DIY Convenience Food

Today I made 16 burritos, indy wrapped them and stacked them in log piles in the freezer. I need convenience food and this is the first shred of an answer.

Have been thinking about ways to fairly painlessly nip and tuck our budget and one of the things I kept bumping into in my mind was "convenience eating." I know I don't seem like the Lean Cuisine type but every house has nights when dinner or lunch or a snack needs to be ready, instantly and there's no time for scratch cooking slow food. I tried to just use snack items for these times: granola bars, yogurt drinks, nuts, dried fruit...etc. Frankly, they aren't very satisfying and although I have good intentions I find myself saying, "Can we just run by that Thai place?" instead of picking out a granola bar and palming an apple on the way out the door. I wanted a real dinner, not snacky stuff.

We just had a trip to Michigan and back for the Thanksgiving holiday and we'll be doing it again for Christmas. We made amazing time there and back and for a while there I puzzling over and over about what in the world made the trip shorter than usual, both ways! Then I realized what it was. We never stopped to eat. I had the car fully stocked with food items, the boys had books to occupy them and A and I were discussing and reading a book of our own and so we never stopped except to gas up and we used the gas stops as potty breaks too so that meant even less stopping. Convenience food is my new nemesis.Most of the time the food you get on the run is terribly guilt-inducing because its expensive, and it's also extremely low in nutrition. I have been wracking my brain to solve the problem. I want food to stash in the freezer that is good for us but super quick (as in, a minute or two zap in the microwave and then eatable out-of-hand), stuff that tastes good and feels like a real meal.

There have to be other ideas out there...I have a dry brain lately and so the only thing I've come up with so far are these burritos. I was inspired by this blogger's idea and did something similar with ground turkey, black and pinto beans, frozen roasted corn (Trader Joe's is good!) and shredded cheese in whole wheat tortillas. I'd love more possibilities so that I can avoid the monotony of only one back-up plan when the going gets tough. Anybody got any other ideas?