Healthier & Cheaper than Lean Cuisines/Smart Ones!

tsgna83

For many years I have taken a Lean Cuisine or Smart Ones meal to eat for my lunch at work. Although these are generally low in calories, they do use some preservatives and can get pricey! I would always buy them on sale, which is about $2/meal where I live. So a weeks worth of meals for work would be $10.
This year, I decided to try something new for me. What I have done a few times now is have a cooking day (usually on a Sunday for me) where I make a huge amount of (healthier) food, divide it up into baggies, figure out the calorie/fat/carb/protein count, and then freeze.
What I've found is a great way to stock up the freezer, always have a healthy meal on hand for myself, and all done very inexpensively!
One of the meals I have done a couple times now is brown rice, a bag of frozen stir fry veggies, and a little bit of soy sauce to flavor. I actually made a batch today so I wanted to share my discovery with others. The bag of brown rice cost $2 for 4.5 cups dry, and 2 bags of frozen stir fry veggies cost $1.50/each. I got 14 meals out of this batch, for $5 total! So about 35 cents each per meal. Also, I have found it can be a great way to control calories as you determine the serving size. Around 300 calories is a good base lunch for me, so I make my servings equal to about that.
I am still experimenting with this, so who knows what may be in baggies in my freezer next .
Just thought I would share... good luck and have fun!

kfortin86

I'm glad you have discovered this!!! We are three adults in my household and when we cook dinner (healthy of course!) we always make 6-8 servings of the dinner. Then divide up the remaining leftovers into tupperware containers to bring to work! Its a great cheap way to get more bang for you buck!!

pink_butterfly

Thats great, im going to try that!

Aid_B

Sounds great just a word of caution, don't want anyone getting sick

Question: I've heard that reheating rice can cause food poisoning. Is this true?

Answer: It's true that you could get food poisoning from eating reheated rice. But it's not actually the reheating that's the problem – it's the way the rice has been stored before reheating.

Uncooked rice can contain spores of Bacillus cereus, bacteria that can cause food poisoning. When the rice is cooked, the spores can survive. Then, if the rice is left standing at room temperature, the spores will germinate into bacteria. These bacteria will multiply and may produce toxins (poisons) that cause vomiting or diarrhoea. Reheating the rice won't get rid of these toxins.

So, the longer cooked rice is left at room temperature, the more likely it is that bacteria, or the toxins they produce, could stop the rice being safe to eat.

It's best to serve rice when it has just been cooked. If that isn't possible, cool the rice as quickly as possible (ideally within one hour) and keep it in the fridge for no more than one day until reheating.

Remember that when you reheat any food, you should always check that it's steaming hot all the way through, and avoid reheating more than once.

peanut1967

For anyone who likes japanese food (and who likes to cook) a bento box could be a great thing to take food to work. Of course you also can put non-japanese food into it. There hundreds of bento sites on the web which provide a lot of inspiration

(just crossed my mind when you were talking about rice)

TracieJ65

Excellent idea and good for you! I actually started doing just this for both lunches and sometimes dinner, about a year ago and let me tell you the money you save can be phenominal! I paid off two credit cards, last year, with only the money I saved doing this and not eating out! Oh, by the way, I have eaten leftover rice pretty much all of my life and I have never gotten food poisoning. As a matter of fact, I am, at this very moment eating left over stir fry that I made over the weekend. It sounds like you are storing it correctly, and right away, so good for you on accomplishments all the way around.

vkpmusic

This is a great idea! I will have to try it! Thanks!