You are driving home from work or from the kids’ after-school activities and the question on your mind is what to make for supper.
An alternative scenario is to have a freezer full of healthy, homemade, nutritious meals ready to be cooked and enjoyed. Then all you need to do is make a salad and perhaps a side dish. Does this sound too good to be true?
For many busy families the second scenario is becoming a reality because they have participated in a “big cook” experience or have created up to a dozen meals at a meal assembly centre.
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The big cook concept is essentially a group of family or friends getting together, having fun and preparing more than 200 meals in just one day. Three busy moms decided they wanted to have delicious, nutritious, homemade, main course meals for their families.
Their solution was to get organized. They selected family favourite recipes that would easily multiply and freeze well. They picked a date, created the shopping list and put in the meat order. The day before their big cook they went grocery shopping and prepared some of the food such as browning the ground beef and chopping the onion and celery.
On the day of the big cook, each member of the group assembled four to seven recipes. Each recipe is enough for eight meals, with each meal serving four to six people. These meals are clearly labelled, sealed in zippered plastic bags and put in their freezers. They pull out a meal, put them in their fridge to defrost overnight and then pop it into the oven or crockpot the next day.
What these enterprising moms, Deanna Siemens, Joanne Smith and Lorelei Thomas, discovered was that it only takes a little longer to make eight meals of the same recipe than it does to make one. Also, by buying in quantity they were able to cut costs in their food budgets. But the big plus was reducing the meal preparation stress so they now have quality time to spend with their family and friends. They reduced the “eating out of the box” and last minute fast-food meals.
Others began to notice and asked for their recipes. The result was a cookbook they wrote called The Big Cook.
Almond chicken
Here is a Big Cook recipe (see chart at right). This one gives the quantities that are needed to make one, four, six or eight person meals. Each one of these meals will serve four to six people.
Method
1. Label bags almond chicken and note time for cooking method: oven: 45 minutes at 350 F (180 C); slow cooker: three to four hours on high or six to eight hours on low; stir-fry until meat is white in centre.
2. Place 11/2 pounds (3/4 kg) of chicken into each zipper bag.
3. Combine chicken broth, bacon bits, celery, onion and drained mushrooms. Dissolve cornstarch in soy sauce and add to chicken broth mixture. Pour an even amount into each bag of chicken. Remove excess air, seal bags and freeze.
4. Place 2/3 cup (150 mL) of almonds into each medium bag and staple to top of chicken bag. Make sure you staple above the zipper so the sauce will not leak. Sprinkle on almonds just before serving.
Hints:
- Stir-frying is fast and a lifesaver if you have forgotten to take a meal out of the freezer ahead of time because it can be cooked frozen.
- To thicken, mix one tablespoon cornstarch (15 mL) in two tbsp. (25 mL) cold water. Stir into hot almond chicken before serving.
- Serve this recipe with rice and steamed broccoli.
- You may add fresh vegetables like peppers, carrots, water chestnuts, snow pea pods or broccoli to the stir-fry while it cooks. Add the vegetables after the meat is almost cooked.
The Big Cook includes beef, chicken and pork recipes. The authors have included lists of recipes that could be used for a big cook along with a grocery list. In addition to coloured photos of each dish, there is a nutrition facts list for each.
To order copies, visit www.thebigcook.com.
Meal assembly centres
The meal assembly centre concept grows out of the big cook concept. Basically, it is a business that will plan a dozen meals, purchase the food and do the preparation. The customer books a session time and comes in and assembles the food to her family’s liking by adding more spices or deleting an ingredient. In less than two hours customers assemble packages of five, 10 or 12 entrees that serve four to six people. In the time that it would normally take to plan, shop, prepare and clean up one meal, a dozen are made. These meals are taken home to the freezer.
Meal assembly centres as a retail concept are experiencing a phenomenal growth in the United States. According to statistics on the Canadian agriculture department website, www.ats.agr.gc.ca, in 2002 there were three meal assembly outlets in the U.S. which in five years grew to 1,420 retail outlets with $504 million in sales.
In Saskatoon a meal assembly business opened in December called Dinner Rush, www.dinnerrush.ca. I visited the location recently and discovered a beautiful, well laid out meal preparation centre.
Dinner Rush is an independent business owned and operated by Krista Koller-Klimosko and Kathryn Sadler, two Saskatoon women who formerly worked in health care. With their hectic schedules they were left with little time for meal planning and preparation. They visited meal assembly centres across Canada and the U.S. to determine what worked best.
Dinners are created in their kitchen to be cooked in yours. Each month they have a new selection of entrees that include poultry, pasta, beef, pork, seafood, salmon and a vegetarian option for about $4-$6 per serving.
The time you spend assembling meals can also include a social component by inviting a friend, your spouse or child to help you. There is also the option of organizing meal assembly parties for eight to 12 people. This is a great idea to help a new mom fill her freezer with meals.
Canning on glass stoves
Dear TEAM: I use a large boiling water canner to seal the jars of jam and relish that I make. Can I use this canning method on my new ceramic top stove without damaging it, such as cracking the ceramic top? Also, when I used the self-cleaning oven cycle the first time, the smoke left a yellow stain that I cannot remove on top of the oven door and the vent under the front panel. Do you have any ideas of how to clean these stains? – A.M., Fairview, Alta.
Dear A.M.: You are correct to be concerned about using your regular canner on your new stove. Old canners do not have a flat bottom and they are usually larger than the element areas on the glass-topped stoves. For these reasons, traditional canners are not recommended for use on glass cook-tops.
The Bernardin canning company has come up with a solution called the Cook’s Helper rack system for home canning and cooking. The racks allow you to use a large flat-bottomed saucepan or stockpot that you may already have, suitable for use on your glass cook-top. The racks are used to lift and hold mason jars for insertion and removal of jars from a boiling water bath. The racks also elevate the jars off the bottom of the pot to prevent glass breakage. Unlike most canner inserts, these racks have multiple wires to hold all jar sizes and the small jars don’t tip and fall through the rack when lifted.
To heat process high acid foods in a boiling water bath, the selected pot must be two to four inches (five to 10 cm) taller than the mason jars used to hold the food.
The racks are stainless steel, which means no more rusty old racks in your canner. Each rack system comes with two racks, small for 9.5-10.5 inch (24-27 cm) diameter pots and large for 11-12 inch (27.5-30 cm) diameter pots plus a set of adjustable height lifters and instructions for use. An extra large rack suitable for pots with diameters in excess of 12 inches (30 cm) can be ordered separately.
In addition to home canning, the racks can be used for blanching, steaming and boiling (corn, eggs, lobster) as well as for cooling baked goods.
The Cook’s Helper rack system is available where Bernardin canning supplies are sold such as Canadian Tire and Co-op stores. It is also available from the Bernardin website at www.homecanning.com/can, 888-430-4231. The set of two racks sells for about $16.
Self-cleaning oven stains
For the stains on your new stove from using the self-cleaning oven, I would suggest that you go back to the store where you purchased it and ask for advice or check your owner’s manual and phone the manufacturer’s help line. If you received a cleaner for your cook-top, I would check the label to see if it could be used on the painted surface.
