I have been cooking! Those of you who know me well will recognize this as a big accomplishment for me. I used to say I didn't like cooking because I was always so nervous about screwing it up. Well, thanks to only cooking for myself and Andres (a very supportive eater!), I've been able to experiment more and figure out that I really am capable of following and even, gasp!, modifying a recipe.
There are several cooking challenges that I'm trying to navigate right now. Perhaps the biggest is that I am not in my own country and sometimes things that I expect to be two-second purchases at the grocery store turn into hour long endevors and making things from scratch (read: enchilada sauce). Also, my eczema has been giving me trouble so I'm trying to cut out dairy to figure out if a food allergy might be part of the problem. Giving up cheese was much easier than expected (probably because Ecuador has inferior cheese to Minnesota, Wisconsin's neighbor), but finding recipes that don't use any cheese, mayonaise, milk, butter, sour cream, or cream cheese has proved a little bit difficult. Now, I hear some of you protesting "but there's tons of great recipes that don't use dairy!" And that brings me to my last big challenge, which is finding recipes suitable for freezing. Now that I'm teaching two classes during the week with a sub period and starting coordination on Saturdays, I have way less time (and energy) to cook during the week. So I've been investigating freezer cooking so I can cook just once, on Saturday or Sunday, and have yummy nutritious food all week long.
Last Sunday I made minestrone soup, beef and potato casserole, and enchiladas. It's all been yummy, but pretty dairy-heavy. So I'm looking for alternatives for cooking this weekend. Which brings me to the reader participation section of this post! I invite you to share any freezer recipes with low/no dairy that I can try out! I'm waiting with baited breath!
Man! sorry I didn't see this sooner. You've been waiting baited for a long time!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, soup, soup, soup! It freezes very well, you can put lots of healthy veggies and beans and things in it and it's very easy to get by without dairy. If you are particularly craving dairy-like things, I recommend making soup with potatoes in it (potato leek, potato onion, etc.) and then blending it up. (Josh and I LOVE our immersion blender for this-like a blender on a stick. It was only about $30 at Target, but I don't know how easy it would be to get such a thing in Quito.) You can also use a regular blender, pureeing in batches or just smush up the potatoes with a fork as much as you like. Sometimes after you thaw something from the freezer it will need to be blended again, but it usually reconstitutes just fine once you do that.
Other things we like freezing are pizza dough that we make (it's secretly easy). Then you can make up a pizza quickly. You could maybe do this just as a flatbread type thing and just use sauce and veggies instead of using cheese.
Let's see, we also like making a big pot of beans and then freezing those in batches. That's nice to have on hand, and if you make them with tomatoes and chiles and stuff you don't need to add much for that to be a whole meal.
I'll try to keep thinking. Are you also avoiding wheat, or is that okay? Good luck with everything!
Bex