Want to eat healthier but recipes still say microwave

Lizling

Don't feel bad about not recognising ingredients. I cook all the time and eat out quite a lot, but I still come across ingredients that are new to me easily once a week. That's fine - I just ask or google it and learn something new.

For techniques, Youtube is your friend. I just searched 'how to dice an onion' (to borrow an example from the thread) and from the first page alone, you could be taught onion-dicing by famous chefs like Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay.

katylou6180

Gwin, I understand totally your non-cooking! I can cook well, but can't always be bothered after a long day at work, agree with other posters about a slow cooker mine's a godsend! It's the meals not the prep- you can eat a lot of good stuff out of the microwave with a few utensils- and before someone shoots me down, I'm going with your theme of non-cooking. Things like jacket spuds with fillings and omelettes are really easy to do in the microwave, and nutritious too. Another site that might help you is canned food uk, which gives you lots of simple, nutritious things to make up out of throwing tins together- so they say (only going by what I've read) the canning process uses less preservatives and additives than ready meals and you really can throw together something good for you and filling out of tins, simply and save the leftovers for another day. Just my twopenneth, good luck whatever you do xx

Horace

I also hate ironing and vacuuming - chores I loathe.

When I did my beef stew the other day, I served it with tinned spuds (27p in Aldi), I heated them separately and then I chucked the remainder in with the leftover stew and added some frozen peas and cooked it up in the slow cooker again.

I use another cheat (thanks to Delia) sometimes, I use tinned onions called Eazy Onions which are chopped and partially cooked onions in olive oil so I will bung them in a frying pan and fry them off a bit before adding mince which I then brown before adding other things.

Must admit I quite fancy the recipe that someone else has given to add tinned veg and gravy granules to mince (might try that next time).

Good luck.

maman

gwin wrote: »

I like the idea of the spag bols and shepherds pies and the slow cooker sounds a great idea.

Horace wrote: »

Must admit I quite fancy the recipe that someone else has given to add tinned veg and gravy granules to mince (might try that next time).

Good luck.

gwin, if you made the mince & tatties recipe that suki suggested whether in a saucepan on the hob or in a slow cooker when you buy one;) it would make perfect shepherds pies (add mash to the top but leave the tinned potatoes out). Or if you followed almost the same recipe with a tin of tomatoes instead of the gravy and a few herbs (teaspoon of mixed herbs is fine), salt and pepper and perhaps stir in a couple of teaspoons of lazy garlic then you'd have a lovely Bolognese sauce. As you're cooking for one you could make a large amount (probably four portions) with a packet of mince and freeze 3 of them for another day. Then you'd have your own ready meals.


Do keep posting, there's loads of help available on here. Tell us what you like to eat and we'll make it as simple as possible and keep asking questions however daft they may seem. We all started where you are now.:)

forgotmyname

suki1964 wrote: »

The best food for you is the food that resembles the base product. The more processed, the worse it is for you

Did anyone watch the TV show healthiest nationality on the planet? Not sure of the correct title.

French eat more fats than us, yet have less heart attacks and cholestorol.

The healthies nations take the product from the land or sea and cook it as little as possible.

I think Iceland was the healthiest? It said take a fish and eat it raw. Perfect. Cook it 2 minutes each side, OK but not so good. Cook it 4 or 5 minutes per side and its lost all its goodness.

suki1964

forgotmyname wrote: »

Did anyone watch the TV show healthiest nationality on the planet? Not sure of the correct title.

French eat more fats than us, yet have less heart attacks and cholestorol.

The healthies nations take the product from the land or sea and cook it as little as possible.

I think Iceland was the healthiest? It said take a fish and eat it raw. Perfect. Cook it 2 minutes each side, OK but not so good. Cook it 4 or 5 minutes per side and its lost all its goodness.

Yes I did watch that and you are correct when you say they concluded that Iceland had the healthiest diet, it had nothing to do with raw fish eating


You are confusing the Inuits, who are in Alaska

LameWolf

gwin there are no foolish questions re cooking - just things you need to know and haven't yet got an answer to. Ask away; no-one worth their salt will think any the less of you. I've been in the situation before when faced with a "foreign" ingredient of not knowing if it was suitable for vegetarians or not!!:D

Suki I didn't know how to cook mince (as in meat mince - I do use soya mince all the time) til a couple of months ago (I'm 54, btw). We're a host family for a dog-sitting service, and one little guest brought frozen mince to be cooked for her dinner. *ahem* I got DH to do it; the smell, to me, was just rank!:rotfl:

How to dice onions - hand 'em to DH and look pathetic.:rotfl:

And I must be weird, because I actually quite like vacuuming.:eek: I don't like ironing, though.:D

suki1964

LameWolf wrote: »

gwin there are no foolish questions re cooking - just things you need to know and haven't yet got an answer to. Ask away; no-one worth their salt will think any the less of you. I've been in the situation before when faced with a "foreign" ingredient of not knowing if it was suitable for vegetarians or not!!:D

Suki I didn't know how to cook mince (as in meat mince - I do use soya mince all the time) til a couple of months ago (I'm 54, btw). We're a host family for a dog-sitting service, and one little guest brought frozen mince to be cooked for her dinner. *ahem* I got DH to do it; the smell, to me, was just rank!:rotfl:

How to dice onions - hand 'em to DH and look pathetic.:rotfl:

And I must be weird, because I actually quite like vacuuming.:eek: I don't like ironing, though.:D

:rotfl:@ the dogs mince

Be grateful it was only mince and not liver or melts, you would have been gagging lololol

Fruball

LameWolf wrote: »

gwin there are no foolish questions re cooking - just things you need to know and haven't yet got an answer to. Ask away; no-one worth their salt will think any the less of you. I've been in the situation before when faced with a "foreign" ingredient of not knowing if it was suitable for vegetarians or not!!:D

Suki I didn't know how to cook mince (as in meat mince - I do use soya mince all the time) til a couple of months ago (I'm 54, btw). We're a host family for a dog-sitting service, and one little guest brought frozen mince to be cooked for her dinner. *ahem* I got DH to do it; the smell, to me, was just rank!:rotfl:

How to dice onions - hand 'em to DH and look pathetic.:rotfl:

And I must be weird, because I actually quite like vacuuming.:eek: I don't like ironing, though.:D

I would have fed that dog raw mince - much better for it My dog eats raw food every single day - I wouldn't feed anything else

LameWolf

Fruball wrote: »

I would have fed that dog raw mince - much better for it My dog eats raw food every single day - I wouldn't feed anything else

Thing is, I'm required to do precisely what the owners request. I don't always agree with them; but they're paying for me to do what I'm told.:cool: And presumably cooked mince is what Amber's used to.