you get them.
There's lots of the chip bags and all of those things.
They're not recyclable anymore as much as they used to be.
So I don't know what they put in the plastic to make it recyclable.
I'm not quite sure.
But those ones are recyclable.
And if you get the freezer disposable zip lock bags.
Make sure it's a double zip.
Make sure it's not the single zip.
Make sure it's double because the double ones make it easier to.
I think all the freezer ones are now double, right?
I don't think they're making the freezer ones that are single anymore, right?
At Dollar Tree, they're singles.
They're singles.
But they're blue and they're a thicker one.
They're like thicker.
So I guess that helps.
But having the double one is really important.
But I did think of another hack with certain vegetables.
So a lot of certain vegetables are water-based.
Several of them.
Like zucchini for one thing are water-based.
So depending on what vegetables you use.
For instance, if you want to do, I cut up cucumbers a lot.
And I cut up celery.
So for celery, for instance, the best way to store celery after you cut the tail
and the head off is to storing it vertical with half of it into water.
For some reason that does really well with them,
it keeps them hydrated, it keeps them from going flinzy, all of the things.
For lettuce.
When you cut up lettuce and either after you wash it, cut it and everything,
it's good to dry it out.
And then put, if you put it in a ziplock bag or said bowl,
because sometimes I put mine in bowls, it's good to put paper towels in there.
Because water from the lettuce will sleep on to other pieces of lettuce.
And then before you know it, you have very not pretty lettuce.
And it's not appetizing or crisp.
So I use paper towels.
It's just such an easy trick to do to make it last much longer.
And then I put dates on everything.
When I open spaghetti sauce or tomato sauce in the jars,
I just get a sharpie and write the date that I opened it on there.
Because those ones are specific.
Like you can't keep them longer than like,
I think it's 10 days that they recommend.
So to keep, this goes back to the budget thing.
To make sure you're not wasting food.
To make sure that you're not blowing money on just throwing food away.
Because I feel like that's a lot of things in this country.
We chuck food constantly.
Like I'm, I'm a, I'm a leftover person.
I'm big on leftovers.
My husband isn't.
He's not a big leftover person.
So sometimes I have to doll up our leftovers.
So I have to like make it into something else.
So if I have leftovers for green beans or baked potato or whatever,
whatever, I'll then make something else to go with it.
So if I had chicken one night with those in the sides,
then I'll do fish the next night.
So it's not as repetitive, if that makes sense.
For me, I'll eat whatever.
I'm happy with it.
But doing the list and sticking to it.
But not being overly strict on it.
So don't make it a monthly thing.
You will draw yourself out in my opinion.
I've tried to do that.
I've tried to do those.
They have those planners, those food man planners,
where you can do Monday this Tuesday that it's exhausting.
To then having to remember or plan that far in advance.
Too much for me in my personal opinion.
I pick from the list and I choose that.
That's what I do.
It makes it life ten times easier.
And you can also, I guess we're mostly talking about dinners at the moment.
But you can use a handful of these items for lunches too.
Like the chicken that I did tonight.
I'm going to use some of that chicken for lunch tomorrow.
I can either, I mean, they're going to do it in a salad.
Or I'm going to do it in a regular sandwich.
You just have to pick and choose.
I see that you assumed that we were only talking about dinners.
But I only eat cake and pie.
So I was personally talking about dinners.
I feel like most time when people meal plan, they do dinner.
Because most people, kids are at school and they eat lunch.
And us adults, we eat lunch.
I work most of the time.
So having a meal plan based on all-day thing is not normally practical.
It's normally based on dinners.
And the reason why I said that.
And when have you ever ate cake?
I've never even heard you eat cake and pie.
FYI.
Now that I think about it, you're right.
I can't remember the last time I actually ate cake or pie.
And that's another thing.
Having people that have kids, having them join to make the meal plan.
It's like, hey, what do you want to eat this week?
Just random things.
No, thank you.
Really?
Older kids, yes.
Well, not little kids, yeah.
But believe it or not, I did that with the munchkins I used to watch.
And we made the weirdest crap and they ate so much of it.
They wanted spaghetti tacos.
Oh, that sounds so good.
Anything tacos sounds good though.
I love tacos with everything.
But yeah, that, I mean, it's a little weird, but I eat it.
It's so weird.
And the little boys, they were like, I was like, I don't know if we want spaghetti or tacos.
And it's like, let's do both spaghetti tacos.
And I was like, what?
And I thought it was the weirdest thing.
It was in the hard tacos.
Yes.
And I put like a hard tacos because otherwise you would not get any texture or anything.
It'd be too, too cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And these kids normally would eat maybe one taco or half taco or a little bit of spaghetti.
If I had made them individually, I made them together.
Both of them ate like between two to three tacos because it was something they really wanted.
They really weren't like liked.
It was fun and weird, you know?
And, you know, boys are gross.
So it was perfect.
I mean, they were delicious.
So I can't really say gross much about it.
But it's stuff like that.
My husband, when he picks a meal, he normally eats more of it because either he's craving it or he really, you know, just because he was hungry.
I don't know.
But normally when he picks items, he does that.
So every month, I usually do it at the last week of every month.
So I have already made my meal plan list, which it's normally the same thing as the one before.
I do have a, would you have cheat days, obviously, because you have to plan for those.
Not every single day you're going to cook from home.
Some people go out to eat or you don't plan for that leftovers that you didn't eat.
I don't eat a lot.
I eat a very small portions.
Children's ice portions normally.
So I have lots of leftovers.
My husband, on the other hand, when he's home, he eats between three to four people.
Okay.
So he's a big eater.
So when I cook, I accommodate for that when he's home and when I'm home.
So that being said, I feel like making only 15 to 20 on your list is a good number.
Doing too many is one too many to choose from.
You know, if you have too many options, you're just going to be like, I don't know.
You know, and so yes, 30 of them, the likelihood of you cooking all of them is not normal.
Pinterest is a really good tool to look up really good recipes and a quick note.
I'm going to have to bash that one because a lot of the recipes I wanted,
want they wanted me to go off platform to some other place to go get the recipe.
So they have this really beautiful looking picture going, oh, you know,
this is, this is a great thing you can make when you click on it.
It's like, now come to our other site where we're going to tell you how to make it.
I don't know what you're talking about, but I have used Pinterest for years.
You just click the photo and that's the link.
It's not like obviously some of them are like, oh, give us your email and we'll send you some.
So yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
It's is is garbled with some of the good ones.
Like I was looking up some, I was looking up some of the non meat meals.
I wouldn't exactly call them vegetarian.
I don't know what they classified as, but they don't have meat in them.
And I was trying to, you know, find some good ones that are simple that I could make without burning the place down.
Can you say veggie meals?
Yeah, you know, veggie meals.
And they they look pretty good.
But when I clicked on them, they were all of them were like, you know, hey,
you have to come to us basically leave Pinterest the place where we're advertising this meal on
so that you can now get the recipe.
I'm like, man, screw this if they allow this kind of behavior.
Think Pinterest as a, as kind of like a third party broker.
And all of these posts are blogs.
Every single one of them is someone that blogged and posts their link on there where their blog is.
Because a lot of times when the recipes in my opinion do work,
you go to another page where they talk a little bit about their life,
whether they talk about their kids or their husband and how amazing this recipe is
and how their kids love it and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then you go down sometimes there'll be like a tab where you can jump to recipe
and it just dumps all the way down.
Sometimes I read them most time I don't.
You can just dump all the way down and find the recipe.
Obviously YouTube is a good one.
The only thing about YouTube is you have to sit there and watch the whole video.
If someone is cooking and it takes 30 minutes to make that video or that meal,
it's going to, you're going to watch a 30 minute video to figure out one meal.
So in my opinion, yeah, so that's why I do Pinterest.
Obviously, I'm pretty sure Google has some too.
I do have books.
I like books.
I'm a big bookworm.
So I do have quite a bit of recipe books.
I actually got this PDF one recently from the 50s.
So funny.
So funny.
Like some of them are like, there's like 50s.
Yeah, from the 50s.
Some of them sound disgusting and I can't wait to try them.
Oh my god.
There was this one casserole that was chicken, cheese and something else.
But they put gelatin in it.
Like stuff that's made with jello.
Like made in jello.
Right?
Gelatine.
And I'm like, oh my god.
Chicken with jello is essentially what it is.
It's so gross.
I'm human.
Hey.
Yeah.
I have a way to try it.
Oh my god.
No.
Let me just go ahead and get there a little note here to call 911 for your husband
because I can already tell this is going to be a bad deal.
Yeah.
Just, uh, yeah.
I mean, but don't get wrong.
I've done.
And then also don't be afraid to experiment.
That's another thing with a lot of these lit these, you know, since you do have time to
do X, Y and Z of cooking because you prepped and ahead of time.
So all the vegetables that would have taken you, you know, 10, 15, 20 minutes to cut up,
depending on what it is, depending on how fast of a cutter you are, et cetera, et cetera.
You can then experiment and add other things.
You can do that.
Don't do it again.
If it's great, then that's something you should write down.
That's kind of the thing that I've done throughout cooking.
Um, me and my husband, one of our favorite recipes that I've done is I made these, uh, fish
tacos recently.
And we didn't have any meat, but fish hadn't gone to the grocery store and all we had was fish
at the time.
So I was like, all right, well, we have fish and I have, you know, shells, but they were the
soft shells.
And I was like, I think you're talking about crunchies.
You're talking about soft shells.
Don't get me wrong.
Tacos are great, no matter how, but I'm a crunchy guy.
I use the soft tacos when we make, um, uh, taco salads or do those.
Um, but I actually, uh, learned how to make the crunch rep from Taco Bell.
That's another thing you can learn how to make.
And it's fantastic.
My husband loves it.
So I will literally have in my freezer right now, I have a pack of, it's like a pound
and a half of taco meat.
And it says crunch rep meat because I add more to it than I would regular tacos because
it's just, it's a different type of taco.
So I have like fajita seasoning and cayenne pepper and all of this other stuff.
And it's wonderful.
And I even add like hot sauce in it when I cook it.
And onions and garlic and, and it's, it's okay to basically food prepping is cutting corners
and doing shortcuts.
I don't cut garlic.
I buy in the jar fresh garlic.
Well, you, you use minced garden like pre minced garlic?
Yep.
Yep.
I don't use the dry powder.
Where's my phone?
Let me, let me go ahead and hit hello officer.
Yes, she's here.
And she's talking crazy.
What do you use?
You use fresh garlic?
Or do you use garlic powder?
Well, we do use garlic powder as well, but fresh garlic is the best.
I even have to admit, I eventually, for a little while, started chewing on the garlic cloves
because I like that powerful sensation when you chew on the garlic cloves.
Like it's, it burns and it's overwhelming for a little while.
And that feeling is, gets kind of addictive for me.
So I kind of, I kind of like doing that.
But outside of that.
And you're over here judging me for having a jar of garlic.
You're over here for again, basically snorting it.
Well, you know, hey, we all got our vices.
So you know what?
Yeah.
I, there's, I pick and choose which ones that I prefer to get like you can even buy frozen vegetables
to help you throughout the vet, the meal prep and all those things.
There's certain ones.
I'm really weird on certain ones.
I don't prefer green beans frozen.
I think, I don't like the cans.
I think what you salty.
The frozen ones are squeak, right?
I am at the empty.
Yes, they're like squishy.
I don't like them.
I don't like them at all.
So I will buy fresh ones.
And another tip is I use kitchen shears.
So kitchen scissors who do my green peppers instead of just sitting there, green peppers.
My green beans instead of doing scissors, it just makes it easier instead of using a knife.
It's just so much quicker.
And another use kitchen shears on what?
Green beans.
You mean you actually cut the food with the scissors?
Absolutely.
There are four.
I thought there's three.
Let me just.
Shears.
Yes.
Yes, also.
It's the whole point of them.
It's me again.
And she's once again right back at it.
I don't know what to tell you.
She's being different.
She's talking about cutting food with scissors.
I even use that for chicken.
If I have to shred chicken sometimes I will use scissors.
They're for cooking.
They're for the kitchen.
So I make sure that I have this one pair that may not be used for anything else other than food.
Nothing else.
It's not used to open a bag.
It's not used to cut paper.
Absolutely nothing.
I have one in the in there that's made to her like if I want to open a bag of cheese or you know a package of meat.
I'll use that for that stuff.
And then I have one other pair that's specifically for whatever food product.
It's used for nothing else.
Even though they get washed I still don't.
I only use it for that and it makes life so much easier.
It really does.
It cuts a lot of time and half.
I know there's a bunch of people that heard me say that.
Yes, I am aware that there are food shares.
I just don't use them for their intended purposes.
My only use for scissors are for cutting things other than food.
Even though yes, I am aware they do make scissors that are meant for cutting food.
And this is the guy that almost poisoned his child because he made gravy and almost burned his house down in the process.
That gravy only caused us to choke a little bit.
We didn't even have to call the fire department.
They knew it was burning down.
And all of our neighbors got away safe.
I think everyone can experiment but you.
Because when you experiment, it's very scary.
It's very scary.
Some things happen.
Like you said, you got to be willing to experiment.
I was willing to.
Jesus can't always have the results you want.
I thought of another point.
I didn't write all my little bulletins down.
I'm going as I go.
But one thing that I thought about is the first week of the month.
I do most of my freezer meals.
Like I was saying earlier, I have lasagna.
I have this.
I have that.
So the last week of each month.
So this week, I guess last week, because today is Tuesday.
Last week, I went through my freezer and looked at what I did currently have in my freezer.
I don't have much of freezer meals.
I have like two.
One, I said lasagna earlier and I have taco meat.
And I think I have fish.
That's already done.
Well, it's already prepped.
But everything else, not so much.
So this Sunday, I will prep probably six freezer meals.
My freezer meals, I normally use for when I'm too tired, when I'm just lazy,
or when I prefer that meal, specifically.
So the other prepping involved, the onions, the this, the that, whatever,
is for the normal cooking habits.
The freezer meals are what I like to call the dump meals.
When I dump them in the crock pot, when I dump them in the insta pot,
when I dump them in a skillet, et cetera, et cetera.
I like to have them already prepped and done.
So basically, even my husband can cook them.
I feel like it's good to pick up specific time where you make several of them.
If you're the kind of family that uses them often, then make more.
In your freezer, most meals can last months in your freezer.
They really can, especially if you make sure that everything's still tight.
But dating them is key.
If you do not put a date on them, you're going to open them up or look at them
and be like, I have no idea when I made this.
And then you're going to want to chuck it because, you know, to be careful.
But dating them is key.
They have lots of really good websites that say which vegetables are best frozen,
refrigerated, et cetera.
Just be careful on which ones you put together.
If you're not going to freeze or refrigerate them, onions and potatoes are best in the dark.
Onion should be left by themselves.
Like, don't have them around any other vegetables fruit and less they're in the refrigerator.
And then when they're in the refrigerator, I like to put them in Ziploc bags anyway,
just to keep them clean.
But don't put them next to anything because onions and apples release a gas.
So they will make other vegetables fruit.
I think even breads go bad faster because of that gas they release.
So just be mindful for that.
I also have frozen right now.
I have a banana cream pie frozen.
And that freeze is really well too.
You just have to really, some items you're just going to into experimenting.
See if it's good frozen.
Other ones you're just going to have to look them up and stuff.
Most vegetables do well frozen.
Corn is one of them, peas is one of them.
So what technique do you use when you're cooking meth?
Well, well, you know, you have to get it really hot.
Don't just get it.
Get your water right on.
Yeah, right.
All right.
I got a couple quick ones for you before we wrap it up here.
Okay.
Favorite meal.
Oh, that one's hard.
I'm not a big pasta person, but I love lasagna.
But I guess my favorite meal that I make often is probably Chinese food.
Me and my husband love Chinese food because there's so many options.
Rice is super easy to make.
You can make it with steak with fish with chicken.
We mostly make it with chicken.
I learned how to make kung pow chicken.
Recently, I learned how to make general chose chicken and orange chicken.
Most grocery stores have the pre mix.
That's like in a jar that you just dump over the chicken.
There's a really good one at all these.
That's for general chose and for orange chicken.
Those ones are really good.
Obviously, they're, I prefer like the best one.
It's the one that I made homemade.
That one's really good.
And if you don't have white vinegar, then you're not really making Chinese food.
Just saying white vinegar is key.
But that's what I think.
I think Chinese food is probably our favorite meal.
All right.
What about dessert?
What's a dessert that you must have?
Oh, I'm not a big sweet person.
But my husband's favorite dessert that I make often is cheesecake.
He loves cheesecake.
So I make cheesecake often.
Cheesecake is really good frozen.
Also, probably pie.
I make apple pie a lot and apple turnovers a lot.
So those are also really good items to freeze.
At Dollar Tree, they have pie aluminum pans that have like a dome cover to keep them.
You know, I guess they're for traveling.
I'm not quite sure.
But I buy those.
I cover it with clear wrap and then aluminum foil.
And then I put the dome over top.
But just FYI, I wouldn't leave it in the refrigerator for the freezer for longer than two weeks.
Because it's not 100% completely sealed.
It's not a Ziploc bag.
So it's not completely sealed for those type of meals.
The turnovers, those are fine.
I put them in Ziploc bags and they're great.
And last but not least, favorite drink.
Oh, I'm a coffee and sweet tea girl.
So I'm all about sweet tea and coffee.
Oh, yeah.
I'm with you on the coffee part.
I love me some coffee.
I am big on coffee.
Tell us a little bit about your coffee.
We got some coffee, a fishy anatoes here in the audience.
And I'm sure they'll probably want to hear about your coffee choices.
I'm not super picky as long as it's dark.
But my absolutely favorite coffee I've ever had.
My girlfriend is from Brazil.
And when she went back home, she brought me Brazilian coffee.
It is so strong because they make espresso and really strong coffee.
It kind of tastes like a little bit like Colombian coffee.
But it has this rich aftertaste.
It depends on how most people like their coffee.
Most people don't drink coffee black.
I'm one of the people that don't drink them black normally.
I've tried coffee black with the Brazilian Colombian just to taste the coffee itself.
But I do prefer creamer in mine.
But that's my favorite coffee.
But lately I've been having just normal.
I like Colombian coffee on the dark roast type.
And I like to grind my coffee.
I grind my beans up myself.
And that's what I do.
And also my coffee has to be so hot that it's burning my esophagus.
I like hot hot.
I know you like only cold coffee.
But I love hot hot hot coffee.
Oh, thank you.
Mug warmers are the best invention.
I have a mug warmer on my desk.
It is the best thing ever.
It is like a hot plate that has pressure.
So you hit the button when the mug is on there.
You hit the on button.
And it literally just there's a button on the bottom to help with safety.
So as soon as you lift up your mug, it turns off.
And when you place your mug back on, it turns back on.
It just heats up the mug ever so slightly and it keeps your coffee hot.
And I'm guessing that this is ceramic mugs only that kind of thing, right?
To what exactly what other mugs would there be?
Well, there do make those glass mugs.
I mean, I don't have a glass mug.
So I wouldn't be able to tell you if a glass mug is fine with it.
I wouldn't recommend it because the handle would get hot, I guess,
because glass is a conductor.
So the glass would get hot.
But other than that, I think I think most people have glass mugs for tea more than coffee.
I don't see it being a problem.
But I would double check with whatever product you buy before you put a glass one on there
because I have glass cookware.
So I have glass pans that I use for cast rolls and my lasagna and all those things.
I have a glass pan.
Those can go in the stove.
So I don't see the problem.
That's Pyrex.
Yeah.
Well, mine's not Pyrex brand.
But yeah, I get what you're saying.
So I just don't know because usually those cups are not as thick as those pans and stuff.
So I can't answer that question or whether it's going to be safe for glass ones.
But it's 1% okay with the ceramic.
I don't prefer to put my travel cups on there just because I don't know if it will ruin them or not.
And also, there's not really a point.
The travel mugs are meant to keep things hot anyway.
But between doing school and if I'm gaming or if I'm just surfing the web, it's really convenient.
I'm a fast coffee drinker, but sometimes halfway through, it's just not hot enough for me.
So my little thing that I got from my birthday.
Wonderful.
I love it.
Well, that is fantastic.
I'm sure the audience has a lot to chew on in this episode.
I thank you for coming out and giving us all these wonderful tips.
Everybody's been waiting to hear from you again.
We're glad to have you back.
Yeah, glad to be back.
That's fun.
We're going to go ahead and wrap this one up.
We'll catch you in the next episode of Hacker Public Radio.
I'm some guy on the internet here with Bumblebee.
Bye.
Bye.
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