Sami Grover
DCL
When Josh wrote his post on 6 ways to green your range, he rather bravely confessed to eating frozen pizza three to five times a week. While I'm more of a home cook myself - including homemade pizza, frozen pesto and even homebrewed beer - few of us are immune to the lure of the freezer aisle completely.
But with a little imagination, we can still exert our own creativity on the lowly frozen meal - and we might even make it a little greener in the process. Here are a few of my favorite ready meal hacks for those days when cooking from scratch just seems like too much work:
5 Tips for Hacking Your Ready Meal
1. Extra Onions with That? Frozen pizza can be good - but it's usually better if you add some love. Next time, skip the sausage pizza and go for plain cheese - that pepperoni looks nasty anyway. Then just add some fresh veggies, or whatever else you have in the fridge, to the pizza before it goes in the oven - even better if you can use some produce from the garden!
2. Love the Spud. Much like Josh's pizza confession, I must admit that I am addicted to tater tots - or rather an organic version. But almost any frozen potato product - from oven fries to wedges - can be topped with some chopped onions and peppers, some cheese, and it'll feel like a complete meal. If you happen to have some organic bacon lying around, you can kid yourself you are a gourmet chef.
3. The Semi-Ready Meal. My wife and I like to stock up on frozen pizza dough and pie crusts. On evenings when we are too lazy or brain-dead to cook from scratch, these become an easy meal that still feels like home-cooked food, and still uses up produce that would otherwise go to waste. With chickens in the backyard, semi-homebaked quiche can feel particularly virtuous.
4. Look Local or Organic. Just because something is ready made, doesn't mean it has to be from miles away. My local coop supplies local pizza, curry and many other meals in its freezer and or deli section. And there are plenty of national brands of organic freezer food. So keep an eye out for artisan or green producers that are catering to convenience as well as taste.
5. Cut Yourself Some Slack. OK -this one is less of a hack, and more of an excuse. Sometimes you just can't face cooking - even if that cooking is just slicing some onions onto your pizza. It's important to be OK with that - if we beat ourselves up each time we eat a less than perfect meal, we'll soon burn out. None of us are perfect - so let's celebrate our successes, forgive us our trespasses, and pass the ketchup.
Salivating over sustainable eats? Learn how to make your own with help from Emeril Lagasse in Planet Green TV's organic cooking show, Emeril Green.
