merlot's Full Review: Frozen Assets Lite and Easy : How to Cook for a Da...
I have always been intrigued with the idea of spending a day cooking, but preparing enough food to eat for a month. I have heard people talk about doing this and it seems like such a great idea. So, I was really excited when I was offered Frozen Assets Lite & Easy-How to cook for a day and eat for a month from the books publisher. I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book to learn more.
The Book Frozen Assets Lite & Easy is a bit of a different kind of cookbook. It encourages the concept of spending a day (or several hours) cooking and then freezing those meals to eat over the next several days, weeks, or month. This book does more than provide the recipes, it provides valuable information on making this task easy on you.
The books author, Deborah Taylor Hough, has written a previous book titled Frozen Assets: how to cook for a day and eat for a month. After writing that book she realized people loved her idea, but also wanted to have lower fat recipes and vegetarian recipes. That's when she decided to write this particular book.
The book is written in chapter style. The first chapter discusses why she wrote this book, the basic idea behind the book, and who would benefit from the book. The next chapters discuss ways to save time and money, the art of the mini-session (more on that later), creating a meal plan, basic information on freezing foods (what to freeze, what not to freeze) and some organizational tips. It also includes tips on preparing the kitchen, what cooking items you will need and which ones will be helpful. All of these are written in an easy to follow format. Nutritional information is included with the recipes, I find this to be a huge asset.
The Recipes
Yes, finally I am on to the good stuff...the recipes. Some of the recipes in this book are written in "mini-sessions". Mini-sessions focus on one main ingredient but make several recipes with that.
I am going to focus on Chicken Mini-Session #1 because that is the mini-session that I did. There were a couple of reasons that I chose to do a mini-session. I knew that I didn't have enough freezer space to cook for an entire month, I wanted to try the book out with something easy, and I love chicken. My goal was to prepare these 5 meals, freeze them and eat them through out the next 2-3 weeks while preparing non-chicken meals the other days.
The meals in Chicken Mini-Session #1 all appealed to me. So often I buy cookbooks and there aren't a lot of recipes I want to try. All 5 of these looked good to me:
•Chicken Fried Rice
•Chicken Taco Sandwiches
•Chicken Tortellini Soup
•Chicken Chili Mac
•Lemon Mushroom Chicken
The most helpful thing in this book is the Shopping List. Before each Mini-session you will find a list of ingredients. This makes it easy to check off what's on hand and what you need to buy.
4 of these recipes require you to cook the chicken in a large stock pot. For the Lemon Mushroom chicken you are going to pound the chicken flat, dredge them in flour, and fry them in a lightly oiled pan. See how easy that is, boil a bunch of chicken and then make 4 meals with it.
The recipes are easy to follow. Once I had cooked all my chicken I simply started with the first recipe and moved on to the next ones in order. It was quite easy. I spent a couple of hours cooking and I had 5 meals done. I made my weekly menu and used these dishes when I wanted.
It was so nice when Monday rolled around and I knew it was Lemon Mushroom Chicken night. All I had to do was pull the bag from the freezer, thaw it for a couple of hours, put the chicken in a pan and reheat it. How simple! All of the recipes are designed this way.
This book includes several Chicken Sessions, Turkey sessions, Ground Turkey, Ground Beef, Beef, Pork Chop, Crab, Tuna, Pasta, Tofu, Cooked Beans, Vegetarian, and Eggplant. Some of these are mini-sessions and some are full sessions which take a little longer. There are quite a few different recipes in here and most look pretty good.
Illustrations
There aren't a lot of illustrations in this book. There aren't any color photographs, in fact the book is purely black and white, simple and not at all cluttered. You will find some food related drawings on some of the pages, but for the most part this is a very simple book, nothing fancy here.
Who Needs This Book
When I first read this book there were a couple of people that I thought would benefit greatly from a book like this. One is my friend Kathy. Kathy has 2 kids and she works full time. Her kids are so busy with extra curricular activities and sports that unfortunately by the time everyone gets home, who wants to cook dinner. If all she had to do was pop a meal into the oven her life would be so easy. Working people would really benefit from once a month cooking.
Many people don't like to cook. Wouldn't it be nice to spend one Saturday or Sunday cooking meals for the whole month, or for at least a few weeks?
Did I Like This Book?
I did like this book. It has some really good recipes in it. Is freezer cooking for me? No, sadly I must admit it is not.
There were a couple of reasons that freezer cooking could never work in my house. The first being that I simply do not have the freezer space to prepare all these meals. I will tell you, many of them are stored in Ziploc bags, which certainly does cut down on freezer space. Buying a freezer for the garage is also not an option. Our garage is small, and well my hubby is a pack rat so there just isn't the space.
While I love the idea of the simplicity of cooking one day a month I have to admit that I love cooking. I also use cooking as an escape. I've been home with the kids all day by the time my husband comes home and most times there is nothing nicer than him playing with the kids while I escape to the kitchen to cook. If I just had to pop something in the oven I wouldn't have that wind down time. That's just my personal feeling.
Can I still use this book? You bet. Just because I don't want to cook for the whole month doesn't mean I can't benefit from this book. Doing a mini-session, or even a full session, would stock my freezer with food. If I have a day where I don't feel like cooking I can pull a meal out of the freezer and I am done.
Of course you don't have to do the mini-session. You can always pick one of the delicious recipes from the book and cook it. I did this just the other day with the Dijon Pork Chops.
I really like this book. It will come in quite handy for the winter months when we won't be BBQing and I we won't be out and about all weekend. I can do a mini-session or two on some rainy day and have meals to eat for several days.
This book would also make a great gift. It is actually my mother in law who first told me about freezer cooking. She would love this book.
This book is soft bound with about 190 pages. It sells for $19.95.
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