This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,923 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 Preparation.
Alright, be a while back, we were talking about Meal Preparation.
You gave some wonderful details about it and meet a person who's never done it.
I'm interested in having these details recorded, especially for others who want to participate
in Meal Preparation.
Can you give us a quick brief on what Meal Preparation is?
Meal Preparation 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.
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 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 Prepping 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 and one month,
you'll probably at least one thing twice, whether you're eating it as leftovers or you're
just making a 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'll 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 dumplings 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 8 and 12 hours a day is 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.
I mean, of course, you can just do food prep.
That's your thing and you don't want to do the whole meal plan.
My person 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.
Cutting 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.
And then 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, but at 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 that the 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 prefer 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 guess you're planning to go to McDonald's, but if you're trying to
cook at home, not necessarily meal planning is your 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
not really 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 meats, doing the cheese, doing all of the stuff I put vegetables
in my lasagna, 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 have 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 raw, they only
last in their 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 and the refrigerator.
It sounds to me like if you were definitely on a diet, if you had 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 a variety.
Absolutely.
And then on top of that, it's also 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, you know, 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.
Well, think of it this way.
If you're, let's say you had fresh cream 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.
Right now, I have probably a court-sized bag full of onions that I do.
I, 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.
When is it?
Because there might be leftovers.
You might not want tacos on Monday when that day comes.
So 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.
No, absolutely.
What about stores?
Do you select, like the safe for instance, I've seen in movies or like a TV show or something
where guy opened up his freezer and he'd have multiple containers with like that
that Monday through Friday or whatever in his freezer or 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.
I, it's just not my thing, freezer bags are very cheap.
So speaking of freezer bags, just freezer is the plug 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 Bolboa.
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 at 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 of in pan, etc.
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 there's 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 through the whole thing.
So organization is really key and then I also write down for my mood, 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 oh, I have two pounds of ground beef
that I cooked for tacos or lasagna or etc.
Or I have pre-made jambalaya, you know, something along the lines of that.
So you know what you have so those things will get freezer burn, ruin 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 zip lock bags, which means you destroy the planet
because these are going to get thrown into 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 for the freezer
and I have some that are for regular snacks.
Those are the ones I use.
But be mindful of those are their fantastic and they're gotten a lot cheaper.
They used to be a little bit more expensive.
I bought some on Amazon and I also bought some at Walmart.
I think for the freezer ones are a little bit priceier.
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 zip lock 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.
I want to say what I use right 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, throw them away and you don't care.
But the ones you have, I just get a, 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 Walmart and at all these, those are the ones that are used 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 your freezer ones that are single anymore, right?
Ad Dollar Tree, 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 some hydrated, it keeps them from going
flimsy, 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 Ziploc 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 as we chuck food constantly.
Like I'm 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, all 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 10 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 in pie, FYI.
Now did I think about it?
You're right. I don't even think.
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 plans.
Like, hey, what do you want to eat this week?
Just random things.
Oh, thank you.
Really?
Old older kids, yes.
But, uh, oh, not little kids, yeah.
But, believe 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, yeah, though.
I love tacos with everything.
But, yeah, that, I mean, it's a little weird, but I did it.
It's so weird.
And the little boys, they were like, uh, I was like,
I don't know if we want spaghetti or tacos.
It's like, let's do both.
Spaghetti tacos.
And I was like, what?
And I thought it was, this weird thing.
It was in the hard tacos.
Yes.
And I put like a hard tacos because otherwise,
you would not get any texture anything.
It'd be too, too good.
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 light.
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 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 size 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 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.
Well, I'm going to have to bash that one
because a lot of the recipes I wanted,
what 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 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 where 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,
give us your email and we'll send you something.
So yeah, that's what we're talking about.
It's as garble with some of the good ones.
I was looking up some of the non-meat meals.
I wouldn't exactly call them vegetarian.
I don't know what they classify that, but they don't have meat in them.
And I was trying to find some good ones that are simple that I could make
without burning the place that you 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 advertising is me alone 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 they're 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 of the 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.
So 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 it 30 minutes 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 chicken.
It beats.
Yeah, from the 50s, some of them sound disgusting and I can't wait to try them.
Some, there was this one, 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, jello, and I'm like, oh my god,
chicken with jello is essentially what it is.
It's also gross.
Yeah, I mean, you know, hey, you know.
I do wait to try it.
Oh my god, no.
Let me just go ahead and get there.
I love note here to call 911 for your husband because I can already tell.
This is no real bad deal.
Yeah, just, 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,
these, you know, since you do have time to do X, Y, and Z of cooking because you
prepped in ahead of time.
So all the vegetables that would have taken you, you know,
10, 15, 20 minutes cut up, depending on what it is,
depending on how fast or a cutter you are, et cetera, et cetera.
You can then experiment and add other things.
If it's bad, don't do it again.
If it's great, then that's something that 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
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 sauce shells.
And I was like, I'm going to say that you're talking about crunchies.
You're talking about sauce shells?
Yeah, that's what it is.
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 you those?
Um, but I actually learned how to make the crunch wrap 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 wrap 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 add 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
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 use minced garden like pre-matched garlic.
Yep.
Yep, I don't use dry powder.
Where's my phone?
Let me go ahead and hit.
Hello officer.
Yes, she's here.
And she's talking crazy.
What are you use?
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, I 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 I'll side of that.
You're over here judging me for having a jar of garlic.
You're over here for again, basically snoring it.
Well, you know what, hey, we all got our vices, so you know.
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 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 that you salty and I don't like the one that's weak, right?
I am at the end.
Yeah, I really wish he, 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 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's four.
I thought there's, I mean, here's our four food.
It's a little 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.
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 there that's made to 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 noticed 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 met 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 a little bit okay.
We didn't even have to call the fire department.
They knew it was burning down okay.
And all of our neighbors got away safe.
Everyone can experiment but you because when you experiment, it's very scary.
I'm very scary.
If some things happen, you know, like you said, you got to be willing to experiment.
I was willing to just, you know, you just can't always have the results you want.
Oh, I thought of another point.
Um, I didn't write all my little bulletin down and kind of go in as I go.
But one thing that I thought about is the first month or the first week of the month, excuse me.
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.
To the last week of each month.
So this week, I guess, last week, because today's 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 when I said lasagna earlier and I have taco meat.
And I think I have fish that's already done.
Full tardy prep.
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, the when I dump them in the
crock pot, when I dump them in the Instant 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't, 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 what 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 for
fragrated, 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 ziplock 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 in an 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 have to get it really hot don't I'm just going to eat it.
Get your water right on.
Yeah, right.
All right. I got a couple of 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 Pao 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 is 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.
What about dessert?
Where was what's a dessert that you must have?
I'm not a big sweet person, but my husband's favorite dessert that I make often is cheesecake.
He loves cheesecake.
Side of make cheesecake often.
Cheesecake is really good frozen.
Also, probably pie.
I make apple pie a lot in 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 if we're 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 or the freezer for longer than two weeks.
Because it's not 100% completely sealed.
It's not as a block bag, so it's not completely sealed for those type of meals.
The turnovers, those are fine.
I put them in the block 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.
That was a little bit about your coffee.
We got some coffee, a fish, and a lot of those here in the audience.
And I'm sure they'll probably want to hear about the 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 Brazil,
Brazilian coffee.
Like, it is so strong because they, you know, they make like a spressos and like, you know,
really, really strong coffee.
It's probably like cool, um, it kind of tastes like a little bit like Colombian coffee,
but it has this rich, after taste.
It depends on how most people like their coffee.
Most people don't drink coffee black.
I'm one of them 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.
So 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 hot.
I know you like only cold coffee, but I love hot hot hot hot.
No, and people.
I'm not as warmers are the best invention.
I have a mug warmer on my desk.
It is the best thing ever.
It's a mug 10 bucks on Amazon.
It is like a hot plate that it 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, they 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 casseroles and my lasagna and all those things
I have a glass pan.
Those can go on the stove.
So I don't see the problem.
That's pyrex.
Yeah, that will mine's not pyrex brand.
But yeah, I get what you're saying.
My, 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 one over cent okay with the ceramic.
I don't prefer to put my my travel cups on there just because I don't know if it'll ruin them
or not and also there's not really a point.
The travel mugs are meant to keep things hot anyway.
But, you know, 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, 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 internet here with.
Bumblebee. Bye.
Bye bye.