TTFeb: Three low-spoons day foods

theladyscribe prompted: What's your go-to low spoons/bad day food? The kind of thing you can make on autopilot.

I'll do three because that seems like a good number. Note that my 'low spoons' tends towards forgetting/procrastinating prepping food, so all the prep for these happens immediately before cooking and eating. Like, I WILL forget to put rice in a mere 40 mins in advance of dinner. 

1. Rao's pasta sauce + pasta + frozen veg. This is my default, because it is all pantry or freezer staples, you just chuck everything in a pot and boil for a while (so minimal attention needed), and the Rao's is good enough to make it tasty without any effort. The main drawback is that Rao's is on the pricey side for pasta sauce; for the convenience though, I tend to stock up when it's on sale. I haven't found a miss from them yet, but their arrabbiata is my current favorite.

2. Panfried dumplings (from frozen). A little more effort is needed to make sure it doesn't burn, but it's still pretty low effort. Just fry, add some water and cover for ~10 min, then fry again. Then serve with some Chinkiang vinegar! Requires some forethought to either make or buy dumplings, but it's from the freezer, so I usually always have a bag or two for backup.

3. Asian wheat noodles with canned dace and bok choy. There's a variety of 'topping' like sauces you can put on carbs to immediately make them delicious, but I especially like canned dance with black beans because the fish makes it feel more meal-like. The noodles cook faster than any other carb, only needing a few minutes of boiling. And for the final component, stir frying just takes so much less time to heat up the cooking vessel, then the food cooks quickly. I like a lot of Chinese veg because you can so quickly stir fry and have it ready in 5 min. (Plus time to wash and prep as necessary.) Bok choy is the tastiest in this combo IMO, but napa cabbage has longer fridge life. Just stir fry the veg, add a little salt at the end, then serve with noodles and dace.

+1. Just drain and serve silken tofu with some sliced century egg (optional), soy sauce, and sesame oil. Tofu has a long refrigerator life, but this feels much nicer to serve in the summer when the coolness of the tofu is appreciated.

I'd be especially interested in other people's quick meals too!

(Unrelated: is anyone else having trouble getting DW comment notification emails? I lost a few earlier today.)

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