not working at all for me !

mardatha

PHEW! Thanks so much all, I managed to lose the thread.. it and my last remaining brain cell. I am a terrible cook, always have been. Hate loathe & detest cooking although I am a good baker. We cant eat home baking much now, he's diabetic and I'm fat. (sob!) I like the idea of following the recipes/plans but without trying to get sneaky with oatmeal
I will plod on ! ty .

mardatha

the last nail went in today .... the stew that I had made and put in the freezer. He almost cried when I slammed it down in front of him.....and he asked for salads all next week !
THATSIT ! I'M FINISHED ! :mad:

Ches

I am so sorry to say this but I have found your posts hilarious. Please don't give up if only to keep me amused. And BTW my OH is a grumpy old sod and although I have a reputation in the family for being a fairly good cook he has always found something wrong with every meal I have ever put in front of him for the last 20 years.

mardatha

I think we must be married to the same bigamist. He isnt a 6ft Scotsman called Jimmy is he?

queen_of_string

Just to cheer you, I have been OS on and off all my life, today I put some chicken and stuff in the slow cooker and wandered off to work feeling very smug. I have to tell you, it was horrible, not even saveable, not even with ketchup!! ( that's bad). We all have disasters and all of us have families that think we have finally lost it from time to time. It's a learning curve, roll with the punches, you'll be fine.

hollyh

Don't give up. I have 3 ungrateful stepchildren who moan like hell about my cooking:mad: an Oh who occassionaly moans :rolleyes: and my kids who are too scared to complain too much;)


Only me, Oh and Ds2 will eat hm bread

My potato wedges actually all got eaten today for the first time ever. I just keep giving it to them until they stop moaning they'll eat it eventually;)

One stepson doesn't like pasta but will eat it with bolognaise and nothing else. Last week i made a bolognaise sauce but without the mince cause i had a migrane and didn't feel up to cooking much, i served it with pasta. SS comes in and says i'm not eating that so i said starve then:p . Oh then goes and buys him a curry:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: . I was so cross. If he wouldn't ever eat pasta i could kind of understand, but he'll eat it with bolognaise and the sauce was exactly the same just without meat

I do tend to stick to what i know i can cook well because when i start experimenting that's when things go wrong:o . U will make mistakes along the way and not everything will be perfect but it's fun trying.;)

donny-gal

mardatha wrote: »

PHEW! Thanks so much all, I managed to lose the thread.. it and my last remaining brain cell. I am a terrible cook, always have been. Hate loathe & detest cooking although I am a good baker. We cant eat home baking much now, he's diabetic and I'm fat. (sob!) I like the idea of following the recipes/plans but without trying to get sneaky with oatmeal
I will plod on ! ty .

I think you have hit the nail on the head with the above statement. I can cook if I want, BUT you have to give it care and attention, i.e. start doing something else when you have something in the oven:o , especially don't go on here:eek: . I agree that you have to start small, and start being OS = cook it yourself first, and MS next. I find a tin of Baked Beans goes down well to bulk out mince at our house. Also add things slowly maybe a tablespoonful of carrots to start with, once they are used to then then slowly increase until the optimum level for saving/taste/acceptability are reached. If I buy lean mince I can cook it and use it, without spending hours in the kitchen, I just put the mince into the SC with a stock cube and leave it to cook (we don't like onions (especially me!)). I could then come home from work peel spuds cook/mash them, throw a tin of beans into the mince which would warm through while the potatoes were cooking, and depending on time allowance, would either turn into a cottage pie and crisp in the over/grill with cheese on top, or just serve as mince and potatoes, no veg value I know, but made sure there was some fruit for desert. Then start adding a bit of carrot to the mince as said before. You can bulk out with extra potatoes which always go down well at our house. If I used value mince, then I would cook it in the SC as normal the day before, put in a tall narrow container to ensure gravy was on the top, chill, remove the fat which would set on the top and warm up in Microwave next day. Cheaper cuts of meat could be trimmed of fat and done in the SC making a kind of roast to slowly wean the Roast fans away from just the dearest meat, without the dinner changing drastically, Brisket inthe SC is very tender and often tastier than an expensive beef joint. The question is time, you cannot become a domestic goddess/cook overnight if working and time is short. I became an expert at what I could turn out within 10 minutes of getting through the door - my attention span in the kitchen can last that long.

There are those who are natural at it too, and love it, my hand made pastry is like cardboard, it is passable via the Chef, but my MIL could turn our pastry to die for, without even trying, and I am still trying with scones. Oh that reminds me of another one, try putting an unsweetened plain or cheese scone mixture, cut into rounds like scones on top of cooked mince/stewing steak/stew in the oven, at scone cooking temp until brown, another filler cheaper than meat. A less fatty dumpling in effect. Usually called a Cobber.

Don't give up, write down what your OH's favourite foods are and try incorporting bits of those into others or changing one part of a meal rather than the whole.
DG

mardatha

LOL thanks for that , you do help. If I throw stuff into anything it always comes out a disaster. Unless I throw stuff at him, that makes me feel much better.

mummysaver

This thread has made me laugh, sorry mardatha! Throwing things together comes easy to some people, but the rest of us have to learn how to do it! My mother was a dreadful cook, never really learnt how to cook properly without closely following recipe books until various friends mums and an old boyfriend taught me!

For stews a rule is to only throw in veg that need a lot of cooking, everything else, like brocoli, will turn to mush. Basically this means just adding root veg, pots, parsnips, squashes, carrots, etc. A few peas or bits of sweetcorn if you fancy can be added towards the end of cooking. If you want to add green stuff it can be done near the very end, but is generally cooked separately and served alongside the stew.

As far as bulking out mince goes, I use value mince and find that a handful of oats and a handful of red lentils (the ones that go mushy, green puy lentils keep their shape and don't hide themselves, and you can't pretend they're bits of carrot either!). This seems to work ok if done in the slow cooker, but you do need extra stock (from a cube in this house - remember these mean you need to add less salt), but not if i cook it in a pan, it is the long slow cooking that hides it all! It might be easier for you to make a tomato sauce with loads of veg (again don't add too many green things, or if you use courgettes peel them, else the sauce goes brown) and then bulk out mince for bolognese like that - the tip about not having a brown sauce is just cos your family sound like they might suspect something if the sauce isn't reddish!

Mushroom sauce does tend to go brown, unless you use tiny white button mushroom, but even then it can brown, looks icky but does taste nice, especially with a bit of garlic added! A quick way of doing a mushroom pasta is to cook your pasta, tip over a can of can of Campbell's condensed mushroom soup and stir through, also good with leftover chicken added - dd3's fave! Had to ask my neighbour for the "recipe" as she always seems to have it there and raves about it, my poor neighbour was quite embarrassed to admit it was from a tin!

Biscuits and cakes are always a good one to get the kids to make, then if it works all well and good, if not they usually eat them anyway! Again to echo others, Twink's hobnobs are pretty foolproof so long as you don't eat the mix before you've cooked it, and you must keep an eye on the timing. Otherwise have a look for a microwave cake recipe, these are almost impossible to get wrong, though the cake doesn't really keep.

Good luck with the OS, and just keep going! If everyone keeps moaning work out your mealplans together with them, or give them an allocated amount of money/ingredients and get them to produce something.

mummysaver

Just had another thought, how about home made burgers in buns and chips, simple to make, just mix mince, onions, herbs, salt and pepper at their simplest, can add about a slice of thick bread (or small handful of oatmeal!) and an egg to make it go a bit further. Just need to make sure that mince isn't really lean else they won't stick together.

I'd serve it with a nice salad for you, and just a salad for him without said burger and chips for your oh, well that was what he wanted wasn't it!