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superborbtheladyscribe 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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Date: 2022-02-16 21:18 (UTC)Other quick meals we do:
1) Frozen pizza from the grocery store + premade salads. We add extra veggies like pre-pitted olives onto the pizza before baking. Premade salads can either come from the deli (so they're truly ready to eat) or from those instant salad packs.
2) Baked salmon (salt/season the filet and stick in oven) + flash-boiled broccoli (add seasoning at the end)
3) Stir-fried beef slices and green beans
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Date: 2022-02-17 21:46 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-16 22:28 (UTC)I live in a town with a really /amazing/ deli/bakery, so a lot of my go-tos involve their bread.
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Date: 2022-02-17 21:51 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-16 23:05 (UTC)my other go-tos:
avgolemono soup, but an easy version that's just the egg-lemon-bouillon-pepper broth with some ramen-style noodles thrown in to cook up fast and maybe some frozen greens added if I'm feeling responsible
couscous reconstituted with chicken bouillon, then add a bit of black vinegar and a healthy spoonful of spicy chili crisp and half a jar of canned tomatoes, microwave to heat it back up, and fry a couple eggs to slice up and mix in
toast one side of a couple slices of bread in the toaster oven then put cheese on the untoasted side and broil until melty and bubbly, and eat with enough salsa or pickles to count as a vegetable
I also like to keep a few extra servings of homemade meals in the freezer in one-meal-sized containers so I can pull one out and microwave it if I'm in really dire straits
and generally speaking I try to do a bunch of batch-cooking every weekend so I have meals in the fridge for most of the rest of the week that I just have to heat up!
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Date: 2022-02-17 22:00 (UTC)I am in decision paralysis about the best container to freeze meals in, but I should... get on that... it seems convenient lol.
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Date: 2022-02-16 23:25 (UTC)My go-to low effort meal is usually some sort of boiled noodle dish. Wheat noodles/udon/ramen noodles boiled with some greens tossed in for the last minute, a poached egg and/or frozen fish cakes/meatballs/tofu puffs for protein, and various seasonings like furikake/kimchi/scallions to taste. Fast, low effort and only uses up one pot. I've never tried canned dace but it sounds really yummy!
If I have the energy to stir fry I can do hot oil noodles with a side of tomatoes and eggs or silken tofu, or shredded pork with zhacai noodle soup if I have frozen chicken broth on hand. If I have plenty of time but no energy I usually do chicken congee or chicken soup in the instant pot.
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Date: 2022-02-17 22:03 (UTC)Yummm hot oil noodles are so good! And noodle soups are such a good effort to taste ratio generally, it's true.
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Date: 2022-02-16 23:59 (UTC)My main go-to in winter is soup with whatever I have on hand, with egg-drop soup being the absolute lowest-effort. I am a big fan of "dump everything in a pot and leave it on the stove until the vegetables are tender and the protein is cooked through." Summertime is sometimes just slices of cucumber and tuna straight out of the can, especially when it's too hot to even look at the oven.
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Date: 2022-02-17 22:06 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-17 00:55 (UTC)1. Instant pot meat sauce and spaghetti - Quick, uses all pantry ingredients. If I've really goofed and have no meat defrosted, I can also pull some sausage links out of the freezer and throw them in instead. Thanks for the defrosting, Instant Pot! I will also throw in frozen spinach so there is a green veggie element.
2. Frozen veg + protein stir-fry - Also fast (and using frozen veg eliminates the need for chopping), and the various recipes I rotate between have sauce recipes with all pantry ingredients.
3. Big salad topped with a scoop of chicken or tuna salad - A summertime staple, cold and refreshing and filling! Also easy to prep the chicken/tuna salad ahead of time.
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Date: 2022-02-17 22:09 (UTC)Ahaha, chicken salad is a high effort meal for me because deboning chicken!!! But it's honestly one of my favorites. I haven't thought of putting it on salad before! I will try that in next summer.
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Date: 2022-02-17 04:06 (UTC)Mine are:
1. A box of white mac n'cheese with half a bag of frozen peas + lots of pepper and some nutmeg or with a big double fistful of chopped kimchi and scallions and sesame seeds. Nothing but some minimal prep and done in ten minutes.
2. I literally always have plain-cooked beans in their broth ready to go; I make them one huge pot at a time. So beans on toast, bean tacos, beans seasoned and put in the hollow of an avocado, beans and rice with olives and veggies steamed on top of the cooking rice… Beans and rice is a sign that G-d loves us and wants us to be happy. Obviously actually cooking the beans in the first place takes forever, but a pound of dried beans lasts me well over a week cooked.
3. A selection of my six-and-a-half million pickles on whatever cracker-like object can be scrounged from about the kitchen. For the days when I am sad and tired and only vinegar and lactic acid will do.
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Date: 2022-02-17 22:11 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-17 22:47 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-17 04:16 (UTC)Mine is just egg and instant noodles! My frozen dumpling of choice is siomai/shumai because it’s more available, and you can’t really oversteam it lol.
1) NOODLES: Lucky Me instant noodle soup, sometimes with a raw egg stirred in, and rice; if I’m SUPER hungry Vedan instant braised beef noodle soup which is very big and has actual beef bits; recently I’ve been doing Indomie with boiled egg, it’s very filling that way
2) Sunny-side up egg on rice, with the yolk runny enough to soak the rice. My actual favorite and super easy meal is water spinach plainly stir-fried in garlic with salt and a little water (or soy sauce) so it’s saucy over rice, with optional fried egg for protein and cheeriness. Water spinach goes bad so fast though so it’s something I’d usually have to have bought earlier that day.
3) More effort veg that I will gladly consume over rice without egg: green beans with squash! Stir fry, then add water and cover so the steam cooks the squash into mushiness, and you get a 2-color, 2-texture dish that savory (and hopefully) sweet. 🥺 Beans fried with garlic or mashed salted egg is also nice (and quicker)! Vegetables 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺
Incidentally my fav canned good for emergency meals are Hunt’s pork and beans over rice, and spam for sandwiches. My friend told me you could make Viet pizza by cooking leftovers on rice paper, but I keep forgetting to do that…
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Date: 2022-02-17 22:14 (UTC)I will try that green bean + squash recipe! I've never thought of putting squash with my stir fry :o :o :o
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Date: 2022-02-18 00:06 (UTC)I was told it was also known as swamp spinach, which is not inaccurate but 😂 It’s my fav vegetable too! But only with salt or soy sauce, I accept no other seasonings. 😤
Re: squash and beans - I learned it from my mom! It’s probably inspired by pinakbet, but all the other ingredients seem very controversial in our household so maybe that’s why she just picked 2 vegetables and ran with it 😂
Pinakbet: https://www.foxyfolksy.com/pinakbet/
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Date: 2022-02-18 22:30 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-02-17 05:28 (UTC)1) Cheese sandwich. Bread, cheese, tomato, greens if I have any suitable ones, mustard, done.
2) Grilled cheese sandwich, usually with some kind of spread and ideally tomato or apple added in.
3) Rice or polenta (boil water, toss in some oil and salt/pepper/herbs, add in the polenta and stir steadily for 4 minutes if you're using instant polenta or a bit longer if you're not, until it thickens up) with a fried egg on top and some kind of veggies either stirred into the polenta or dumped on top.
4) Toast, some kind of cheese or savory spread, fried egg on top. Done.
5) Those Knorr's pasta + sauce packets, with some broccoli or spinach (frozen or fresh, either way) tossed in towards the end so it feels like a real meal. This is definitely among the more processed options, but it's tasty and satisfying and so there are always a few packets in my pantry against the kind of day when nothing fancier is gonna happen.
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Date: 2022-02-17 22:16 (UTC)