Livin’ The Souper Cubes Dream

I loved the idea of Souper Cubes. If you’re unfamiliar with the product, they’re these silicone trays used to freeze your food in various sized blocks. Sounds simple enough that you don’t need it, right? But imagine a few weeks worth of food for you and your family in a neat arrangement in your freezer. You take out a block for your lunch and put it into a Souper Cubes dish (sold seperately) and suddenly you have a microwave safe bowl to heat and eat your food from. What makes Souper Cubes different from other silicone trays on the market is that they contain a metal frame built inside so they’re much sturdier than the others.

Now that you’re caught up I’ll tell you that I have experimented a lot with Souper Cubes without really making the whole food prep thing work for me. I froze all kinds of leftovers from Thanksgiving and Christmas, made a bunch of soup and even soup stock from the rotisserie chickens I buy at Walmart. But the reason I hadn’t went to eating all my meals in block form yet was because not all frozen foods reheat easily.

The Problem With Eating Food Blocks

In the beginning I made only meals for myself. I did this because everyone in my family eats different things and no one likes some of the things I do. But without a microwave and the forethought to actually thaw the food the night before I had no way to reheat my lunch unless I wanted to use the oven.

I finally found some cool stainless steel stackable bowls that fit in the instant pot. It took a while to heat but it was easy enough and each bowl held three small blocks so I could have a meal with variety and use it to eat from.

Then I decided that my daughter needed to get in on this freezer prep stuff, too. She’s a seriously picky eater and the only things I can get her to eat reliably are beans, rice, rice pasta, and red sauce. Oh, and Lay’s potato chips. But I know she likes other things, only she wouldn’t eat it more than once in a while. So I bought her a microwave.

I swore off microwaves when I gave mine away when she was five. Food tasted better. I didn’t worry about what it might be doing to me, or my daughter, or our food. And once I installed a hot water heater in the place of the little spray thingy that sits next to the kitchen sink faucet, I found I really didn’t miss a microwave.

She swore to me that when she moved out she’d have a microwave so I decided to buy her one and let her learn to use it and hopefully be more responsible about feeding herself once in a while. She’s welcome to take it with her when she moves out someday. But with the introduction of the microwave came all kinds of new leftover possibilities.

Suddenly the Souper Cubes felt like a gold mine waiting to be discovered.

What I’ve found works best Souper Cubes style

Soups are obviously the best choice for Souper Cubes. That’s what they were made for and they rock at it. But I’ve also had much success with mashed sweet potatoes, leftover Christmas ham, rotisserie chicken, Lentil Curry, Creamy Peas and Hashbrowns, Taco meat, leftover spaghetti sauce so it doesn’t ruin, Honey Garlic Chicken, and Sloppy Joe meat.

Other fun uses for Souper Cubes: I love the cookie trays for making perfect little cookie dough balls to bake later. I’ve frozen lemon juice in the tiny cubes to use in a recipe later.

My Two Week Meal Plan

Every week I go to the grocery store, hand them all my money, walk out with some food, and come home and starve because there’s nothing to eat. (Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to me, either.) So, I decided to get organized and make a meal plan for myself so I’d always have something fast to eat. This is important to me because I have food problems and besides chips I have to cook anything I want to eat. Frozen gluten-free meals are super expensive but I’d love to have the convenience of something hot, fast, and yummy. Here’s what I came up with based mostly on what I already had.

Creamy Peas and Hashbrowns

I love this dish! It’s basically just frozen peas, onions, garlic, frozen hashbrowns, almond milk, salt, pepper, nutritional yeast, and a little butter. I cook it in the skillet and then freeze it in the Souper Cubes trays.

Lentil Curry

I love curry! My family hates it! I make my own with lentils and coconut milk. Sometimes I’ll leave out the seasoning before I freeze it in case I can get my daughter to eat some with me. I always have curry powder and curry paste on hand.

Veggie Soup made with homemade Chicken Broth

I buy rotisserie chickens at Walmart sometimes and my daughter eats the white meat, I eat the dark meat, and then I pressure cook anything that’s leftover and strain it for soup stock. It’s excellent to have on hand to flavor a soup or to drink if someone is ill.

Quinoa, Lentils, Basmati mix for grain bowls

I love grain bowls! So many ideas. You just need some kind of grain base, warm or cold veggies on top, beans or chickpeas for a protein, and some kind of sauce to hold it together. If you don’t have a sauce then extra virgin olive oil and salt will do nicely. These grains will work just fine in a Souper Cubes block but for ease of thawing in the microwave I put them in a Ziploc bag and froze them thin and flat so I could break them into chunks.

Brown rice and tomatoes for grain bowls

I always cook my rice with a little bit of turmeric. I’ve heard it helps keep you from absorbing the bad stuff in rice and turmeric is super good for you.

Hummus

I had a pound of chickpeas in the cabinet and threw them into the instant pot with some water and salt for about an hour. I drained them and smashed them and before I knew it my hummus had turned into chickpea salad. We decided not to freeze it and have been eating it with chips and as a sandwich filler for a few days.

Cookies, cake, muffins, and donuts

I recently made about 75 gluten free cookies for a family reunion that I didn’t get to go to. My cookies made it there but most of them made their way back to me anyway. I threw them in Ziploc bags and shoved them in the freezer. I’ve been snacking on them ever since. My mother in law made us a gluten free muffin mix for Easter breakfast at church and sent the leftover home with me. I had a gluten free cake mix I made for a dinner and all the leftovers went in the freezer. And finally, Aldi’s has a gluten free brand of their own and we discovered frozen donuts that taste like Krispie Kreme! My freezer is stocked with dessert this week! Lucky me!

Fish, eggs, and eating out

I decided that a few days over the two week period I would eat fish, eggs, or eat out. That made it easier to come up with enough food to fill two weeks.

The plan is to eat a grain bowl, fish, eggs, or eat out for the main meal, then have a lighter meal of soup, curry, or peas, then have oatmeal for breakfast and snack on fruit and nuts. I have diced onions, cucumbers, snap peas, and fresh grape tomatoes to put on the grain bowls. I usually drain a can of chickpeas and toss it with nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper for a protein topping. And I have a few veggies on hand I can roast if I want. There’s also always air popped popcorn that I eat plain as a snack at night. I have bananas and raisins for my oatmeal and a sack of apples to munch on. If I have to buy anything for myself from the store next week it’ll be something fresh.

Adding The Family

I also made a meal plan for my husband and daughter. I cooked two pounds of ground beef and made it into taco meat and froze it into little half cup portions in my Souper Cubes tray for my husband. I’m planning on making him a nacho plate with them once a week for a while so he doesn’t get bored. He often eats tortillia chips, canned chicken, hot peppers, and barbeque sauce for a supper and I think I can make it into a taco salad instead. Right now he’s eating brown rice and tomatoes, either plain or as a grain bowl, and hummus sandwiches. He also has a lot of easy to fix foods that he can eat.

For my daughter I made Honey Garlic Chicken in the instant pot. It makes 4 chicken breasts in a rich yummy sauce and I made it twice for the freezer for her. She’s also got instant rice to go with it. That should last her several weeks if she eats it once a week. She’s also getting on board with the grain bowls and I’m glad to see her eat more veggies. She has a few frozen gluten free meals in the freezer and I’ll probably make her a simple chili/tots meal this week as well. She’s planning on making air fried okra (gluten-free) for herself and she asked for baked potatoes that are super easy.

So, while I have a meal plan for them, I don’t have it all cooked. But just knowing that we have the food on hand and it’s not that hard to fix makes me a lot less stressed.

Why There Are Three Cases of Waterloo Under My Bed

When you’re trying not to go to the grocery store you have to get creative and know your family’s habits. If there’s plenty of Waterloo (a bubbly drink without sugar or calories) we’ll drink more of it. My husband also goes through a couple bags of chips by himself each week. So when I went to the grocery store I bought extras and hid them away. We love all the different flavors of Waterloo and it’s fun to have so many flavors on hand, but I took them out of their boxes, mixed them up, and put some in the kitchen cabinet, some in the fridge, and the rest is hiding under my bed. (Don’t tell my husband.)

I also put some chips back for each of us to pull out next week.

Will It Work?

Will I be able to avoid the grocery store for a full two weeks? Probably not. But I hope to spend less, cook less, and at the very least, be much more organized and have good food for my family to eat each day. I think I’ve also unknowingly put myself on a diet so maybe I’ll lose some weight. I can say I’m not hungry all the time, I’m not eating chips for meals, and I’m a lot less stressed. So it’s already a win for me.