Water Safety?

Well, I now have a new meaning for water safety after being almost run down by a Belmont Springs water delivery truck the other day.  He couldn't wait to make his left, and decided to do it while I was making my right.  Fortunately, I saw him and braked hard and quickly enough that I still have the front end of my car.  Imagine my horror as he then proceeded to speed through a neighborhood and a school zone (active with people), make an illegal turn, and then cut off another vehicle while pulling into a parking lot.  If you get water delivered, you might not want it from this company...their drivers might take out your mailbox, or worse.

But this blog is about food, not water or erratic drivers!  Tonight's dinner:  hamburger meat with freezer sauce!  Larry has been teasing me about this all week, since he saw it on the board where I write down our possible meals for the week.  What exactly is freezer sauce?  Well...it depends.  In this case, it was the leftover sauce from a Milanese Braised Beef recipe that I got from Cooking Light.  There was almost two cups of the tomato-y, beefy goodness left after we ate the original dinner and I just couldn't bring myself to throw it away (no, my parents did not grow up during the Depression).  I thought that if I froze it, it might make a quick Hamburger Helper-style meal one night, and indeed it did.

I sauteed some onion and carrot to up our veggie quotient, browned the ground beef, dumped in the sauce and brought it to a boil.  Dumped in a cup of frozen peas and some cooked egg noodles, grated over some parmigiano, and we had dinner.  I have to admit that I do feel faintly ridiculous posting this...but dinner was fast, cheap, and easy.  (Just like...insert appropriate joke here.)  My main advice is to make sure you skim most of the fat off of the sauce before you freeze it, or dump it into your ground beef, so your final dish isn't too greasy.  I thought to do this at the last second before pouring it in, and was relieved that I did. 

I think "freezer sauce" would work with a lot of different kinds of sauces from braised dishes, and might be just the time-saver you need on a Friday when you just want to go to sleep early!