With the recent exception of last week's menu, we typically don't have enough food from what I cook on Sunday to make it through the week. So both as addendum food and variety, we eat fillers throughout the week. Fillers are foods we eat which I don't batch cook on Sunday afternoon. This can be a combination of store-bought freezer meals as well as batches of frozen food from homemade meals. Keep in mind any cooking which happens during the week is much more simple.
In this post, I'm going to go over store-bought freezer filler foods we eat periodically. I know I make a lot of homemade food for my family, but I'm not above freezer chicken nuggets or dumplings.
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| Random assortment of what's currently in our freezer. Not sponsored. |
1. Chicken Nuggets - We love chicken nuggets. If there was a way I could get chicken nuggets to not be soggy in a hot food thermos, I'd bring them for my kid's lunch. I haven't found a way to do this yet. I've seen some youtubers stick paper towels in the thermos to absorb moisture and keep them crunchy, but I doubt the true effectiveness. So we save chicken nuggets for home when they can be eaten right after cooking.
2. Corn Dogs - My kids enjoy corn dogs here and there. My husband and I enjoy corn dogs here and there. We've done both the corn dog on a stick and mini corn dogs.
3. Frozen Dumplings - this category is anything that includes any brand of dumpling (we eat multiple), soup dumplings, or tiny wontons. Depending on how specific you get, you could almost lump them all under the category of "dumpling."
4. Frozen Noodles - I keep a small stash of premade noodle servings with vegetables. If it's convenient and I have some on hand, I will try to add a protein in since most are made vegetarian. Otherwise, it's a quick microwave and eat type meal.
5. Tacos/Mexican - We do occasionally buy mini tacos at Costco when they're on sale and keep them on hand in our freezer. Currently, I have a pack of tamales I found on markdown. So those are on deck for a time when we need some food in a crunch.
6. Fish Sticks - My husband and I love fish sticks. There's a guilty pleasure about eating breaded, crunchy fish late at night as a snack with homemade tartar sauce. My kids will eat it occasionally, but we seldom give it to them because somehow they end up smelling like a fish stick, even hours after eating!
7. Lasagna - occasionally we find the frozen lasagna on sale at Costco or Sam's. This one isn't really a quick meal though since it does take a couple of hours in the oven.
#1, 2, and 6 are items we (the adults) tend to crave when we see our kids eating them. I'm not sure what it is. Perhaps it's because they're not our everyday food so they are actually more like a special treat. There are other items which make their rounds through our freezer so this list isn't all-inclusive. I actually enjoy a freezer food "treat" here and there because we don't eat it often. A number of these also turn into my dinner #2, especially when I eat dinner before 5 pm most days. These have also come in handy if we all get sick or after coming back from going out of town. If I'm feeling fancy, I'll usually pair these with some side dishes: mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, or broccoli with the American items or kimchi/seaweed salad with the Asian items. It ends up being quite a tasty meal!
Anyone else have guilty pleasure frozen food? 😄
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