Another Town, Another Zoo

We've been here less than two weeks and we've already headed to the zoo. It was only 80 today! Had to go. It was a pretty nifty zoo. But boy, is it sprawling. It actually warns you on the map that there are over five miles of paths. And I think we hit them all! Nicky had a grand time. He got a little startled at the sea lion pool. And I don't know which he liked better, the tram ride or the polar bear. Both were huge hits.

So I got my exercise for the day. Which hopefully makes up for the peach pie that our new neighbor baked for us. I was doing pretty well this week. I did my weekly official weigh-in this morning and I'm at 184.2. So I lost almost a pound since I found the scale over the weekend for a grand total of 25.2 pounds so far!

I think thawing the meals is the best option. I tried cooking a frozen lunch the other day, the turkey-swiss sandwich (John and I are sharing the lunches he got). The cheese is oooey-gooey anyway so the extra time needed to defrost as well as heat wasn't so good. I heated it for a minute at a time so the cheese didn't melt out everywhere and I wasn't able to get the middle totally warmed before I got too hungry! So I'm putting two lunches and two dinners in the fridge to thaw for 24 hours before we eat them.

Dinner tonight was chicken parmesan. It was quite good and the only difference between the fresh and the frozen was that the chicken was just a little tougher. However, as the chicken in the fresh meals is tender enough to cut with a fork, I'm okay with that. The pasta, sauce and cheese were exactly the same. And I think the broccoli was actually a little better.

One thing I learned, however, is that it's best to not stack the meals as I thaw them. The chicken hadn't totally thawed and it was because there was some ice between the packages.

So the shipped/fresh comparison is doing fine. I always said that frozen dinner plans were terrible but I think there's a big difference here because DTG flash-freezes them and then ships them to you right away. So they don't have to add all those, well, additives to get them to you still tasting like food. Oh, speaking of shipping. This week's shipment arrived perfectly. The frozen ice packs in the cooler were still frozen. So a freezer full of food to eat this week. Which is good because I have a garage full of boxes to unpack. (or look through and leave out there!)