A little victory on the domestic front.
Yesterday I made dinner. It was edible, for everybody Wrigglebot included. Now I know to a lot of people this doesn’t seem like a big deal but I don’t cook. In fact this could quite possibly be the first dinner I have made all year. It was a Shepherd’s Pie except with veggies in it as well as meat because all growing boys need vegetables.
The difficulty wasn’t really in the cooking it was in the coordination. Husband wasn’t home yet so Wrigglebot had to be entertained whilst I was cooking and then bathed while it was in the oven. I plopped him in his high chair for a while with some toys, and he was fine until he realised that food wasn’t coming and then he started whinging, which was when the meat began to burn but not too badly, as I said before it was still edible.
I am starting to realise that Wrigglebot can’t eat baby food for his whole life and now he is capable of chewing and swallowing most things so he should be eating what we are eating, so I am feeling the need to cook. I want to cook easy meals; they should involve no more than five ingredients, four steps and if they use more than two pans they are not for me. If anyone has any suggestions I would welcome comments, keeping in mind the above stipulations. Quite simply any recipes need to be foolproof, the other day I was just browning off some mince and the paper in the packet got browned off with it. Why on earth do they put paper on meat and why isn’t there a massive warning on the plastic wrapping?
May 29th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
It strikes me that a crockpot would be ideal in this situation – you throw some veggies and meat in it at a convenient time in the morning, turn it on, and it’s ready to eat at whatever time is convenient in the evening. It works around baths and husbands and everything and the recipes are usually dead easy. And the darned paper we’ve all stirred into the spag bol absorbs meat juice…..mmm..fat water and blood.
May 30th, 2007 at 8:56 am
these are our family favorites:
nachos: browned ground beef or turkey with taco seasoning, on top of tortilla chips, with shredded cheese over it, melted under the broiler for like 2 minutes max, and then eaten with sour cream, salsa and chopped veggies if you want (takes approx. 10 minutes)
tacos: same as above, but instead we just put all ingredients on the table, and don’t melt the cheese. Instead of the tortilla chips we have taco shells to stuff our ingredients into (takes approx. 15 minutes)
pork barbeque sandwiches: pork rump or pork something pretty cheap, cooked all day in the slow cooker (crock pot) (10 hours low 5 high) use fork to break up meat, add BBQ sauce, serve on hamburger buns (prep time only about 10 minutes)
spaghetti: brown ground beef or turkey and onions and garlic, add store bought Spaghetti sauce, add can of diced tomatoes, serve over noodles (approx 20 minutes)
beef stroganoff: brown ground beef or turkey and onions and mushrooms, add 1 can cream of mushroom soup, one cup or more of sour cream, simmer, serve over egg noodles or rice (rice takes 30 minutes usually, I start is at same time, and simmer till rice is ready)
we do a lot of easy recipies, a lot of ground turkey, a lot of barbequing hamburgers and hotdogs too:) Hope you figure out some easy things he and you’ll eat!
May 31st, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Thanks heaps for your suggestions Joy. I will definitely try some of these.
June 5th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
corex’s vegie pasta.
You get some vegetables and chop them big, then some bacon and chop them and chuck them all in a fry pan with some olive oil. Fry it up a bit but keep the vegies crunchy. Get some of those wagon wheel pasta things and boil them (i like them because they are a fun shape). At the same time or before make a tomato type pasta sauce (the easy way is best, get a jar) heat that up in a big pot, big enough to fit all the vegies and the pasta (once its cooked for the pasta) then chuck all the ingredients into the pot with the sauce for a while til its nice and hot. The thing about food is it needs to taste good so do lots of taste tests if its boring use a little salt and stuff like pepper is hard to get wrong.
corex’ steak.
Get the phone, call corex, tell him you want steak. Get some plates make a salad and wait for a knock on the front door glass and do something fun with Wrigglebot for 30 minutes.
voilà corex’s steak.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Can I follow up my comment by lending you my crockpot with some recipes? It would be much more helpful if you had one to try out. (I can’t praise its flexibility and short prep time enough). Joy’s BBQ pork sounds like a good one…