If you have been following some of these posts you now may have half a dozen or more neat little pint containers in your freezer - dishes made with beans or lentils or brown rice, and the veggies that you spent time shopping for, washing, chopping and cooking in your rice cooker. Whether you have frozen these dishes in a plastic Ziploc Twist n Loc container or in a paper Solo Bowls to Go container to heat in a "Lunch Crock," or in any other kind of container to heat in your rice cooker, I will refer to them as the "frozen block. (Please check the earlier post on Building a WFPBN Main Course ... in a Rice Cooker, and the post on Small Appliances for more on these methods, appliances and containers.)
For all of the ideas below you must first REMOVE this frozen block from it's container (easy to do - just run a little warm water over it until it pops out!) before heating it in any way.
These little containers are the money in your nutritional savings bank that you "deposited" when you spent some time prepping and cooking. Now you can make "withdrawals" of these frozen blocks for healthful meals with minimal fuss!
The easiest, no fuss way is just to put a frozen block into your Lunch Crock warmer or in your rice cooker set to warm, warm them up and eat them. If you leave your Lunch Crock at work you can carry the frozen block in the Ziploc Twist 'n Loc container or the paper Solo Bowl to Go container, take it out and put it into the Lunch Crock and enjoy a good hot dish at noon.
You could also do the equivalent at home for a no fuss meal, leaving the frozen block in the fridge to thaw part way and, and later heating it in the lunch crock.
But what if you have a little more time and want something a little more interesting? That's when the cooking and warming abilities of your rice cooker come into play. You've already done the "heavy lifting" for this meal - the rice/beans/lentils are fully cooked and so are the veggies. Now you can start a frozen block in the rice cooker using the cooking function and adding a little water to facilitate thawing without sticking, and add a few things to "freshen" it a bit, as well as adding more greens!
The frozen block will thaw fairly quickly and you can add some of the following - as much as you like: More chopped greens of course (in addition to what is already in there), plus whatever you have on hand. Leftover veggies from something else? Some mushrooms, diced potato (sweet or regular), or anything else you have on hand, chopped fine enough to heat through in a few minutes, or maybe a bit of tofu for texture or fresh bean sprouts (that only need a few seconds warm up). Consider a few tablespoons of quinoa that only need a few minutes of cook time, and a little extra water to be ready and which will add to the texture and nutrition. Season as you wish - I like a few drops of sriracha sauce - and in a few minutes you have a big, delicious bowl with hardly any prepping or cleanup.
This is a dish for when you get home from a long day and just want to relax and eat without compromising health, using the frozen block that you made earlier, in a meal that's as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.
