Meal Exchange From Start to Finish

For the meal exchange in April, I decided to make Red Curry with Tofu and Vegetables.  Not only is it delicious, but it's easy to make, freezes well and is cheap.  For less than $55 at a local Asian grocery, I bought all the ingredients needed for six meals to swap at the meal exchange, plus an extra meal for my family to enjoy.

I took on the mass production of cooking in stages.  I diced seven packages of tofu and after getting the first batch (of four) going in a light layer of oil, I mixed a large batch of red curry paste with cans of coconut milk in a stock pot.  I put my roommates Andy and Danielle to work taping labels to the Ziploc bags that would hold the different portions of the meal and measuring and packing dry rice.  Once the tofu and curry sauce were finished, they ladled the contents of the stock pot into Ziploc bags.  I had chopped most of the vegetables the night before, so I was able to pull those out of the refrigerator and start cooking.  I blanched the broccoli so it wouldn't get as mushy when frozen and then reheated, and then sauteed the remaining vegetables.  When finished, we added the vegetables to the bags of curry sauce and tofu.

My two sous-chefs

A canning funnel ended up being really helpful in filling Ziploc bags with liquids.

The result of all that chopping, frying, sauteing, blanching and scooping was six meals packaged, labeled and ready to go into a friend's freezer.  I know the Hello Panda cookies aren't Thai, but when I saw them at the store, I thought they'd be an unexpected treat for whoever picked my meal.  

On Saturday morning, I pulled the Ziplocs of curry sauce and tofu out of the freezer and started to pack up.  All these meals are heavy, so I've learned the best way to transport them is with a laundry basket.

At the meal exchange, we group the meals on the tables by type - vegan, vegetarian or meat.  Even though I'm not vegan, my meal this past month happened to contain no animal products, so it went with the rest of the vegan meals.

Before we choose meals, everyone explains what they brought.  As I listened to everyone describing their meals, I was taking mental notes of which meals I wanted to try to get first!  Every month there's something that ends up being really popular and goes quickly.

We draw numbers to decide who chooses meals first.  Everyone in group 1 chooses one meal and then the last group chooses two meals, before working backwards again to group 1, who then choose two meals.  It looks like organized chaos as a volunteer calls out whose turn it is to choose a meal and participants are in various stages of paying attention due to chatting with friends or chasing after their kids, but after nearly four years and one iPhone app developed just for the occasion, the system works for us! 

William wants his mom to pick a curried zucchini soup.

William's sister Noelle is pretty excited about the soup too.

An hour later, after all the meals are packed up in laundry baskets, the kids have had a chance to play and the adults to catch up, we head home to make our kids lunch and restock our freezers.  For all the work that goes into preparing for meal exchange, it's worth it when I look into my freezer and see that dinner is already made.

Why order take-out when there's a homemade Thai meal in your freezer?