About a year and a half ago, our family made a pact that we wouldn’t go out to eat for a year. We hoped to save enough to fly on a vacation that year rather than drive.

While we weren’t entirely true to the pact, we did end up flying to Boston that summer.

Since then, we have continued to cook and eat at home the vast majority of evenings. We eat out very infrequently, usually only when our plans have failed. (As opposed to what we did before, which was fail to make plans.)

As it turns out, a big part of our success has been keeping on hand a variety of desperation dinners – as my friend Rowan calls them, 425 Specials.

That is, we are much more likely to eat at home – even when I really, really don’t want to cook – when we have fish sticks or chicken nuggets or a pizza in the freezer.

No, these aren’t the meals you’ll photograph for your insta feed. (Is that a thing the kids still say? Insta feed? I may be behind on my slang. No cap.)

Anyway, they aren’t photo-worthy, but they’ll at least keep your belly full.

Unfortunately, those foods tend to be highly processed and fairly pricy. They aren’t as processed and pricy as the average fast food meal, sure, but they’re still not what we want to eat daily.

So I also try to feed my freezer.

But I’m picky about what I put in there. I have purchased (and subsequently donated) easily half a dozen cookbooks that promised freezer-friendly meals.

First of all, I’m not going to remember to take out a giant casserole three days ahead of time to thaw.

Are you waiting for a second of all? Because there is not a second of all. There doesn’t need to be a second of all. The first of all is enough to ensure that every casserole I’ve ever placed in my freezer has remained there as the days pass into weeks and the weeks into years, waiting for the fateful day I decide to remove them from their hermetically sealed cryogenic tomb.

That day never comes. Or, rather, it does… but it’s the day I’m deep cleaning the freezer.

In light of this failing on my part as a homemaker and mother, I try only to make foods that can be easily cooked from their frozen state.

Flat quart bags of soup and chili fit the bill here. So do chicken taquitos and flattened bags of guiltless chicken alfredo.

Taco meat (browned ground beef, seasoned up and – you guessed it – frozen flat in quart bags) has saved my supper dozens of times.

And so have Italian meatballs. Precooked, frozen meatballs thaw and warm through surprisingly quickly in a pan full of tomato sauce.

But because I have such strict rules about what I will and won’t feed my freezer, I sometimes get a little bored of the options.

Enter: these Greek meatballs, a variation on the Italian-themed ones I’ve made for ages.

Easy to make multiple recipes at once? Check.

Easy to freeze in such a way that they could be used for one meal or five? Check.

Easy to heat through directly from frozen? Check.

My friends, in Biloxi, they would call that a jackpot.

GREEK MEATBALLS

Ingredients
4 pounds ground meat (I used 2 pounds ground beef and 2 pounds ground turkey)
1 red onion
1 individual-sized cup of Greek yogurt
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 Tablespoon garlic paste
4 eggs
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 clamshell fresh mint leaves, minced (about 2 Tablespoons minced fresh mint)
Optional: 1/2 – 1 cup flour, for dusting, plus oil spray

Directions
■ Preheat oven to 425 degrees; use the convection or air fry setting if one is available on your oven. Grease or line with foil a large, rimmed sheet pan. If you have a cooling rack or other oven-safe rack available, place the rack on top of the sheet pan.
■ Grate the onion directly into the largest mixing bowl you own so that all of the juices from the onion remain in the bowl. (Heck, use a roaster if you have to.) Add meat(s), yogurt, panko, garlic, eggs, salt, pepper, oregano, and minced mint. Mix these ingredients together until well combined. (I use my hands for this step, and frankly I’m not sure you can do it with a spoon.) Pinch off a walnut-sized piece of the meat mixture and roll it into a ball. Place it on one side of the bowl and repeat this process until all the meat is in balls. If you would like to bake at this point, do so.
■ For a slightly crispier exterior, sprinkle about 1/2 cup all-purpose flour over the balls and roll them a bit to coat lightly. Place the meatballs on top of the rack (or directly on the baking sheet if no rack is available). If you sprinkled them with flour, mist them lightly with oil at this point. Bake for about 20 minutes.
■ Break open a meatball from the center to be sure it is brown all the way through. Continue to bake until you reach this standard; my oven took 25 minutes for a fairly crowded pan to bake through. Serve with feta, slivers of red onion, tomato, and naan or other flatbread. Place leftovers in a freezer-safe zip-top bag. Lay meatballs flat in a single layer (use multiple bags if necessary) until frozen. Once meatballs are frozen solid, you will be able to move the bag around as necessary.

Amelia Plair is a mom and high school teacher in Starkville. Email reaches her at [email protected].

Amelia Plair is a Starkville resident who writes occasional food columns.

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