I think I've destroyed the notion that being car free means you have to limit what you can cook due to transportation restrictions. In fact I was making so much home made food I bought an old chest freezer two years back and use it for freezer cooking so nothing goes to waste. I make very large batches of stew or saag (an Indian spinach based dish) and freeze them in gallon bags. I then take a bag out, thaw it in the refrigerator and make it into lunches. I use wide mouth ball jars for storing the prepared batches in the refrigerator. Here's the Chicken Saag Aloo o' Doom in the 15 gallon pot (yes I brought that home on my bike). I make it over the course of a day, and in this case the NIN song kept going through my head:



With equal parts rice preapared after a batch is thawed, it doubles in size! Incredible number of tasty lunches out of it. Even though my apartment's stove is from the 50's and only one burner even works on it.

This is a "small" batch of my matzo ball beef stew. The matzo balls hold up better in the freezer than ordinary flour dumplings, and taste better with the beef.



Ingredients are primarily from the local farmers market and the costco.

I use a bread machine to make a 1/3 rye 2/3 wheat mix that tastes great and travels well in sandwich form for food on longer bike rides. I use potato water which gives the yeast extra power.

I've been getting good deals on eye of round steak, which is easy to make into a budget gourmet dinner:



OK, the Laphroiag is not budget. But what the heck. I save ten times that price in no car payments every month.

My latest was a very tasty pacific cod chowder. I get these fillets on sale from the fish store next door and have them sealed in vacuum packs, then freeze them. Combined with some basic evaporated milk, local spuds and green onions plus some cooking onions and bacon and you have paradise on a rainy day: