Can you only cook 4 dishes? Do you eat spag bol twice a week?

Heth_2

I never cook spaghetti bolognese, and can cook many more than 4 dishes, and regularly do. I have loads of cookery books and will usually do at least one new dish a week. Of course we have quick and easy things, mainly pasta (never sauce from a jar though, unless maybe camping) when we are working late, as well as meals I have batch cooked and frozen. We eat some things we like more often, but also tend to have seasonal phases, like in the summer we had alot of different courgette dishes as we had so many in the garden, whereas in the winter we don't eat them at all. There are other things we have more in the summer like bbqs, omlette, salads and other more wintery things like a casserole. I love variety and would get bored eating the same thing too often.

sonee2405

I cant cook to save my life.Can someone please tell me how to make veggie spaghetti bolognese please or cheese pie.I know how to make any type of biriani or curry though because i watch my mum and have it all memorised -problem is i dont like indian food and live on chips

stefejb

I hardly ever cook without a recipe - i sit down with a book at the beginning of the week and write down the recipes and page numbers that i want to do and then decide daily which one. I suppose that really there is very little that I could do "off the top of my head" but I do consider myself a goodish cook, cook only from scratch, and ensure that I'm not duplicating. I shop more or less daily with a list so I don't end up with lots of things in the cupboards and if i do I will look for recipes incroporating ingredients that I have. i use the same recipe book each week so we end up having "themed" weeks - at the moment we are saving for holidays so the theme is Student Veggie

lambanana

I never have spaghetti bolognese, my bf doesn't like spaghetti...or mince! We have pasta shapes and vegetable-y sauces at least once a week though, cheap and cheerful and as quick as putting a ready meal in the microwave.

thriftlady_2

showtunesgirl wrote: »

I would be wary of making generalisatons such as this.

Not a generalisation just a suspicion I have based on foodie conversations with Italian and Spanish friends. They seem to be more conservative in what they cook than Brits are. By that I mean they cook like their mammas/madres cooked. Brits seem more susceptible to food fashions and we are bombarded by many different styles and cusines.

newleaf

Spag Bol twice a week??? Crumbs, I'm not eating my share that's for sure. We had it about 2 months ago, and that's the first time in years. (I found some old spaghetti I had forgotten about!)
I'd like to think we newleafs are quite imaginative and inventive with our workaday nosh, but there are a few favourites that crop up once every week or two - mr newleaf makes a wonderful tuna lasagne, and a spicy fried rice that's equally good.


*Hangs head in shame*. I have already confessed elsewhere on this board about the Loyd Grossman sauce

lil_me

I do vary stuff mainly because I prefer it, DP would eat same thing day in day out if it was something he liked. I don't think there is more than one day this month he hasn't had a cheese and ham toastie.

I also try to not do similar meals, if I do curry and rice and fancy chilli I will do it with chips or baked potato rather than rice. I do enjoy Italian food, but do vary what I make, lasagne, bolognese etc. Like I have said before I will batch cook the bolognese sauce but use it for various things inc Mexican.

Churchmouse

Well maybe I should whisper this but......... I LOVE spag bol! There I've said it! I actually adore Italian food full stop. I do eat spag bol probably twice a month :eek: Having said that no two batches are ever the same, being cooked entirely from scratch and dependent on what amounts of ingredients I have. I bulk cook and then freeze it in portions and it, along with chilli is my emergency too tired/lazy/pushed for time to cook meal.:D

We do enjoy a fair bit of variety and I can cook a great many more than 4 meals.

Perhaps I need to join Penny-Pincher! at the addicts centre:rotfl: If there's a class for shepherd's pie addicts, there must be one for spag bol ones:o

jcr16

i love spag bol. we prob have it every couple of week's. ( it the one dinner my daughter loves) i make loads more than 4 different meals. that seems so boring.

i must say when i was preg with my daughter i had a craving for spag bol and i would eat it prob once a day maybe twice if i had it for lunch and dinner. but the craving only lasted a few weeks. i then went onto tuna and pickled onions. lol.~( i craved oranges with my son , so i am not totally mad)

Softstuff

thriftlady wrote: »

Not a generalisation just a suspicion I have based on foodie conversations with Italian and Spanish friends. They seem to be more conservative in what they cook than Brits are. By that I mean they cook like their mammas/madres cooked. Brits seem more susceptible to food fashions and we are bombarded by many different styles and cusines.

If I cooked like my mum I'd pierce the film on top a few times with a fork, pop it in the microwave and wait for it to go ding whilst a tin of peas got slowly but surely cremated on the hob :rotfl:

I see nothing wrong with eating foods from other cultures, but then I've never been a fan of a lot of the foods classed as British cuisine (can't stand mash which makes Shepherds pie nauseating).

Hubbie and I think we should have been born italian. The breads, bakes, pastas, stews, pizzas, vegetable dishes - all appeal to us. We don't do spag bol much at all.... but I could cook what you might call 3 pasta dishes in a week, but they would be so very different you wouldn't be bored.

As for having a repertoire... I could cook about 200 dishes from memory... heck, I do all my baking without a recipe. But when we want to try something new or specific I look at recipes just the once, adapt, and use.