Electric Boogaloo
(Sorry. Couldn't resist.)
Damn you, blog! Damn you!
Tortillas aren't so exciting, because it's nothing better than rice+stuff, but in a less manageable format.
Make a vat of stew/chili/whatever occasionally on the weekends, and freeze it in smallish containers? This works for absolutely anything with a stew/thick soup texture, which includes half the food in the world.
You haven't mentioned the other grad school cliche -- stir-fry -- which requires no thought if you don't care what it tastes like, and just requires a little recipe-reading/spice familiarizing if you do care.
Breaded fried stuff (fish, chicken, probably not veal because we're all better than that, aren't we?) is dead easy and quick. Thin, flat, protein object; dip in milk, in flour or cornmeal, fry in hot oil.
It all depends on what you like.
The sad truth is that I think I like my routine. This all sounds so hard.
Plus stir fry is the final solution for a refrigerator full of vegetables that you know you're not going to get around to using.
Why are you Googleproofing Alameida's name?
The point of tortillas, in this context, is that they take even less time than rice.
I sometimes do pots of veg chili for a couple of rounds of rice, beans and stuff, or pasta and stuff (that's going to get me thrown out of Texas, I realize). Simple! For me the limiting point is that I just don't like going to the grocery all the time to buy fresh stuff (cf. stir-fry), and if I buy it in overoptimistic quantities it tends to stick around.
I guess what I'm saying is, stick to what you know.
Here's a recipe, though:
Garlic
Fresh spinach (or spinach that has gone dry from sitting in the crisper a while)
Black-eyed peas
Chili powder
Chop the garlic. Wash the spinach and chop it up some. Get the black-eyed peas into an edible state (that means, for instance, open the can and rinse them in a colander). Saute the garlic for a bit. Add the spinach and chili powder. Swoosh around a bit. Add the beans. Let heat through, flavors blend, whatever. Wrap the results in a tortilla, or serve on rice, or pasta.
come to think of it, I could add, "toss in the last carrot, peeled and chopped, of course, idiot."
There's always "pasta, beans, 'n' stuff".
btw, do you have spam deletion privileges? The one on "Final Reading Group Exercise" is pretty nasty. What happened to the approval for comments on old threads?
The stew thing (for whatever value of stew, bean soup, various Indian dishes of stew-like tendencies, whatever you like) is a project, in that if you're not used to it it will kill a Sunday afternoon, but if you freeze it in serving sizes it does give you an awful lot of effort-free food from that point on.
The question is, what do you like? If you're a big-chunks-of-meat person, nothing is easier than broiling or pan-frying steaks and chops, and a little pan sauce to make them extra tasty is easy too, and gets the pan clean. But advice like this is pretty useless without an idea of what you would like to eat but haven't been cooking.
and if I buy it in overoptimistic quantities it tends to stick around.
Cf. stir fry. This happens to me all the time. Since I don't live terribly close to a grocery store, if I want to be realistic about eating fresh fruits n' vegetables, I need to buy them overoptimistically. Last stop is stir fry.
There's also Special Stew: pasta, tomato sauce, tomato paste, lentils, any vegetables on hand, all in whatever proportions are available.
all in whatever proportions are available.
See, this is bad advice for someone who doesn't already make stew. It is possible to take perfectly reasonable ingredients and make them taste nasty. What you want to do is start with a recipe, and then after making it once or twice start improvising, so you get the hang of what works and what doesn't.
I guess I need to come up with a good stir fry sauce, and my troubles will be solved. What do you think of Stubb's?
(Fresh fruit is not a problem.)
I don't think you get the spirit of Special Stew, LB. Special Stew is bad advice for anybody.
I take it you've rejected Unf's bachelor diet.
I take it you've rejected Unf's bachelor diet.
Is ogged getting revenge by taking off all the spam protection devices?
They have evil-alien-mecha sheep?
They have evil-alien-mecha sheep?
That was Unf! I'd been remembering that post as FL's, and figuring he was completely incapable in the kitchen.
Hey, where'd our mailto links go?
Special Stew is bad advice for anybody.
Oh, I got it now. I had a friend who used to make something he called 'Stuff' -- ground beef cooked in a frying pan, combined with the salad dressing of your choice, and poured over pasta. Same basic idea.
I suspect the mailto links vanished as a part of our Absent Blog Lord's benevolent and ongoing efforts to save us from the bots. But he can't come on to explain it without violating his hiatus! HA! HA! HA!
Those are good and articulate points!
I ahve always found the ratio of preparation + clean-up time to enjoying food time unacceptably high. So I would just order pizza and drink heavily.
That said, if you pick a flavorful fish (salmon, swordfish, tilapia), you don't need a sauce and simple cooking is a snap. Price is the downside.
Labs, do you like Asian food? 'Cause if you've got a decent Asian grocery store near you, you can buy stuff that makes making like, Thai curries and stuff, really easy. I swear.
Yup, silvana's right. You can also get curry-making stuff at Trader Joe's and Whole Food's.
I've got a pan_asian market owned, I think, by Chinese people called Super 88 near me. It's great for a lot of things; they have a ton of fish, but I haven't managed to find the thai curry stuff. There are, however, about 20 different brands of soy sauce.
Chinese people called Super 88
Are they Jennifer 8. Lee's cousins?
My name is Bostoniangirl, and I have a problem with punctuating properly on blogs.
There's a pan-Asian market near me, which is, I think, owned by Chinese people, called Super 88.
If Labs doesn't expand his culinary repertoire, he'll die a wizened sock cooker.
SB-- wizened sock cookers are not wicked cocksucker, by any standard.
Nothing improper about the punctuation in 29, I was just taking advantage of an ambiguity to attempt a funny.
(It's "wizard," though. You really are a Bostonian girl.)
If Labs doesn't expand his culinary repertoire, he'll die a wizened sock cooker.
That's why we all sound like such gizzard n' wok hookers.
Oh right, I meant to google it first. I've never actually said "wicked" in that way--except when trying to capture a Maine accent.
I did once call a dear old friend "a wicked, wicked woman." (Her prayer each night is, "Dear God, please kill Murdoch.")
I was just taking advantage of an ambiguity to attempt a funny.
I need to express this so often (to people whom I've unintentionally piqued), it should go its initials, IWJTAOAATAAF.
We started out getting along so well together, must we fall apart in acronymity?
I wasn't piqued, merely ashamed. I have bad perfectionist tendencies. (I'm both lazy and a perfectionist at the same time. It's a dreadful combination.)
That looks like something that might be pronounced as you cross your eyes, loll your tongue, and fall down. Actually that might work in lieu of the explanation.
38: That's not a bad prayer, actually. I sometimes think he's the person whose retirement to a nice monastery with lots of acreage would do the most good in the world--any Republican will just be replaced by another one, but while Murdoch's sons are just as evil it seems they are much less competent, and the driving into the ground of that segment of media would do worlds o' good.
(not a bad prayer modulo the "you shouldn't pray for anyone's death, it harms the soul" thing
and there might be someone in Sudan we could do with even less)
Re 42 and 43: she's old, and she mostly says it when she's caught something depraved on television. I'm not sure why, since she's not a Sky subscriber.
I think she curses him for the tabloidification of the Times. She doesn't quite believe that she's ready for the Telegraph, but she's too middle brow and anti-intellectual (her word, not mine, her late husband was a don) for the Guardian. She disapproves of Shakespeare on motor bikes.
By the praying of your friend,
Something wicked doth portend,
Careful, Murdochs, lest you be outfoxed!
Oh fer chrissake. You can actually cook most of the dishes in Elizabeth David's "Italian Cooking" in 2hrs and leave the washing up for later. If you are determined not to make time to eat good food, at least Pomiane's Cooking in Ten Minutes will give you a vague idea of what your dinner ought to taste like. Rassen frassen strir fried rortillas I ask you.
Is Murdoch really such a evil icon that he doesn't require a first name? It's very confusing for those of us in the A-Team fan community (I like the one where they foiled the corrupt local official).
No way! That one sucks. I like the one where they build a killer armored vehicle out of a bigwheel and popsicle sticks.
I like the one where Face goes undercover.
I like the one where Mr. T says he won't fly on any damn fool plane and they better not drug his milk like that other time, and then they drug his milk. but, more on topic, dsquared is right. real italian food generally does not take much time to cook and uses surprisingly few ingredients, though they must be good ones. seriously, check out some elizabeth david or something.
other E-Z meals:
steamed salmon; hellmann's mayonnaise mixed with dill, shallots, capers and lemon juice; steamed asparagus (you can do this in a two level bamboo steamer, though the asparagus must be put on later); new potatoes halved, boiled, and mixed with butter and dill. this takes about 25 minutes all told.
shrimp cooked in olive oil and lots of garlic; good bakery-bought bread to dip in said olive oil; salad. (15 minutes, tops)
sausages with red and yellow peppers (brown the sausages; pour off most of the grease; fry sliced onions in the grease; add sliced pepper and garlic; cook, then return sausages to skillet); rice or mashed potatoes or bread; green salad
baked chicken; roasted baby potatoes with olive oil and rosemary; whole roasted garlic heads (cut off top, pour some olive oil over and wrap in foil, then cook with the potatoes); broccoli steamed in the microwave.
then the next day you can have chicken salad over green salad, with whole wheat toast, and make stock with the carcass, and then the *next* day you have chicken soup, either with carrots, zuchini, potatoes and whatnot or with shiitake mushrooms, chinese noodles, thinly sliced carrot, green onions, soy sauce and sesame oil. you can add sliced boneless chicken breast to these soups to make them more hearty.
salad nicoise.
lentil soup; stewed okra and tomato; rice
should I go on here? I think I'll just write a post.
I know I'm not Paul Bocuse, but I'm miffed that my recipes are considered spam. :(
Maybe Bob has been zombified by a mad spammer.
Come to think of it, Ogged is kind of zombie-obsessed, isn't he? Hm. Perhaps he needed his hiatus in order to perfect his sinister experiments.
And now he's destroyed the evidence!