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What I cooked: March 21, 2011

I roasted a turkey breast . Well, it's roasted for 20 minutes at 400°F to brown it, then it's vacuum sealed and cooked sous vide for 90 minutes at 160°F to stay moist and tender.

Even just a 1.73 lb. turkey breast is too much for me to eat in a reasonable amount of time so I slice, vacuum seal, and freeze individual serving sizes: 3x 5.0 oz. for turkey and gravy dinner, 1x 3.0 oz. for turkey sandwich and 1x 2.8 oz. for stir-fry. And a little left over for Roscoe.

I also needed gravy to go with three servings of the turkey, so I made a batch of 24 fl. oz. of gravy .

I cooked 1.5 lbs. Vermont Smoke and Cure bacon . I don't need bacon yet as I still have some left in the freezer, but I bought it the last time I was in the supermarket and the oven was already at 400°F for the turkey, so I figured I might as well cook off the bacon too.

I grilled a North Hollow Farms strip steak. After the somewhat unsuccessful indoor steak attempt I went back to grilling outside on my Solaire infrared propane grill. Just 1:30 on one side and 1:00 on the other and it looked good. It's not fully cooked; I vacuum sealed and froze it so I can make a perfect steak in the sous vide when I'm in the mood for steak. I did kind of feel like a crazy person because I was outside grilling a steak in 28°F weather, before it was supposed to snow, at 9:00 AM.

I did this last night, but I also shelled and deveined a half pound of large Gulf of California white shrimp, vacuum sealed, and froze them. Each serving is around 4 oz. and suitable for my favorites like shrimp fra diavolo with spinach , shrimp scampi with spinach , shrimp pad Thai and others.

And I separated and vacuum sealed some spinach. This size container of fresh baby spinach fills two quart sized jars, fairly tightly packed, with some left over. The jars are the perfect size for a spinach salad or a single serving of sautéed spinach and keep fresh much longer than not vacuum sealed.

And this was all before noon! I'm done cooking for the day.

Okay, I take that back. A friend posted on Facebook that she was having spaghetti, and that got me thinking I was more in the mood for pasta with Italian sausage than my original menu of turkey, gravy, rice and broccoli. So I vacuum sealed the turkey and gravy. And then divided a jar of Bove's basil marinara, making one serving for tonight and three vacuum sealed and frozen for later. This is how I solve the problem of not being able to eat an entire jar of sauce before it goes bad, because I don't have spaghetti very often.

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