Please advice, what can I cook - living alone, working full time

MrsAtobe

This is surprisingly good, for those days when you are hungry and tired and can't wait for dinner. You could always have a salad and fruit afterwards, to make a more balanced meal.
http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/SPAGHETTI-WITH-MARMITE-5306

P.S. I made it with Bovril, I can't stand Marmite :-D

tizerbelle

MrsAtobe wrote: »

This is surprisingly good, for those days when you are hungry and tired and can't wait for dinner. You could always have a salad and fruit afterwards, to make a more balanced meal.
http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/SPAGHETTI-WITH-MARMITE-5306

P.S. I made it with Bovril, I can't stand Marmite :-D

Oh that takes me back. I used to do the same about 25 years ago as a skint student - but I'd use tomato ketchup and fresh ground pepper, no butter/parmesan. Can't stand marmite or bovril.

Mistral001

My 15min. meal: Microwave potatoes (12mins), Fry meat/fish (10 to 12 mins). Boil vegetables in saucepan (5min). Fry some onions/herbs/spices along with the meat if you want. All this will usually take less than 15mins to prepare and cook.


PS. Heat plate by putting a tablespoon of water on the plate and putting into microwave for one minute.

nannyboo1

Fusspot wrote: »

He has suggested me getting a steamer for the veg and a George Foreman grill for meat and fish but I don't want too many gadgets that I may not use plus I don't have space for.

All well and good but if like me you forget to take stuff out to defrost you would still have the same dilemma.

Sad as it sounds where a poor memory like mine is concerned either an alarm on your phone to go off half an hour before you leave home reminding you to take stuff from the freezer or as a friend of mine does she has put a poster up (she made on the computer) on the door
She leaves the house by and this has worked for her

Alnwicklass

Hi Fusspot! It does sound like your bf is in need of a little gentle reeducating when it comes to what is in food. You can easily find out what preservatives (if any) are in foods by reading labels and in some cases, frozen veg will retain more nutrients than the fresh equivalent.

If your bf is worried about cooking previously cooked food that has been frozen either commercially or at home, he might well have been the victim of someone else's poor food hygiene in the past. It took a while for me to eat quiche again after the unpleasant results of a friend who just "took the chill off it" in a warm oven for 10 minutes:eek:

Thinking about your meals, a lot of people have already given you some great ideas for batch cooking. Recipes using smaller pieces of meat/mince/beans that are in sauce seem to keep better in the freezer and are easier to defrost quickly. I most often freeze portions of chilli, bolognese, casseroles and soups as they take very little extra effort or supervision to heat up.
In the summer I will make lighter soups to have on the cooler days, and we can pretty much live on salads - I usually start with the basics of lettuce, tomato and cucumber and then look to see what I have that needs using up - if it's in my cupboards I must like it, so anything goes!

You do need to allow yourself a little planning time, even if you just set a reminder on your phone for breakfast time to check "what's for dinner?" then you can defrost, pre-prepare a bit or know to buy a specific ingredient that day rather than hitting the ready-meal shelves out of desperation rather than choice.

HTH

rozmister

I'm single and cook for myself almost every evening. Once in a while I batch cook chilli & bolognese (because you can start with the same base & then split it into two pans) and have this an emergency dinner.

I eat quite a lot of jacket potatoes with a topping like sweetcorn, bacon & cheese or prawns in mayonnaise and salad, homemade chips (nuke in the microwave for 6 minutes, pop in the oven for 15 minutes) with quorn sausages/burgers/preseasoned chicken breast & frozen veggies/salad, pasta with freshly chopped veggies and warmed up soft cheese (maybe some ham if I've bought any), chicken or fish with soy sauce & sweet chilli sauce, rice & frozen veggies and occasionally homemade chicken/vegetable curry with rice.

I make up something to do the first few days of lunch on a Sunday (normally pasta or quinoa but sometimes it's soup or a stew in the winter) and then for thursday & friday I have leftovers & deliberately make a big portion on wednesday & thursday night.

I used to have a steamer but I used to get annoyed having to clean all the bits (I only fixed the dishwasher recently & there's not much drying space in our flat between 3 of us) and having to build it so generally I pop my veg into a takeaway tub with about 1/2 a cm of water & microwave it giving it a shake halfway through.

For convenience I buy frozen peppers (they are better value most of the time too), frozen sweetcorn, frozen peas, frozen green beans and onions which I chop & freeze and use when needed. They don't have any additives & they taste fine to me but I've been eating them for years now!

Once you find a few fail safe cheap dishes & get into the habit of cooking you'll find it becomes much easier. I never sit down and have a cup of tea until my dinner is begun, I just know that if I stop after work I'll give up on making dinner & eat popcorn instead!

gozaimasu

Your slow cooker will be the key thing to get you eating something hot/nutritious when you get in. Get a decent recipe book and you'll see that you don't need to just eat stews.

Try baked potatoes (p rick with fork and wrap in foil) on low for 7 or 8 hours - cooked perfectly all the way through. All you'd need to do is put together a topping like cheese or tuna mayo that you could have pre-prepared in the fridge, or just take 5 mins to make it on the spot.

You could also try putting small portions of things like chilli in a glass ramekin in the slow cooker - as a hot topping for your baked potatoes. Again, on low for the same time and it doesn't dry out too much (makes a watery sauce nice and thick).

Chicken is also good on low - especially from frozen.

You could also do curries using (dried?) pulses, or something involving rice. I haven't tried these yet as I'm still experimenting with the slow cooker.

If you're after something quick, you could look at stir frying when you get in. Shouldn't take more than 10 mins to prepare/cook with a veggie only option. Only a wee bit longer for chicken. You could also chop all of the veg in advance so it just needs chucking in the frying pan.

jackieblack

kate_pixie wrote: »

You said though that you had problems in remembering to get the food out to defrost and that's where my major problem was too. It's just another thing to remember in an already busy morning.

One small tip that I could give and has SAVED me is to get the frozen meal out in the evening instead of the morning and left it defrost in the fridge. It's a lot easier to remember when you're putting the rest of your meal together or when washing up and gives you the safeguard of getting it out in the morning if you forget. You could even put a post it behind the sink to jog your memory.

Hope that helps

While reading through, this is exactly what I was going to suggest

queengoth

I buy chicken breasts raw then chop them into small pieces before freezing. They can then be cooked straight into a curry or stir fry without having to defrost first. Fish like salmon takes 5 mins tops in a microwave, I keep one Tupperware dish purely for fish, if you sprinkle on a little lemon juice or a tiny amount of seasoned oil, served with tinned spuds and micro veg. I also make a Thai chicken soup that takes about 10 mins, brown off your frozen chicken in the pan add soy sauce fish sauce and diced fresh or 1/4 teaspoon dried chillis. Add boiling water and boil for 5 mins, add stir fry frozen veg and bring back to boil. 3mins and you're done.

claire1a

I batch cook meat and jacket spuds and keep these wrapped in the fridge so when I come in I just heat it all up in the microwave (also head up frozen mixed veg) and bam have a meal. Sometimes i'll defost frozen homemade chilli or curry to go on the jackets or i'm a big fan of microwave rice (50p in h0mebargins)

Other things I do is cook a pizza and have half, half the next day with salad (if you sprinkle the base with a bit of water and stick it in the oven then it doesnt go chewy)

Or if I have a roast dinner on a sunday I plate up an extra plate and have it on say tuesday for my dinner and just make up some extra gravey in a mug.

There are loads of things you can go without it being a repetative but it does involve some planningn and cooking extas.