quick meal ideas

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.

Couscous cooks very quickly, although it's a pain to sweep off the floor
after the meal is done. Serve with any kind of hot dog or sausage your
kids like. Or with leftover meat, or cheese, and veggies.

Most veggies cook well and quickly in the microwave. Wash the veggies,
pierce if it's a squash or potato, wrap in a damp paper towel and
microwave for 3-10 minutes, depending on the veggie and your microwave.

Cook ahead: pasta can be made in the AM or a day ahead and kept in the
fridge. Most meals can be made in quantity, so you can eat the
leftoverss the next day or freeze for later.

Check out Aviva Goldfarb's book "The Six-O'clock Scramble". Quick,
healthy meals that kids tend to like. (Yes, I know Aviva. That's how I
learned about the book. Lots of good ideas in it.)

I hope these thoughts help.
--Beth Kevles

http://web.mit.edu/kevles/www/nomilk.html -- a page for the milk-allergic
Disclaimer: Nothing in this message should be construed as medical
advice. Please consult with your own medical practicioner.

NOTE: No email is read at my MIT address. Use the AOL one if you would
like me to reply.

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

I cook dry beans in the crock pot quite a bit. I use the "Whole Foods
for the Whole Family" "Easy Beans" recipe, but spicing them just how I
like. It works better if you either pre-soak the beans or pour
boiling water into the crock pot in the beginning.

--Betsy

"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?

Aula

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.

"Anne Rogers" wrote in message
. ..
looks like we're going to have 2 nights where we won't be getting in the
house until after 6, I'm planning to give a late snack and have dinner
when we get home, rather than doing packed dinner for the kids, but I'm
struggling for ideas to what to cook FAST. We have a crock pot and a timer
on the oven and both days we're home in the afternoon. We also have a big
freezer to store stuff. So far I can only think of Pizza and Lasagna!

Anne

If it's only a couple of days (is this a one-off or something that will
happen on a long-term basis?) , make something simple like sandwiches and
soup, omelets, or plan for leftovers, like meatloaf sandwiches, chicken
wraps, bbq pork sandwiches, etc.
If you have a Wegmans (I 3 Wegmans! ) or a Costco nearby, they have
fabulous ready made entrees that aren't frozen (my major beef with Trader
Joes, though I love them too) , and aren't terribly expensive for what you
get.
I'm not a quick cook, I work, and try not to rely on canned/packaged foods
(sodium issues) so I'm lucky if I get dinner on the table by 7:00 pm most
nights. Everyone's used to it by now, though.

Anne Rogers wrote:


Spagetti

do you mean the tinned stuff? otherwise it's still quite time consuming,
I confess to not particularly liking the tinned stuff, but then maybe I
need to try some different varieties.

We usually cook the pasta fresh (which doesn't take long) and use the
spaghetti sauce in the jar with maybe added mushrooms or crumbled
ground beef or something in it. I almost never make the sauce from
scratch.

We do have the canned Chef-Boyardee type stuff on hand but rarely use
it.

"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.

Anne Rogers wrote:


And I also used Peg Bracken's "I Hate to Cook Book" for some things.

I'll look out for it.

You can usually get a paperback of it for cheap. She's also written
the "I Hate to Cook Book Appendix"

Brown meat balls, put onion soup mix, minute rice and water in with
the meat balls, cover and simmer until the rice is done.

Do you happen to know a good brand? One of the things about being a
foreigner is much less brand awareness and much less of an idea about
the relative price of things, if I look to prepare the same meals I did
in the UK it can end up very expensive and sometimes impossible!

Do you mean soup mix or rice? I use the freeze dried or foil packaged
dry soup mix (like Lipton), and mostly I use Minute Rice because
that's done in 5 minutes. For the meat balls, I just take plain
ground beef and roll it around to make a little ball of it. The
onion soup flavors it.

There's also a meatball recipe in Peg Bracken which uses tomato paste
and whole berry cranberry sauce - I think she calls it Rosy Meatballs.
This is similar, except that I don't bother seasoning the meatballs.

Recipe Name: ROSY MEATBALLS
Category: BEEF
Serves: 6

1 pound Lean Ground Beef or Ground Round
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 beaten egg
1/2 small onion minced
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
salt and pepper to taste

Sauce:

1 cup tomato sauce
16 ounces whole berry cranberry sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Mix first five ingredients well.
Shape into bite-sized meatballs.
Bake in conventional oven at 350 degrees for approximately 15-20
minutes.
Be sure not to overcook.

Sauce:
Combine whole berry cranberry sauce and tomato sauce.
Simmer on stovetop for approximately 15-20 minutes.
Pour over meatballs and serve.

Anne Rogers wrote:


You could make some pasta sauce in advance, and heat it up while
some pasta cooks.

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.

I've used an electric stove basically all my married life except for
when I was at my mom's, and I don't like gas. Are you at altitude
where you are? Because that will make more of a difference in the
water boiling time (and temperature) than I would think the
electricity voltage would.

Maybe you are not doing it right? You need a pan with a flat bottom
(which isn't so important for gas) that transmits heat well. Copper
bottom or a copper cored pot is better than pure stainless. And I
think it will boil faster if there is a well fitting lid on the pot.
(Which also prevents it from being that proverbial watched pot)

The microwave is especially good for, boiling water has got to be at
the top of the list. It’s fast. Depending on the microwave,
under-a-minute fast. The microwave can have a mug of water boiling hot
in two minutes

Also you turn the heat all the way up in the beginning to get the
stove burner coils bright red for a kick start. Then you can turn it
down for the actual cooking.

Rosalie B. wrote:
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.

Thanks.

I never heard of one called that. Quite logical, really.

Jeff