Thursday, February 03, 2005

mm.. dinner

I really want to be a better cook. But it’s so hard to cook after work when you’re tired and would rather sit back and boil a pot of water for dumplings or instant noodles. Some nights I like to get fancy and crack an egg in my noodles.. oooh.. Iron chef here I come. Pasta requires a little more work. One pot for the noodles and another pot for the sauce. That’s double the pots, double the clean up. I can also kick that up a notch and add ground beef.

The George Foremen grill is also great, though I haven’t used it in a long time. It makes the grilled chicken or whatever you put in there too tough and chewy, but it sure beats what I had for dinner last night. A Twix bar before my toastmasters meeting and half a bag of Chex mix, a few bites of pineapple during the snack portion of the meeting then I went home. Still feeling unsatisfied I tossed in two chocolate covered macadamia nuts while I searched around the kitchen for food. I reached for two eggo waffles, toasted then buttered. Mm… still hungry. I reached for the remainder of my Chex Mix. It was almost 11pm.. nothing was going to satiate me that night, so I just drank lots of water to rid the salty chex mix and called it a meal.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

On a busy time schedule, and don't want to cook sometimes its easy to just plan out and prepare the day before and then throw everything together that night. Or just get a personal chef and that will cut out the the need for planning.

head dump said...

I've tried that before and went grocery shopping, all that grocery ended up rotting 'cuz I never got around to cooking!

celia said...

that's why you buy dry food or canned food. buy things like mac & cheese. they're easy to make and it's filling. canned soup, like chunky beef. buy bread & sandwich meat. these are all quickies and yet they're filling.

Ben said...

I had a huge reply for you, but instead, I'll give you a summary of it here. And I'll post it on my blog for my readers in a few days.

Most instant foods are high in carbs and high in sodium. (Take a look at your can of beef/chicken soup.) You're better off buying something like the rotisserie chicken at Costco, which will easily feed you for a few days with a variety of meat: dark meats to eat on their own, white meats for whenever you need chicken breast. Salads are very convenient, and dirt cheap at Costco; slightly more at Safeway. And I love buying those country-mix frozen veggies (peas, carrots, corn).

What I find works is "strategically" buying groceries based on how long they'll stay fresh. If you pre-cut or pre-slice some staple ingredients and freeze them, cooking is made infinitely easier. And then always keep a small selection of decently healthy snacks to tide you over in case you're really in a bind.

Damn, now I'm hungry.