Usually I like cooking, but lately I’ve been in a real funk about it. I’m talking about the ordinary, what’s for dinner on the weeknight kind of cooking (with two hot lunches on the weekend) That comes out to seven meals a week. It shouldn’t be that difficult to come up with seven meal ideas a week, but my culinary Muse has forsaken me. I’m sick of my own cooking and bored with my recipe repertoire.
My past strategy was to have a kind of loose “schedule” — pasta night, chicken night, meatless night, etc — and fill it in using whatever was on sale at the grocery store. It worked for a long time — it was a good way to stay out of ruts and stay within budget. Lately, though, the sales have gotten less and less helpful — sorry, $1.00 off ribeyes or fresh lobster isn’t going to help me that much — and the selection at the markets continues to shrink. The cases are packed with the special of the week and precious little else. (Let’s see, what kind of chicken would you like? Thighs, thighs, or…. thighs?)
I am also getting really, really irritated with the Invasion of the Brine at the meat case. I just came back from the supermarket, where they had a nice price on turkey breast. I was all set to pick up Sunday’s dinner until I saw that the turkey was “self-basting.” Sorry, I’m not paying good money for salt water. Same thing goes for all that pork injected with “flavor solution” and ground poultry with “up to 15% flavor solution added.” Isn’t there anything left for people who want to do their own cooking?
I’d love to shop at Whole Foods more often, but I’m trying to keep our grocery bill under control and I hate the creepy, “Earth First” vibe of the place. There’s also the little fact that I really should be making an effort to cook more healthfully, but a lot of the “lean” recipes I come across rely on processed foods (fat-free non-dairy whipped topping?) or very expensive tidbits (yes, filet mignon is lean, but come on!)
So now it’s 5:25 PM, my hungry husband will be rolling in in 20 minutes, and I have no idea what I’m going to fix. I did “breakfast for dinner” yesterday, so I don’t want to try that again. Maybe I’ll thaw out some pesto. No, that won’t work — I forgot the Parmesan cheese.
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Peony,
The brine is absolutely evil. One cannot find unbrined pork at the major markets, and that is criminal. In spite of the dopey hippies at Whole Earth, they do have good meat and cheese and produce. In the meanwhile, why not make chicken cacciatore with those chicken thighs? Red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, onions, a touch of garlic, olive oil, mushrooms, pancetta, white vermouth, herbs and you are in business. Serve over simple risotto or even steamed rice.
Also, I really don’t recommend trying to cook lean. You will end up consuming more calories in the form of carbohydrates and sugars. Rather, vary the fats. I use butter, goose fat, pancetta, olive oil, and peanut oil. Probably the number one is olive oil, followed by pancetta/goose fat, followed by butter. Peanut oil is for special cases (Chinese food, for instance). Food satisfies more, tastes better, and is better for you when it is full of real ingredients and not modified food starch (the non-dairy whipped topping).
I think the very worst thing you can do is worry about the amount of fat, rather than the quality of fat.
Hamburger stroganoff, start to finish in the time it takes to boil the pasta. I lived off it in college. Ola, 5, and Pojo, 3, adore it. Not fancy but cheap and good.
2 lbs hamburger
1 c onion, diced
1 small jar mushrooms, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
garlic powder, 3-4 shakes to taste
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 small container sour cream
parsley, dried or fresh, to taste,
1 package egg noodles
Brown meat and onion in skillet. Add mushrooms, salt, pepper, garlic powder, parsley. Make sure you add the liquid from the ‘shroom jar. Stir in cream of ‘shroom soup. Heat to boiling. Cook 3-5 minutes. Adjust seasoning to taste. Reduce heat and add sour cream for last 15 minutes of cooking. Spoon over noodles and serve hot.
You cook the stroganoff part while the noodles cook. This takes 20-30 minutes max. If you don’t have egg noodles use elbows, bowties, or anything else you got. You can also fudge the meat amounts. Heck, you’re a Mom, you cook. You know when you can guess-timate. This a very flexible recipe.
Joes SPecial
cook ground meat with onions and garlic and herbs to taste. add in some chopped greens (spinach is traditional but I use what I have – kale is wonderful) and steam until wilted. Beat some eggs and add into the mix, stirring until cooked.
Or try a ragu. Erik should shield his eyes as this is one of my Irish mother’s “Italian” recipes.
1 lb. ground beef
1 small onions if you got it, less if you like it that way
1 small green pepper if you got it
salt and pepper to taste
garlic powder if you like it
1 jar store bought spaghetti sauce.
1 box pasta
As you are boiling the water and cooking the pasta, brown the ground beef and onion and pepper. Season to taste. Add pasta sauce and heat through. Pour over pasta and serve. La Bella Mama served this because even teh finickiest eater, moi for instance, devours it.
In desperation there’s always “Buttered Roni Special.” That’s where you dowse cooked pasta with butter and lots of black pepper. La Bella Mama served this when she didn’t feel like cooking.
The Planned Parenthood donations I’ve read about in several places are what killed Whole Foods for us, but yes, it was the atmosphere that made me wonder whether they supported PP and the like.
You know I don’t have any recipes (tonight I “made” box veggie chili with black instead of kidney beans and some canned cashews added, and a saute from a long-frozen bag of “Thai” vegetables.)
Thanks for all the recipes (checking to make sure there’s paper in the printer) — I do appreciate them. It’s kind of the planning thing I’m stuck on right now.
Oh, off topic, Davey’s mommy, but for a good chili recipe, the “Favorite Chili” recipe that came with your slow cooker (in the little cookbook) is a good, no-gimmick chili recipe.
Thanks! I’m not sure if it’s the one you’re thinking of — mine has no favorite chili but does have two or three chili recipes, and they’re not so dependent on questionable prepackaged and processed foods as some of the others in the booklet. When we got the slow cooker I was not into chili, but decided to give my husband’s boxes of veggie stuff a try one night, and it was good.
Fast, cheap, and appropriate for Fridays:
1. Put on your water to boil.
2. Dice an onion
3. Heat olive oil in your skillet.
4. Gently fry onion
5. Add one or two cans tuna (preferably Italian olive oil packed, but I have done it with water packed as well).
6. Put in a generous splash of red wine (two buck chucks is fine).
7. let it simmer. Meanwhile, as soon as the water is boiling salt it (never add oil), add your pasta (penne rigate is best) and stir once in a while.
8. As the pasta is approaching half done, add a good handful of drained kalamata olives to the sauce.
9. When the pasta is half done, drain it, but not too carefully, and add it to the pasta. Finish cooking the pasta in the sauce.
10. Shave reggiano parmeggiana over the pasta and serve with red wine.
I love to serve this to food snobs, because it mixes fish with red wine and cheese and tastes great.
A non-Friday version of this is a Roman dish that is similar, but you use tuna, onion, reconstituted porcini mushrooms, and pancetta. Omit the olives and fry it in this order: olive oil, pancetta, onion, mushrooms, tuna. Serve this one with a minerally white (Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio is perfect).
I also recommend cooking on designated cooking days so that meals are ready to go. I just made a ratatouille that will be ready for baking tomorrow, so when I get home from work, we will have food that took 2 1/2 hours in 20 minutes.
I suppose, when you get to my age, you realize that you haven’t the energy or the time to be a purist about everything, and don’t object to letting someone else do some of the chores. I rather like the brined pork – I think it tastes better when it’s had the salt solution in it. Besides, it leaves in the pan what practically amounts to stock – reduce it quickly, stir in some butter, black pepper, sage and a little lemon juice (and some sour cream if you like it), and you’ve got sauce.
I have been learning more and more about the benefits of brining, mostly for poultry (if I do Thanksgiving this year I might give brining the turkey a try) but I’m sure it would work well on lean pork.
I would just rather do it myself, so I can control what goes into it — no dextrose, please. I’m all for shortcuts (for example, I do not plan to make my own ketchup) but I’d like to have more of a choice of which ones I’m going to take. I’d rather be able to buy plain pork and dunk it in the salt water myself.
On the day I wrote this post, I dug around in the freezer and found some chicken I’d frozen for just such an emergency. It was delicious — just my kind of shortcut!
You’ve got to do something with turkey – there’s so much white meat that it requires some ingenuity to get it done right through but keep it from turning to shoe leather. My method is to do the bird under a foil canopy with canned broth in the pan, until the meat is almost ready to drop off the bones, and then remove the foil and let the skin get brown. I suppose that wouldn’t work with a stuffed turkey; my father disliked stuffing cooked in the breast, however, so I’ve always been used to doing it separately in a pan. When push comes to shove, there is no getting a twenty-pound turkey to cook so that the white meat is really moist and tender, so there’s nothing for it but gravy. But I prefer dark meat anyway.
Domestic turkey is one of those battles that cannot be won. The things have been bred way too breast heavy. It is a case where brining helps (and I am with Peony, I’ll make my own, thank you), but even then it is not sufficient. A subcutaneous stuffing (we call it batutta) of pancetta, fennel seed, garlic and rosemary helps, too (although at this point I must ask, why not goose?).
My answer? I skip on the turkey. We have had goose at Christmas for the last 10 years. I have alternated between French recipes, Italian recipes, goose confit, and every year it has been a hit. I also have the happy side effect of a good supply of goose fat, goose cracklings, goose stock, and goose demi (I use the pan juices and thin them with beef stock, then strain and thicken, more or less). Goose is a magnificent bird, and can be had cheaply, if you hunt. Then again, if you hunt you can have wild turkey, which is a great delight (beautiful animal, too).
One can brine lean pork to good advantage, but larding it with pancetta has been my recent method. I have gotten to where I just don’t go for an arista unless the pork has a nice fat layer or has been larded with pancetta. Not only does it keep the meat moist and flavorful, but when you roast it over a wood fire, it makes the smokiness blend with the meat much better. It is quick and easy to do, and really brings out the flavor.