I hope your surgery goes well, with the least amount of pain, and that you recover as fast as is possible under the circumstances.

I freeze these in single meal portions:

Lasagna

Chili

Sliced bbq

Bbq ribs

Italian sausage and peppers

Home made pizza

I make my Mom’s MacN Cheese recipe , custard style, in a 13x9 and bake cool cut in servings wrap in parchment and freeze . It reheats like fresh made. I make White Chicken Chili and freeze in 4 c servings. I make my pizza crusts and freeze ready to top. Black beans with spices ready to reheat and serve with rice and grated cheese and toppings. Meatloaf freeze in servings stacked with parchment.

I'm not sure my favorites are what you need. I tend to freeze two portion cuts of casseroles, so lasagna, pumpkin lasagna, bread pudding, breakfast pudding, and whatever random casserole I make. Also enchiladas and other individual pieces baked in a dish together. Also, the same size of soups. Quarters of fruit pies. Individual, freezer to MW mac & cheese. Also, useful amounts of cooked meats, especially chicken and turkey. Sliced brisket, pulled chuck. Lots of other things, but those are the favorites. They're all mains, though, not complete dinners.

Do beans freeze well?.....I would have thought their texture would fall apart after freezing. Because chili etc sound great. I also sometimes make a dish of black beans and salsa on rice that would be good too.

I freeze chili and 15 bean soup all the time! They freeze just fine. I also make soups of all kinds and freeze. Not a fan of doing this in the heat of the summer, though. I'm looking for crock pot meals to cook and freeze (just cause I'm lazy, not for medical reasons), so I'll be following this thread. Good luck with your surgery!

It depends how picky you are about beans and the quality of your freezer. Beans in liquid, if they're frozen fast and defrosted slowly, can be quite nice or at least okay. You can also freeze the chili without the beans, and stir in some cooked (canned) ones when you reheat.

At the end of summer, my Dad used to make up containers of eggplant parmesan to use up garden produce. So wonderful to have that in November!

Good luck with the surgery! I like having chicken soup and minestrone soup in the freezer. Just make sure both the noodles and the soup are at room temp before you put them together in the container, then freeze. Or, freeze just the soup and usethis rice when ready to serve.

I freeze home made baked beans all the time, they come out fine.

I usually make large servings of curries, casseroles, spaghetti sauce etc and freeze the extra after dinner. Soups I do the same. My homemade soups often are just a vegetable sauteed with a chopped onion and then simmered in an appropriate stock, then pureed with a stick blender and a little cream added. If the vegetable is broccoli or zucchini, I will add a good sized dollop of pesto as well. Tomato soup often has chopped bacon (fried off in the pan first, then removed and the onions and tomatoes sauteed in the bacon fat, the soup pureed and then the bacon added back into the soup). Minestone is a favourite, as are mulligatawny and cheddar corn chowder. For pumpkin soup I roast kabocha squash and onions, then saute a tablespoon or so of curry powder in a large pot and add the vegetables and chicken stock. After pureeing I add a can of coconut cream.

You can also freeze things like chicken pot pie filling, and separate or bought pie or puff pastry.

Good luck with the surgery and a swift recovery.

Wishing you the best possible recovery! I don't really care for casseroles so I tend to freeze cooked components in individual serving sizes instead like grilled, chopped chicken breast, soup base/broth, etc. It's easy then to thaw a portion and add it to a salad, a sandwich, pasta or soup.

I would cook up things like ground turkey or chicken that you can thaw for tacos or other Mexican dishes, taco salad or burritos, or add to Marinara sauce to go with pasta. I don't make homemade chili anymore, but I buy Amy's Organic Black Bean Chili and add an extra can of low sodium black beans (to cut the per serving sodium count) and ground turkey for more protein, top with Greek yogurt for even more protein.

I really like Trader Joe's Chicken Soup Dumplings. They come frozen in a tray of six dumplings. 1.5 min in the micro. They are delicious and decent protein and pretty low cal.

I hope you love your new knees!

To everything else mentioned, I freeze Seafood Gumbo. Freeze the gumbo and the rice separately and combine after heating.

When I make meatloaf, I always make an extra, portion it amd freeze it. It can even be nuked, not reheated in the oven. Same with baked ziti. Make sure you have a supply of frozen veggies. Good luck with your surgery. Everyone I know who has had it is quite happy with the results.

Our favorite freeze now/serve later is chili. 2-3 times each year I'll whip up about 4-5 gallons of chili and spilt it into meals for 2 in ziplock bags, generally it produces 10-12 bags. Stored in our chest freezer until use.

ham and beans freeze well

Enchiladas

Stir fry dishes also freeze well, as long as you avoid vegetables that don’t reheat well, such as broccoli florets.

I save the thick stems of broccoli and cauliflower, and peel them and then dice them to use in stir fries.

Pulled pork in BBQ sauce freezes well. We pack ours in 1 Cup portions, with Brioche rolls separately (but in the same freezer bag). Ready to go with just one pull from the freezer.

Best wishes for a great, fast recovery!

When we did these for hubby's knee, we made them smaller as sliders, easier to eat during recovery.

Warning, unsolicited advice from here. Be certain to do the full set of re-hab exercises in the first few weeks (yeah, they hurt!), but it's your best chance to regain full range of motion in that knee, and really worth it in the long run.

Good luck with the surgery. My husband has had both hips and one knee replaced and he was and getting around pretty well in just a few days. The docs do not want you sitting around, LOL. The worst part of the whole thing was the thigh high compression socks, those are a devil. I think they make them with zippers now?

I freeze beans in chili, in enchiladas, baked beans, etc., and they are fine. I'm very aware of textures, I refuse to eat bananas because what food can possibly be mushy and slimy at the same time? Jello is terrible, yogurt is slimy, etc. The beans are fine after freezing to me, so you probably won't have a problem with texture either, unless you are specifically looking for it.

Cabbage rolls freeze well and then you just add sauce and cook when you want them. Meatloaf freezes nicely in little muffin cup sizes and so does twice baked potatoes. Mashed potatoes will do OK if there's enough fat, ie butter and cream.

I also freeze things like muffins and those little "egg muffins" that are really just scrambled eggs with stuff in them freeze nicely too. My daughter makes breakfast "bowls" for her husband with scrambled eggs, roasted potatoes, sausage or bacon, add some cheese. He just grabs one and takes it to work and when it is thawed he nukes it in the microwave.

I tend to think that if I can buy it frozen I can probably freeze it, although that doesn't always work. I've found that cookie dough, pizza crust, biscuits and scones all freeze well unbaked and then can just be baked when needed and it's fresher that way.

Annie

TV, best wishes for the best surgery and recovery 🩷

I’ ve made and frozen Vichysoisse (NYT) before and it sure was welcome one frosty February night when we came in from the cold. Don’t forget soups — easy to make, freeze and heat up.

Split Pea with Ham (extra special if you take a few minutes to micro dice a bit of celery, carrot and potato — visually appealing and more flavorful.)

White Bean Soup with Escarole (or greens)

Seafood (or clam or fish chowder)

Minestrone

Avgolemono (Greek Chicken, lemon, pasta, ____)

——

Spaghetti Sauce with Meatballs — defrost and serve with pasta or make a sub sandwich.

Tuna Noodle Casserole(s) with mushrooms, saltine crumbs on top.

I hope your pain is in reasonable control now and that you have more freezer space than I do ;)

Oh, and why not treat yourself if you have access to affordable lobster? (Southern New England USA price for grocery store fresh lobster is about $13/pound. Get a 1.25 Lb one. Shell all of it, including body. If you're going to use it for a frozen dish such as ravioli or soup, you can freeze it. You do not need a ravioli maker or press — just a countertop or table, rolling pin amd a sharp knife.

You can freeze these. You can defrost and serve with a toasted nut butter sauce (and I bet you can make that ahead and freeze). Lemme know if you’d like a recipe.

Best wishes!

TV, this baked pasta dish freezes really well and is easy to pull together. I’m posting the recipe as I found it on another forum long ago. This is easy to halve if that works for you. Some tweaks I made to this are adding garlic to the meat/onion, along with some dried oregano, basil and red pepper flakes. Just use any sauce you like; I always have Rao’s Marinara on hand. Don’t freeze this with the Parmesan on top. Add it right before baking. I thaw this in the fridge and let it sit out about 30 minutes before baking. You can bake it from frozen but the baking time will, obviously, be longer.

BAKED ZITI

1 pound dry ziti pasta or rigatoni
1 medium onion, chopped
1 pound lean ground beef
2 (26 ounce) jars spaghetti sauce
6 ounces provolone cheese, sliced
1 1/2 cups sour cream
6 ounces mozzarella cheese, shredded
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
Add pasta and cook until al dente; drain.
In a large skillet, brown onion, ground beef over
medium heat, adding s&p. Add spaghetti sauce, and simmer low for 30 minutes. Taste for seasoning.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Butter a 9x13 inch baking dish. Layer as follows: 1/2 of the
pasta, all the Provolone cheese and sour cream, 1/2 sauce mixture,
remaining pasta, mozzarella cheese and remaining sauce mixture.
Top with grated Parmesan cheese.
Bake for 40-45 minutes in the preheated oven, or until bubbling and cheeses are melted.

Here’s to fast healing! I might not be far behind you with pain in my left knee these days. My sister’s had both knees done.

Another thing I freeze is meatloaf baked in a muffin tin. I make them with ground turkey/mushrooms, bake, freeze in the tin, then take out and pop into a freezer bag

My mom used to make pizzas from scratch and freeze them ahead of time. Red chili or green chili freezes up nicely. I used to make breakfast burritos, 64 at a time and freeze them.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery!