Easy/Healthy meals with nonperishable or frozen foods

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I am looking for easy, healthy things to cook that can be stored long-term beforehand.

When I cook things, I usually cook fish or chicken. With fish it is easy because I found some individually wrapped frozen salmon fillets, so I can stock up on like 40 fillets and just open an individual package when I want to cook it. But due to mercury and such, I try to limit myself to fish once or twice a week. For chicken or any other meat, I haven't found anything similar that tastes good. I bought some frozen chicken that was packaged similarly, but it tasted disgusting. Of course there are deli sandwiches, but I am trying to limit my consumption of processed meats, and I eat too many sandwiches as it is.

What I would like to find is some sort of dinner item that I can buy in bulk for long-term storage (like the fish I mentioned above), and cook when I feel like it. I am really just looking for a protein source since frozen vegetables work really great. I do get TV dinners sometimes but you can't live on those alone. And I'm not altogether convinced of how healthy they are, even though I only buy the healthy/organic ones.

I hate buying perishable food at the store that I have to eat within 1-3 days. Not only does it make me go to the store much more frequently, but it "forces" my nightly meals...if I come home and feel like one thing, I can't have it because something else I bought will go bad if I don't eat it immediately. I like to save the fresh/perishable things for when I'm really cooking a nice meal, but not for a daily thing. Also most fresh meat comes with 2-4 servings wrapped in the same container. Living alone, this leads to me only eating one and throwing the rest away (I really dislike leftovers).

You buy pre-cooked quinoa in little pouches now. I just dump some in a bowl and add some olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper to doctor it up a little. I also like to add chickpeas and whatever fresh veggies I might have on hand, usually diced cucumber and onion. Takes all but ten minutes to prepare and the pouch things are usually good from about a year after you buy them, as long as they are unopened.

Sea creatures with lowest mercury risk:

frozen: shrimp

frozen or canned: clams, oysters

canned: sardines,herring

From what I've read, mercury risk in fish correlates with size. The larger a creature is, the more mercury it accumulates. Swordfish, tuna and salmon are pretty big. But sardines and herrings are tiny.

I eat a lot of sardines. They seem to keep for months in those tins.

Maybe not exactly what you were looking for, but still relevant:

http://lowspoonsfood.tumblr.com/ is a tumblr dedicated to easily-obtained, somewhat healthy food for people with chronic disease, fatigue and/or executive function issues. I really like a lot of the ideas presented there.

package of frozen vegetables + package of frozen chicken + pan + *insert random sauce* = food within 10 minutes ?

Can of soup + can of pulses for protein + boost it by adding some extra veggies.

Have you tried opening the meat and separating it into one portion pots or freezer bags before freezing? Throwing away that much meat must get really expensive. The other thing you can do is cook batches of food (e.g. chilli, stew, bolognese), and freeze individual portions in tubs so you just need to reheat it and cook some rice or pasta when you want it. If you've got enough freezer space then you don't have to worry about eating it in a hurry and it's like a TV dinner where you know exactly what went into it!

For things with protein you can cook from fresh that day, I'd suggest red lentils, quinoa or tinned beans (e.g. kidney beans, chick peas). These can be cooked/heated then mixed in with rice, frozen veg and soy sauce to make a really quick dinner. Another alternative is Quorn. One of the products they sell are "chicken style pieces" and if you don't expect it to taste like chicken, it's really not bad.

We started making pizza crusts out of cauliflower, eggs, almond meal, (goat) cheese, herbs and spices. We then add the "dough" into 9 oven-safe glass pie plates and cooked them for 20-30 minutes. Once they were cooled, we stored them in freezer ziplocks and into the freezer. When we feel like a quick meal, we take one out, add toppings and cook for 10 minutes - yum.