Dinner from the freezer

I really want to participate in Mele Cotte's Deep Freeze Summer Challenge - make a dish created from the depth of your freezer. Summer cleaning, if you will.

Last night's dinner qualifies, but I'm not going to submit it, because there wasn't any actual cooking involved (cooking being defined as combining ingredients, usually with some sort of heating mechanism, to produce dinner). Plus, once again, I don't have any pictures. And I think any pics I would have taken wouldn't have produced a Pavlovian response in anyone.

In my freezer, I had a box of steamer clams in garlic butter sauce from Trader Joe's, along with a loaf of garlic bread from Food4Less. I baked the bread, and heated the clams. Bingo, bam, whatever, done. Tasty.

I was initially skeptical about the frozen clams...I was sure they'd be gritty and taste frozen. But they were better than some "fresh" clams I've had. Chewy, tender, no grit, decent sauce. So if you're near a TJ's, picking up their frozen boxed steamers isn't a terrible idea.

And tonight's dinner kind of qualifies too, because MIL made lasagna with ground beef from the freezer. But I'm not about to publish her secret recipe because she'd probably kill me.

I've still got almost a whole month to come up with a suitable dish for Mele Cotte's challenge - I've got my eye on some short ribs currently lounging on my freezer's second shelf...maybe braised with chiles and coffee...we'll see.