I live alone, and travel roughly 4-5 days a week. This ends up leaving my fridge in a rather scary state - often all that's in it is beer, condiments, and old cheese. Then I end up ordering pizza for dinner, which I hate.

I'm sure there are others on this board in the same situation I'm in. If you have any good ideas of healthy, easy to prepare and store food, I'd love to hear from you.

Here are mine:

The main issue for me is keeping fresh fruits & veggies and fresh meat around. I try to get out to the grocery store at least once a week, but sometimes it's just not possible.

So FT, got any ideas on how to keep your kitchen stocked and viable while travelling a lot?

I'm a regular at Dream Dinners and similar "meal assembly kitchens." You visit the website, pick out & order the meals you want, then schedule a session where you go and assemble them. The ingredients are all there, chopped, sliced whatever, and everything for each meal is at a "station" for that meal. Depending on the particular location, each meal serves, 2, 3, 4 or 6 people.

Some companies will assemble the meals for you and you just pick them up. Either way, head home and stash them in the freezer until you need them, then defrost, cook and enjoy. I am not sure about Canadian locations; I confess, my comments are US-centric. I am in Maine at the moment, so I am headed over to "The Prep Kitchen" in Freeport to try out their meals.

For fresh fruit and vegetables, you just have to go to the grocery store occasionally!

I've frozen a lot of different meals--if I know I'm going to leave Mr. Kipper home alone for a while, I'll try to make sure he has lunch and dinner stored in the freezer for while I'm gone--all he has to do is pull out whatever he'd like that night, defrost, and reheat. For lunch, he just has to pull it out that morning, take it to work, and it thaws by the time he's ready to eat.

I've made enchilada pie, which freezes really well--basically, take large flour tortillas, toss one in the bottom of a pie pan, pile on what you'd like in an enchilada, toss another one on top, and repeat until you fill the pie pan, then cover with foil and bake, then divide into meal-size portions, place into storage containers, and freeze.

You can also take chicken, mix it with salsa, rice, and taco seasoning, top with cheese, cover with foil and bake. I use boneless, skinless chicken breasts for this.

I've found that the pre-cut chicken works well.

If you like chicken pot pie, you can use frozen veggies, rather than fresh, a can of cream of chicken soup, pre-cut chicken chunks, and the pie crusts from the refrigerated section. Place 1 pie crust in the bottom of a greased pie pan, mix the chicken, veggies, and soup together, add seasonings to your taste, and toss in the pie pan. Place the other pie crust on top, cut slits into the pie crust, fold the edges together, and bake until golden brown. This freezes decently too.

individually frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts.

You can get them in a 2-3 lb bag at the grocery store. The go straight from the freezer onto a George Foreman Grill and are done in like 13 minutes. Or you can put them straight into the oven.

www.homebistro.com

I keep a week's worth of meals on hand. They can do low carb, diet plans, or just plain old yummy food. The soups in bread bowls are amazing!

Funny I came across this. I just emptied out all of the contents of my refrigerator this morning. Including the condiments, as many of them had aged a bit too much for my liking (e.g. > 1 year for hot sauce, etc.)

My biggest problem is that I don't like my refrigerator. It's a top-freezer model, and no matter what I try and do, things just seem to get lost either under piles in the freezer or pushed back to the recesses of the refrigerator. Then I go on a four trip in three week stint, and I don't trust anything left in the refrigerator any more. Then I end up eating out for four or five nights until my next trip.... and the death spiral has started.

I've saved up to get a larger side-by-side unit which is better laid out for my needs and has a bigger freezer unit. I figure that just in terms of not throwing out food each month and eating in more, it might pay for itself when depreciated over 10 years!!! I just need to get the electrician here to put a circuit in my garage for the old refrigerator (to become a beer/soda/party fridge) and I'm going to make the move.

In terms of freezer food staples, I have simplified greatly. I used to precook meals and freeze them, but I have largely given up on that approach except for the burrito-bowl type fillings.
- Prepared burritos and tamales, and burrito-bowl fillings (dump over tortilla chips or rice)
- Extra Chinese food (3-chilli chicken) - buy two extra dinners, let cool, freeze in halves
- Cauliflower and artichokes
- Costco frozen shrimp 31-40 piece
- Polish or Italian sausage
- Chili (in the winter)
- Ice Cream when it's on sale

I like pickles, but I'm always afraid after about 90 days after opening and refirgeration to keep on eating them.

I like to make large batches of of soup or stew and put it into 2 cup containers for the freezer.

I tried freezing lunchmeat a long time ago, but was not happy with the flavor/texture after it was defrosted, so I never tried it again. I freeze every other kind of meat, so I wonder why I had poor results. Now if I have extra turkey or pastrami that I know will spoil before I get back home again, I leave it for the outside cat.

Frozen TV dinners!!

The individually vacuum-packed frozen fish filets at Costco are great. They have salmon, Mahi Mahi, etc. When I was in grad school & working full time, I would often cook some boneless, skinless chicken breasts, then shred/cube the meat, and freeze it. That way I could easily defrost & toss it into some pasta w/sauce, or pretty much anything, with very little prep time. For packaged meals/snacks, I like the Thai Kitchen products--noodle bowls, etc. These are easy to throw in the microwave when you walk through the door at 11pm after a 17-hour work/travel day! Costco also sells 3-packs of decent guacamole that you can keep refrigerated/unopened for at least a couple of weeks, or put in the freezer for longer. They defrost quickly.

I find this thread so depressing

You can get 2-3 weeks out of oranges and other citrus fruits especially if you refridgerate them. Since they don't continue to ripen once removed from the tree they will remain roughly the same quality and flavor until they mold. Just pay attention when buying them and make sure the outside is in good condition with no scratches, tears, or other marks as that will speed up the molding process.

Other than that, that's about all I can think of along the lines of fresh fruit that will last any length of time.

Potatos, onions and garlic all have a shelf life of atleast a month and if you are careful in the grocery store you can often find eggs that will be good for 3-4 weeks from purchase date. With those four things you can throw together a pretty good breakfast of eggs and home fries and of course you can eat breakfast anytime of the day. And I've never really looked at the pre-processed egg things but I think those may have even longer shelf lives than fresh eggs.

Any type of fish will freeze incredibly well and defrost very quickly. Lemons, fish, rice, and a few herbs and you can put together a really healthy dinner with ingredients that will last last atleast a month and are incredibly inexpensive so even if you throw it out you're not out a lot of money.

Why did you say so?..

Funny you mentioned this. I am visiting a friend who hasn't done much cooking
lately - went through the pantry in the same way and ran across a bottle of Naisa
hot sauce dated March 1963. Tasted the remains of it - all the goodness had left
- so I dumped it, along with some other stuff of less impressive antiquity. (The
date was hand written on the label.)

Not much use outside the UK, but I'm sure there are equivalents elsewhere... I swear by Ocado, which is a company that delivers Waitrose (high end supermarket) goods - both fresh and pre-prepared - over huge chunks of England, cheaper than the supermarket sells it for itself, and easily orderable (is that a word) through an iPhone app or online. It has a 'delivery pass' product, too - delivery varies from free to �7, but the pass gets you a year of unlimited free deliveries - and reduces the minimum spend.

When I was travelling, this was a wonderful service - lovely food turning up on the door shortly after getting home (1hr time slots, too!) These days, it's still a wonderful service!

You're braver than me for tasting it.

Your friend should have tried selling the bottle on eBay; there are some people that are really into collecting things like that.