budget freezer recipe suggestions?

[setissma]

Hi, all! I'm a graduate student with a minor quandry: I'm currently profoundly bored with most of my stock of freezable recipes. I'm trying to eat well on a (fairly minimal) budget, and I'm running up against some problems that I suspect a lot of folks have, which are that a) it's very hard to cook for just one person, and b) food is expensive! If

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[deliquessence]

I freeze homemade soup and chili con carne in 1 cup containers (repurposed cottage cheese containers). For a meal I might add some canned wild-caught salmon or tofu or shredded turkey or beef chunks for adequate protein and variety. One soup I use a lot is potato celery leek and another favorite is creamy curried split pea soup, both from the Follow Your Heart Vegetarian Soup Cookbook by Janice Cook Migliaccio. I also keep a fresh pot of veggie (water, onion, celery, carrots, zucchini, green beans with basil and oregano) or broccoli mushroom soup in the refrigerator to warm up by the bowlful. Since the recipes are for a couple quarts each, a couple potsful will last for about a month frozen so I have variety. I keep an eye peeled for beef roasts on sale and grind my own hamburger for the chili - much less expensive and not nearly so fatty as packaged ground beef if you have a grinder on hand (I have my mother's manual Armaide from the 1950s).

Steamed veggies with cottage cheese spiced to taste. Since I like curries, I learned some vegetarian curry recipes (from The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas) to get the style of preparing curries from the individual spices. One of my favorites is a curried cauliflower with sweet red bell pepper and cilantro that I make in bulk and store in the fridge in 1 pint plastic containers - this also freezes well. I chose vegetarian-style recipes since they don't rely on chicken or beef stocks and are attentive to spices rather than sugar and salt to enhance flavor - then I add whatever meat, fish or poultry as the spirit moves me.

Sardines with chopped tomatoes dressed with a mustard vinaigrette, perhaps with sliced radishes, is also tasty. Plain yogurt with curry powder stirred in to accompany steamed veggies is pretty good too. Homemade hummus (garbanzos, tahini, lemon juice and shoyu) goes well on bagels or with veggies or in a sandwich.

For a cold day, take an idaho potato, dice it up finely skin and all, boil drain and mash it with a bit of milk. Serve with a couple hot link sausages that you boiled in a separate pot while preparing the potatoes.

If you have a Trader Joe's near you, they have reasonably priced frozen berries that work well in whey-based smoothies.

[setissma]

These are great suggestions, thanks! :)