Microwave Side Dishes

I am not a great microwave cook.  Until recently I only considered the microwave good for melting and reheating, not for cooking.  That attitude is gradually changing.  While the microwave may not be great for baking, it can be a useful tool in making easy side dishes to go with freezer meals.  Plus grocery store have started selling rice or pasta pouches that are already cooked and can be reheated in the microwave.  I haven't tried the pasta pouches, but I have tried a couple of the rice ones and found them useful.  I don't plan to use them all the time since they're more expensive, but having a few in the pantry would be handy as a back up.

For making my own microwave sides, I started with the obvious, potatoes.  I have been microwaving potatoes and sweet potatoes to serve as a side since long before I started making freezer meals.  When I started doing freezer meals I sometimes needed a vegetable side for a meal.  This lead me to using the ready-to-microwave bags of green beans or broccoli that are found in the supermarket produce section.  It took me a while to get over not prepping my own veggies, but these are convenient and tasty with a little butter, salt and pepper.

Mashed Potatoes

So... I... uh... this post is supposed to a recipe for freezer mashed potatoes to accompany my meatloaf post.  I made a large batch of mashed potatoes and froze it in dinner-sized portions and apparently neglected to write down the proportions of the ingredients I used.  It's a simple dish though that most of you likely know how to make.  If you don't, this recipe looks similar to what I do.

Really the point of this post more than giving you a recipe is to let you know that creamy mashed potatoes do freeze well and make a great side to have in the freezer for a number of dishes.  Next time I make them I will write down the recipe.  Sorry.

Meatloaf and mashed potatoes

I would have never though of meatloaf as a budget meal until I was shopping for the ingredients to make meatloaf and found a 10 lb package of ground beef for about $20.  Considering that 10 lbs of meat will make 5 batches of meatloaf and that each meatloaf will feed my family for 2 meals with some leftover and that the cost of the other ingredients is low, that means that a meatloaf meal costs less than $3 for my entire family, not including the sides. And meatloaf sides can be inexpensive too.  I always need to have mashed potatoes with my meatloaf, which are cheap.  Add a vegetable side from whatever is on sale and you've got a whole meal.

This inexpensive beef was 80/20 (80% meat, 20% fat).  I usually go for 93/7 so I have less fat cooking out of my meat.  When buying a small amount the 93/7 is not too much more expensive than the 80/20, but when buying in bulk, the 93/7 was almost twice as much.  For that price difference I will deal with the extra fat!  I didn't want super greasy meatloaf, so I cooked my meatloaf on an oven-safe rack inside a sheet pan.  All the grease drained into the pan.