Today there is a plan of action in the household. A mission spurred on by a discussion a couple weeks ago between Mark and me. We were marveling at how easy it is to drop a few pounds in just a week or so when we just pack our lunches. Too often though, we both go out to lunch at work and too often it is easy to eat too much. Even for me when I generally get some steamed veggies with tofu, or a tofu curry from the trucks. So, we are on a cooking mission today, to stock our freezer with lunch sized servings of a few meals. We are each making two dishes to subdivide. I am making vegetable lasagna with spinach, broccoli, carrots, tofu filling instead of ricotta and of course some of my home made pasta sauce that I canned a few weeks ago; and a vegetarian shepherd�s pie� yes, it is possible to have a vegetarian shepherd's pie, I use soy crumbles. I place a layer of egg noodles in the bottom of my baking dish, layer on the crumbles cooked with mushrooms, onions and garlic in a red wine gravy, then layer on corn and peas, then top with a layer mashed potatoes. It is very hearty, perfect for chilly autumn nights and a comfort dish for me. Mark is making an enormous batch of his chili as well as home made baked beans with bacon. Before we begin I have the arduous task of cleaning out and organizing our freezer. I can�t wait until we purchase a new refrigerator. I desperately would like a side by side fridge, we�ll move the current fridge to the basement for extra storage once we buy another, odds are that will be an x-mas gift this year. However, I am armed with heaps of new zip-lock containers to aid in the reorganization and packing up of lunch sized meals into our tiny freezer. I need to have some more coffee. Then I�ll be ready to tackle this. Addendum: since we did have a couple small heads of cauliflower from our most recent organic veggie delivery I also made some cauliflower au gratin. Whipped up a quick b�chamel sauce to pour over the steamed the heads sprinkled with grated cheddar and voila! There was enough to make two small containers for ready made side dishes. Are we really going to have room for all of this in our freezer? Thankfully Mark is taking some to store in the freezer at work (no excuse for forgetting his lunch). %PHOTO{"http://denovich.org/gallery/deb/P7110108"}% %PHOTO{"http://denovich.org/gallery/mark/P7210402"}% %PHOTO{"http://denovich.org/gallery/markdeb/P7110103"}%