quick meal ideas

(Beth Kevles) wrote:


Quick meal at our home:

Tuna-pasta-peas: Make pasta. Add tuna (flake it so it's not in chunks)
and a bag of frozen peas. Add salt to taste. Serve. You can make this
same meal as a casserole with the addition of a can of Campbell's
cream-of-mushroom soup, and then bake for about 15 minutes instead of
serving promptly.

Tonight dh made a tuna, pasta, pea salad. The pasta was whole grain
piene (sp? it is like little pipes), and it had hardboiled eggs
(which he does according to Martha Stewart's recipe a dozen at a
time), tomatoes, tuna, and peas on lettuce. You can also substitute
cottage cheese for some of the mayo.

"Anne Rogers" wrote in message
. ..
but I'm
struggling for ideas to what to cook FAST.

We have two nights in our week like this,too. On those nights, I either
make something ahead of time in the crock pot so that it is ready and
everyone can eat as soon as they are ready....stews and soups, pasta sauce
and pasta, pot roast , stuff like that.
For non-crock pot meals: ham steaks are super fast, just toss them in the
skillet for a couple of minutes to warm them up, serve with a side dish of
some sort (macaroni salad prepared ahead of time, a can of corn and maybe
some sliced tomatoes). Quick nights like this my kids sometimes will just
eat a bowl of cereal and some fruit, or scrambled eggs and toast. Peanut
Butter and Jelly sandwiches, tuna sandwiches or grilled cheese are also
extremely fast and simple: serve them with some carrot and celery sticks and
a piece of fruit and dinner is done in no time flat. You can also take
meatballs (made ahead of time) and warm them up in sauce, put them on
grinder rolls add some mozarella cheese and stick them under the broiler for
a minute to melt the cheese.

Jeff wrote:
Anne Rogers wrote:


I'd do jacket potatoes in that case.


silly me, where did I put my brain!


What are jacket potatoes? I know kids' jackets get dirty, but I don't
think they get dirty enough to grow potatoes, besdides, they don't get
enough sun.

Either baked potatoes or potatoes cooked in the microwave so they come
out the same as baked potatoes.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

Aula wrote:
"Anne Rogers" wrote in message
. ..

you know it's a difference you don't really think about or expect, but
with the lower voltage in the US and not having gas, water simply takes
longer to boil, which means for pasta it's as long to boil the water as it
is to cook it, rather than it being something that if you do when you
first come in, by the time you have the pasta measured out, it's pretty
much done. Plus, the range of fresh pasta (=decreased cooking time), I
always used to keep filled fresh pasta in the fridge, you could basically
get it to the table in 7 minutes, that's impossible here.



Wow, and *I* thought putting a meal on the table in 30 minutes start to
finish was fast! Otherwise I'd expect a 45 to 90 minute meal event,
sometimes longer for roasts, fussy things like lasagna or quiche. I had no
idea the difference in electricity would impact that, although to be honest
we've not had anything but gas stoves since we got married [and I had mainly
gas stoves most of my 15 years of single life as well] so I'd not have
considered that. Perhaps you need to get a gas stove! Any possibility of
that happening?

I would have said allow 10 minutes to do that meal :-).

Yeah, over here, you can buy fresh filled pasta in the supermarkets:
most of them take about 3-4 minutes to boil. Allow 3 minutes for a
(electric) kettle full of water to boil, and a minute for the saucepan
to come to the boil after you have put the water in, and Anne's timings
aren't unreasonable. The sauce would heat up in the microwave.

One big difference seems to be that over here, most people have an
electric kettle for heating water: they've been common for longer then
most people have had microwaves, so the idea of heating water in a
microwave sounds a bit 'studentish', IYKWIM.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

deja.blues wrote:
"Anne Rogers" wrote in message
. ..

I'd do jacket potatoes in that case.

silly me, where did I put my brain!


Baked beans on toast with an egg on top is quick and easy.

unfortunately American baked beans are quite different from English ones
and they are fattier and we don't like the taste, I can get English ones
if I want to spend four times the price! shame as they are a good quick
meal.


Wegmans! They have Heinz Beans (green label) in their "world" section and
they were like $2.49. Acme (Albertson's where you are, maybe?) also carries
them and I don't recall them being very expensive.
I'd heard of the famous beans on toast and did a food experiment.

That's about four times what you'd pay over here - under 50p is common,
and anything over 75p for a 400g (about 14oz) would be extremely
expensive :-).

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

"Rosalie B." wrote in message
...
Jeff wrote:

Anne Rogers wrote:

I'd do jacket potatoes in that case.

silly me, where did I put my brain!

What are jacket potatoes? I know kids' jackets get dirty, but I don't
think they get dirty enough to grow potatoes, besdides, they don't get
enough sun.

...
I've always thought that just meant a baked potato. IIRC the jacket
part refers to the skin of the potato.
It is a baked potato. I like the French term for it "pomme de teirre dans la
robe de chambre" (give or take the odd spelling) "Potato in the dressing
gown" as we were taught at school. I bet they don't use the whole name
though.
Debbie

"Penny Gaines" wrote in message
...
Yeah, over here, you can buy fresh filled pasta in the supermarkets: most
of them take about 3-4 minutes to boil.

One can buy fresh pasta here, DiGiorno brand [spelling?] comes to mind, in
the dairy case. They have several types of pasta from regular spaghetti
type noodles to cheese or meat ravioli. Those do cook within minutes.
They are also far more expensive than boxed pastas so I avoid them.

Aula

"Aula" wrote in
:


"Penny Gaines" wrote in message
...
Yeah, over here, you can buy fresh filled pasta in the
supermarkets: most of them take about 3-4 minutes to boil.

One can buy fresh pasta here, DiGiorno brand [spelling?]
comes to mind, in the dairy case. They have several types
of pasta from regular spaghetti type noodles to cheese or
meat ravioli. Those do cook within minutes. They are also
far more expensive than boxed pastas so I avoid them.

but they taste *so* much better!
Tom got me the pasta maker attachment for my KitchenAid mixer
(the one that makes spagetti & noodles, not the roller). fresh
pasta with fresh eggs is amazing.
lee wants a ravioli board, even if Boo won't touch ravioli

"Anne Rogers" wrote in message
. ..

I do a lot of make aheads. DISCLAIMER: According to the cookbooks, what I
am about to suggest is considered unsafe. I do it anyway and have never
had anything even remotely resembling a problem. I do have a chest
freezer set to very cold.

I make a crockpot stew recipe in advance, doubling or tripling. I make
the recipe up to the point it goes into the crock pot. I put them in
freezer bags and freeze.

If I make a casserole, I make two and freeze one.

erm, why are those considered unsafe, they sound exactly like the methods
in the cookbooks I've seen, it's usually in the defrosting that the
official method is rather different to what you can get away with - so
you're supposed to defrost in the refridgerator, which can take forever, I
often leave something out for the first couple of hours then put it in the
fridge, then out again to finish defrosting.

Cheers
Anne


You are not supposed to mix uncooked meat and other ingredients then freeze.
I use "unsafe" methods for defrosting also. We have not gotten sick yet.

"Penny Gaines" wrote in message
...
deja.blues wrote:
"Anne Rogers" wrote in message
. ..

I'd do jacket potatoes in that case.

silly me, where did I put my brain!


Baked beans on toast with an egg on top is quick and easy.

unfortunately American baked beans are quite different from English ones
and they are fattier and we don't like the taste, I can get English ones
if I want to spend four times the price! shame as they are a good quick
meal.


Wegmans! They have Heinz Beans (green label) in their "world" section and
they were like $2.49. Acme (Albertson's where you are, maybe?) also
carries them and I don't recall them being very expensive.
I'd heard of the famous beans on toast and did a food experiment.

That's about four times what you'd pay over here - under 50p is common,
and anything over 75p for a 400g (about 14oz) would be extremely expensive
:-).

Here, that makes them only a few cents more than an American brand, though,
so I guess it would be wise to buy them from a store that imports in volume.