Goodwill, Sal Army, and the church thrift shops are wonderful places to pick up dishes and serving wear for very little money. I buy used Pyrex, CorningWare and similar other pieces at those places. About 10 years ago when I was making food for my MIL, I bought several pieces of CorningWare French Whie 16 oz round containers with plastic covers. They worked great.

Your mother sounds like she knows what she wants, but I wonder whether she has tried the newer versions of the frozen dinners by Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine. Frozen dinners have come a long way. These two brands have less sodium than the traditional frozen dinners and the food is tasty. They are quite a bit different from the Marie Callender, Stouffers, and other frozen brands.

GW, I don't think her attitude toward frozen dinners has to do with taste. She has always thought that people who resorted to buying things like that were lazy, slovenly, and probably, their family tree was defective ( not judgmental much at all). Plus, if she ever found out I bought a dish at Goodwill, etc, she would never eat the food. She is very germaphobic. Even if it is irrational, at 87, I'm not likely to change her mind.

I have some of the Corningware French White small dishes (16oz?). Perhaps I ought to give her one of mine. I can line the ones I keep with plastic, freeze the food in them, then Food Saver the frozen dishless food and take it to her.

My sister, who lives closer, is on her way now with vegetable soup and cornbread. Tomorrow, I'm taking minestrone, lasagna roll-ups, and chicken gumbo. She keeps salad greens on hand all the time.

Try a restaurant supply. Or maybe Amazon You should be able to get single serving double ramekins and those oval single serving dishes that they put lasagna or enchiladas in at restaurants. They also make paper loaf pans, and you might even find the single use coated paper pans that some of the smaller, more artisanal frozen food makers use. These paper pans are meant to go in an oven or microwave, same as the ceramics. Plus, if she's okay to open a bag and transfer to a dish for heating, there's Food Saver, if your mom doesn't object to plastic. Double ramekins (4.5" diameter) tend to be a perfect single portion size, about 1 cup, except for for active young men--who often want double portions. These may cost a lot less if you buy them by the case.

As to what to freeze, soup freezes well, but doesn't generally re-reheat well. That is, it's fine to heat up from frozen or thawed, but the leftovers don't heat well, so it's better to do single servings if she's eating alone, rather than a couple of servings together.

Breadstuffs, pasta, tomato sauce, cheese and cooked meats all freeze well, which means that most Italian pasta dishes, and a great many Mexican style tortilla dishes freeze well. Eggs and casseroles generally freeze pretty well, too. Heavily eggy dishes (like quiches) can thaw "wet" but a good warming in an oven should restore them.

Liquids freeze well, but "wet" foods don't always. Fats freeze better than anything. Proteins can be problematic, but cooked meats, tightly packaged, do pretty well, and cooked meats in liquids, like stews, freeze well. Cooked vegetables, however, do not. Vegetables freeze best when they're blanched, rather than raw or cooked through. So, for a traditional beef stew, it's better to put some veg in for the sauce, and either cook them down all the way or remove them. I haven't tried the following, but it might work: You could combine fully cooked stew (no veg) with blanched and fully cooled--even better, pre-frozen--vegetables, and freeze them together as a single dish. That could help keep the veg from going too mushy.

Rats, I had a long response composed and it evaporated while I was on the phone!

Thanks, plllog. Mom is not a fan of tender crisp veggies, so I think stew will be fine except the potatoes. Maybe I'll just freeze a few servings of mashed potatoes. I like stew over mashed potatoes.

If I make a quiche, should I cook it completely or just until the eggs are set and then freeze it with instructions for finishing the cooking?

I found, now can't find again, nice 16 oz disposable containers that would go from freezer to oven. They came in packages of 100 and weren't terribly expensive. Maybe $25/100. One reviewer said they fit perfectly in a quart size freezer zip-lock bag. They were on Amazon.

I've also looked at Webstaurant but found nothing like I was looking for. KA has mini-loaf pans which looked to be perfect for individual meatloafs, but a reviewer commented that the pans have pinholes in the bottom. KA responded that the holes were part of the manufacturing process.

Do you have a store in your area that sells food service supplies? We have GFS here & they sell all kinds of disposable serveware for very low prices.

https://www.gfs.com/en/gfsstore/locator

Single servings of basics like mashed potatoes, oatmeal, etc., that just make getting by a little easier is a great idea. Re the stew vegetables, see what your mom thinks of them after one try. The blanched veg that I recommended won't be crisp by the time the stew is heated. They'll just have a better shot at not being goo. A lot of this also depends on the moisture content of the stew, acidity, and a ton of other chemical processes that are hard to control. Maybe your stew will come out of the freezer exactly to your mom's liking.

I always cook the quiche fully, but not to very browned since it'll have another shot in the oven. Same with things like lasagna. Remember, you're better off cooking out the excess water because that's what causes it to go funky in the freezer.

When I can't find things because they've weighted the search engines in weird ways, I just find another search engine. Amazon couldn't find this. Google did:

http://www.amazon.com/Ovenable-Paperboard-Container-100-Count/dp/B00E8MJ098/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1425869721&sr=8-12&keywords=freezer+to+oven+containers

If this was the one you were talking about, yes, that's the kind of thing I meant. What's great about the paperboard is that it doesn't break when dropped. Note that these don't have lids. They might be ideal, used with a vacuum sealer, though the ziplock you mentioned will work for shorter periods in the freezer (more likely to get a lot of ice crystals with the Ziplock). I tend to prefer old fashioned freezer paper to Ziplocks for pans, but you have to be good at sealing out the air for paper to be a good alternative.

They make mini-foil loaf pans, which are great for meatloaf. My mother uses them. http://www.amazon.com/Hefty-Foil-Baby-Loaf-5ct/dp/B000ZNUFHK/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1425870516&sr=1-1&keywords=mini+foil+loaf+pan They're expensive for disposable, but are are easily cleaned and reused, if the loaf is removed for eating. Otherwise they get pierced by forks and knives. Again, if you can get to a catering or restaurant supply house, you might find a much better price by the case (though only if you're not spending more on gas).

Foil pans, for sure, can be recycled. The paperboard ones might, but you'd have to check with your provider.

I also think you should try a local food service or restaurant supply store, or try to find one on-line, so your mother doesn't have to worry about scrubbing dishes, although providing her with similar/identical bake ware and then freezing items in that dish and repackaging is a very good and environmentally sustainable option, if your Mom is up to it.

Many things freeze well, I tried to do that with my stepmother but she only likes fast food and restaurant stuff and won't eat anything I provide to her. Ah well, I got her set up with Meals on Wheels and quit worrying about it.

Anyway, all types of cookies, breads, muffins and unfrosted cakes freeze nicely. So do soups and pasta dishes. Lasagna is nice, you can make a big batch and split it up into portions, especially if she always has salad greens on hand.

I've found that burritos with no sauce freeze well, as does taco filling and fajita filling, if she likes any kind of spicy food. Don't forget breakfast, my girls liked muffins but they also liked breakfast sandwiches made of English muffins, eggs, cheese and sausage or ham, and breakfast burritos of scrambled eggs, cheese and meat. They were quick to unwrap, heat up and would probably be even better in the oven than the microwave.

Meatloaf freezes well and is also easily portioned into smaller portions, although some leftovers make a nice sandwich for later too. Meatballs are infinitely sauceable, making several different meals, and my family liked calzones, which were just homemade pizza dough made into small individual rounds, filled with pizza fillings or broccoli with chicken or whatever suited them, baked and frozen. They can be just thawed or reheated, as wished.

Pancakes and waffles can be reheated in the toaster, and breakfast meats like sausage or bacon or ham can be fully cooked and frozen for reheating. I used to freeze meatloaves and mashed potatoes in muffin tins and then package the "muffins" so that the kids could just take out a couple and heat them up.

Biscuits and scones freeze well unbaked, as does some bread dough for things like cinnamon rolls. I find that my frozen yeast doughs are best used within a month or so, or they can lose their rise but pie crusts and cookie dough keeps well for months.

Good luck to you and to your mother!

Annie

Grainlady, I was going to suggest the "meal in a mug" or "cake in a mug" stuff, but the OP says her Mom seldom uses the microwave and isn't certain about the safety, so she probably won't do that. It'd make it a lot simpler, though.

Annie

Where are my responses going? I responded to everyone and now I don't see it! Here are the Cliff Notes:

Mom doesn't have memory problems beyond what you would expect for someone in their late 80s. She has no mobility problems. She is just tired. Late last week they discovered that she was oxygen deficient and she was put on supplemental oxygen. We are hopeful that will give her some renewed vigor. We are also hopeful that she will get comfortable going to the grocery with her little oxygen tank, but she may not.

plllog, those are exactly the little black pans I was looking for. Thanks for being persistent after I gave up!

I don't want to use foil pans because I have had experience with acidic foods eating tiny holes in the foil.

Mom only uses the microwave to melt butter or boil water. She has a Cuisinart convection toaster that sees lots of use.

Mom has recently expressed a desire for tacos, but she has become very sensitive to the taste of salt. So I made 4 packages of low-sodium taco meat. Sister is picking up low sodium taco shells at Whole Foods. The taco meat will make 2 or 3 tacos per package.

I also made 4 mini-meatloaves. The cooked weight was a tad over 5 oz. each, which may too big for one serving and not enough for 2 servings. I'm kinda feeling my way on portions, so it is pretty much hit or miss until I get some experience and some feedback from Mom.

To recap, tomorrow I'm taking taco meat, meatloaves, minestrone soup, and lasagna roll-ups. Next time, I hope to have sweets and vegetables in addition to entrees. Perhaps, I'll make a couple "microwave mug kits." Maybe if she tries it and likes it, she'll use the microwave more often. GL, are there any particularly good recipes you can point me to?

Thanks all for your help and support. It means a great deal to me to have such knowledgeable people sharing so generously.

bbstx, These containers on Amazon might work well too, would also help with portions. Reditainers. They also come in a variety of sizes. I wonder if lining foil pans with parchment paper would help when you know you are doing something acidic? I have not tried it but it may give the buffer needed as it seems that foil pans would be ideal in the situation for those things that would be warmed in the convection.

Update: I cooked all that food and left it in the freezer when I went to Mom's on Tuesday! :-( I was too far down the road when I realized I had jumped in the car without it. Going again Saturday. There will be notes on all doors this time!

I've made more dishes. My freezer is running out of room and I fear that it may be a challenge for Mom's freezer. I'll probably take a variety of dishes, not everything I've cooked, and wait for the next trip to take more.