Cooking for Busy People & those on Jenny Craig

Chicken Tetrazinni
One of my early memories as a young married couple was the fun we had in preparing a week’s menu of dinner meals on the weekend. We would freeze each meal in a container — or two portions in one (very romantic). Then when needed, we would heat them up (in the oven in the old days) and in 30 minutes, we’d have a wonderful meal!

Today, we are doing the same thing for our weekend ‘events.’ We cook and enjoy our weekend meal then portion control the rest into individual containers. As the week progresses, we can visit the freezer (we have 3) and say,”What do we want tonight? Will it be  Paella? , Seafood gumbo?Bobotie? , Lazagna? ,Chicken Tetrazinni? , Beef Stroganoff? or ?”

As an aside, we are fixing  Chicken Tetrazinni  this weekend in a more original format…. something I hope Luisa would be proud of having her name attached. It will be wonderful.

As they say in the film “Last Holiday”, “…you know how some people feel about pork fat.” However, a little always adds something special.  Jenny Craig  has a cookbook that allows you to ‘doll up’ their basic meals… however adding mushooms and Parmesan to their Chicken meal does not really make it “Chicken Tetrazinni”… although I have found worse recipes out there.

So to answer those who have written and asked, “Why spend so much effort and time for an event meal?”… I simply say that the meal will continue to be enjoyed for weeks to come in smaller portions!

Roger Freberg

Check out the calories in your favorite meal…. how many servings must your casserole be divided to be correctly portioned controled?  CLICK here  to check your favorite recipe!

Cooking’s holy trinity….

Gumbo... one of life's epicurean wonders! 

What’s fun about cooking is lively discussions about what constitutes  the foundation of any style of food.

In French cuisine they refer to the ‘food holy trinity’ of carrots, onions and celery.

the other trinity
In New Olreans, the common combo is somethng slightly different: onions, bell pepper and celery…. and nowhere else is this so clearly evident than in the making of GUMBO… one of God’s greatest creations.
However, sometimes more is better… I would add garlic to the list. One can not really have too much garlic, if properly prepared.

I have noticed that many ‘short cut’ recipes remove one trinity or another… and that is to bad. Even simple “Tetrazinni” deserves some onion, carott and celery.

Food is such fun, isn’t it?

Roger Freberg

About 8 years ago, I posted my  Seafood gumbo recipe…  share it with someone you love.

Congratulations on being a Weblog finalist!

Congratulations sweetheart
Laura was nominated, then was selected as a finalist in an international Blog Contest! Well, we’d all like to win… but some of these folks in the high frequency political sites kinda swept the field …  but it was fun knowing someone who was in the mix!

Congratulations, Laura, it is wonderful to know that  your beautiful site  was a part of it! We are all proud of you!  Maybe more Cal Poly sites will be there next time?

For those of you who haven’t seen the contest… here’s a link!

Roger Freberg

Temple Grandin, the Farm, Autism and Perseverance

Dr. Temple Grandin and Dr. Laura Freberg
The other night Laura and I went to hear Dr. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University lecture about how to ‘calm animals’ and it seemed like I was once again in a Psychology Class listening to Laura discuss ‘habituation’.

Autographed for LauraDr. Grandin — for those of you who don’t know — is also an authority on autism. She — herself — is autistic. While we were there we bought three of her books. We knew Karla would love the books referencing animals… but her book on Social Relationships seems to have been derived from her own study. Just as many of us try to understand the mind with autism… they are working just as hard to understand us.

Dr. Grandin was the personification of what Laura had always speculated about the ‘engineering-type, highly focused and fiercely logical’ mind of a person with autism. Dr. Grandin was brilliant.

Laura has blogged on the event as well…. a very nice discussion.

It was a very enjoyable evening.

Roger Freberg

Dr. Grandin was kind enough to autograph her books…. as shown above.