Turning Freezer Food Into A Meal: Stroganoff

Yesterday, my houseguests left and I was all alone with the kids.  They were going nuts, and I needed to feed them.  I didn't want to eat any of the complete meals that were in the freezer because we'd eaten them all recently.

I wanted something different. Something fresh.  But, also something easy that I had all the ingredients on hand.  So I started digging around in my freezer, and I found a pack of pre-cooked ground beef that I had forgotten about.  This could work, I said to myself, and I went to the pantry.

I had already decided against anything spaghetti-esqe.  I had a bag of that in the freezer I could have thawed.  But one kid doesn't like spaghetti, and the other kid does everything the first one does, so I wasn't feeling that fight tonight.

In my pantry I had egg noodles, and cream soups, so I decided to toss together a quick beef stroganoff type meal.  I put my thawed, cooked ground meat into the skillet with a can of cream of mushroom soup.  (I seasoned the meat when cooking it so I didn't need to add any seasonings now.)  I decided to toss some frozen peas into the skillet just to make it a one dish meal.  I also added a bit of my fresh basil and rosemary to add a little flavor to the sauce.  Tossed it over whole wheat egg noodles, and dinner was served.

My girls both loved this and ate without complaints, so that was a big win in itself.  The other plus was how easy and inexpensive this meal was to make.  Having the meat already cooked was a huge time saver, and all the other ingredients were right there in my pantry.  The pasta I had gotten for FREE I think.  No more than $0.20 for sure.  The cream of mushroom soup was $0.30, and then half a bag of $0.95 Aldi frozen peas.

I write this post to show you (but mostly myself) than pre-cooking, even if its just the meat and I don't have time to create an entire meal for the freezer, is still worth it!