So I put together a few facts....

[conuly]

1. The kids keep coming home from school cranky and yawning. They get to bed too late.

2. When Jenn and/or 'dul gets home, it's already pretty late, and that's when they start cooking dinner.

3. Bonne-maman eats too late.

4. I'm home all day.

These added up to...

5. I should just make dinner every night instead of twice a week.

Which is what I'm endeavoring to do - prep dinner during the day, heat it at dinnertime. Anybody have any simple meal ideas? They should NOT rely on dairy (some substitution is okay, but it adds up fast), and they SHOULD have a good amount of vegetables or fruit in them.

Today I made:

Black beans with corn, red pepper, garlic, and culantro (that's not a typo)
Kale with tomatoes and sweet chorizo (bonus, the sale gave me three ounces of the spicy type free, so I'll use it elsewhere)
Sweet plantains with lime juice
Rice

So you can see that I have a green veggie (the kale), a yellow/orange veggie (the corn, and the mangoes for dessert), a red veggie (the tomato and red pepper), some starch (brown rice and plantains) and, of course, some protein (black beans and the chorizo). So that's a pretty complete meal, and other than the fact that mangoes cost a dollar apiece right now and I don't like them it was all pretty inexpensive, though it'll be cheaper still if I plan my menu in advance for next week. That's why I'm asking for ideas! Ideas for sides or for main dishes (which do NOT need to be meat-based) are appreciated. No crock-pot, so nothing like that.

Comments

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Spaghetti squash is really easy and delicious. You can either salt and pepper it and use it as a side vegetable, or put spaghetti sauce and meatballs over it and use it as a pasta substitution.

[conuly]

*pokes*

How are you? All the news today was "OMG, MASSIVE FLOODS IN ARIZONA! No, don't laugh, that's actually a lot of rain for them and it's floody."

[karalianne.livejournal.com]

Have a search over at allrecipes.com - totally great recipe site.

I tend to do meat + potatoes/rice, with fresh salad, but we need a lot of protein.

[conuly]

I can do that, but I like personal advice when possible. Allrecipes.com is a little... overwhelming.

[karalianne.livejournal.com]

True, it can be, at that.

You're feeding two kidlets, not just adults. When I was growing up, we always had salad with dinner. We ate a lot of pasta-based meals (e.g., spaghetti, casserole) because there were four kids to feed, and three were growing boys (and I held my own, to boot). Once or twice a week, we'd have poultry (usually thighs or drumsticks, bone-in and skin on), pork chops, or roast. Food gets expensive when you eat a lot of meat (like I do now).

Shake 'n' Bake chicken was always a favourite. Mom made her own coating instead of using the boxed stuff.

Casseroles would be either cream-soup based or tomato-based. That is, tuna casserole has cream of mushroom or cream of celery soup in it and cheese on top, while a hamburger casserole has tomato sauce and hamburger, and probably cheese on top. There are vegetarian versions around, as well, which use beans instead.

Spaghetti sauce was always made from scratch, not out of a jar, and it always had ground beef in it.

Homemade pizza was always a hit, but it's expensive to do (not as expensive as at a restaurant, but still). Same with lasagna.

Chili was also a big one. Kidney beans, tomatoes, veggies, ground beef, and chili powder!

And then there were other things, like lentil stew, chicken creole, and hamburger soup.

When we had meat, we would have either rice or potatoes (boiled or mashed), and for veggies we would have brussels sprouts, broccoli, or frozen mixed veggies.

[conuly]

I don't use ground beef in my pasta sauce, but I use sausage.

I'd like to have salad with dinner more often, I have to start doing that. If nothing else, it'd give them something to eat while waiting. (I want to get more BOWLS and start making SOUP more often as well. It's on my to-do list.)

[ourstreets.livejournal.com]

i make pan-fried chicken breasts w/kale, garlic, carrots, red cabbage and brown rice probably 3 times a week. spaghetti is also really good and easy - and you can stuff tons of veggies in there. ground beef is also super cheap. also, premade hot dishes. search google for "casserole". make a bunch of them on sunday, and you can have "just stick in in the oven for 2 hrs" dinner all week! i also do premade lasagnas - low dairy because song's somewhat sensitive to lactose - but they're not dairy free, so.

[ourstreets.livejournal.com]

also, i'd totally share recipes, but i just do the "what's in the fridge, let's cook it together" thing. we keep the place stocked with lots of raw (/frozen) meat, veggies, high fiber pasta, brown rice, and garlic and i just run from there. hope this is somewhat helpful.

[ourstreets.livejournal.com]

augh, also i didn't read the "don't need to be meat-based" thing.

song is SEVERELY hypoglycemic (she has seizures when it's not under control), so we do SUPER low sugar(/carbohydrate), high fiber (veggies), and meat EVERY SINGLE MEAL. so pbbt on all my comments. :P

[conuly]

Oh, you know, it's not that I'm against meat, just that I like veggies :)

And yeah, I make pasta once a week as it is, or twice. I can't so much as open a can of tomatoes without chopping up some spinach to go in it!

[becoming-mother.livejournal.com]

Burritos - bean/rice/veggie with salsa - might work well. Soups of all sorts.

I'm going to cross-link my main journal because that's where my recipes are hanging out. There's one for lentil soup (http://kyrielle.livejournal.com/1455180.html#cutid1) that we really liked (and it can be varied; the other variant I've tried and liked is here (http://kyrielle.livejournal.com/1444609.html#cutid1)).

And there's my mother's "goulash" (http://pics.livejournal.com/kyrielle/pic/0004yyaz) recipe - I have the scan, so that's what's to work with. It's not veggie heavy and does have meat but, although I haven't noted the variations, it's very amenable to having the meat changed (I used ground turkey once), replaced (beans are just lovely), and veggies tossed in as long as they're compatible with the base flavors.

I'm experimenting with more cooking myself these days - and if it seems like it'd survive freezing, I make extra and freeze it for on-the-go days. Some things work better than others. The goulash doesn't work (not a total surprise; the pasta goes soggy), though partial cooking might. The cooking time is so long that partial cooking might not save enough to be worth it, though.

Also tasty are roasted vegetables with just a touch of olive oil (and optionally spices, but I kinda like just veggies). I keep forgetting temps, so I just check a web site for a ballpark on it and then throw whatever veggies together.

Edited to add: warning, the goulash recipe makes a lot. I kid you not. Make sure you have a big pot for it, or halve it. It's insane. :P

A couple of our standards: pilaf, chicken...

[redbird]

One is a rice pilaf; for the number of people you're cooking for, it's going to be a side dish, I think.

Needed: 1 middle-sized onion, three tablespoons margarine (you could probably use plain oil, butter works but you've ruled that out), 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth (you can stretch this some--if you have 12 ounces of broth, just add four ounces of water), a handful of thin egg noodles, and a cup of uncooked long-grain white rice. Spices: black pepper, bay leaf, I like a couple of cloves, a whole cardamom pod or three, and/or a cinnamon stick, but anything except the pepper is optional.

Also a Dutch oven or other fairly heavy pot, with a lid (mine is oval and enamel, and trying to imitate the height of 1950s kitchen style, unsuccessfully, because I don't know what happened to my mother's Dutch oven when she moved).

Chop the onion. Melt the margarine in the pot. Saute the onion until soft but not brown.

Toss in the noodles. Stir, and saute another minute or so. Add the rice. Stir to coat with fat, and cook until the rice is transparent.

Add the broth and spices. Stir thoroughly. Cover and cook for 20 minutes, or until done: it's done when the rice is ready/appropriately soft but not too soft.

If you have leftover chicken, duck, or lamb, you can toss them in when you add the rice, and get something in the way of a main dish (depending on how much meat, and what other protein you have in the course of the day). I've been known to stop off in Chinatown, buy a quarter roast duck from one of the shops there, bring it home, pull the meat off the bones and cut it smaller, and make a rice pilaf. It's not as thrifty as using up leftovers, obviously, but it's not expensive in terms of buying meat to make a dinner out of.
]

---

There's also what we cheerfully call "chicken with twigs." Again, very simple, adjust quantities to suit.

Some chicken thighs (for adults, to serve with grain or salad, probably two each; my supermarket sells packages of about ten of them). This is quite good cold for a later meal, so if there's room in your baking dish, cook as many as you have. This works fine with skinless thighs, or with the skin on: you'll get some crispy bits of skin, and some flabby ones not worth eating (even by people who like chicken skin).

Olive oil, lemon juice, thyme (or other herbs if you prefer), black pepper*, fresh lime (optional, but good).

Preheat oven to 375. Grease a pan with a bit of olive oil. Mix more olive oil, lemon juice (close to 1:1, though my girlfriend still calls this "chicken with salad dressing"), and herbs. Put the chicken in the pan. Pour the oil and lemon mix over the chicken, trying to cover all the pieces. Bake for 50-60 minutes (testing for doneness with a fork or a meat thermometer, or just go for the full hour).

Meanwhile, cut a lime or two into quarters or eighths.

When the chicken is ready, serve it with lime, so people can squeeze the juice over their pieces of chicken. (The book I found this one in explained that the cook had invented it after a heart attack, so he does it without the skin to reduce fat, and the lime juice means he doesn't miss salt. I'm not on a low-salt diet, but I like lime, and recommend it here even if you're also happy to use salt.)

This goes well with bread or rice; it would probably go well with something like roasted new potatoes. I don't make pasta with it, because we mostly make sauce to go with pasta, and that would complicate what is otherwise a fairly simple dinner.**


*Yes, I could cook for someone who can't eat black pepper, but it would be tricky.

**Simple, at least, if you find rice simple (whether from practice, talent, or because you have a rice cooker).

...and squash

[redbird]

[I ran into the comment length limit here, so it's in two parts]

Roast winter squash: this isn't exactly a recipe. Get an acorn or butternut squash. Slice in half. Bake the halves, face down, at 400 degrees for an hour. At the end of the hour, take it out of the oven, turn it over, put margarine or butter on each half, and add a bit of maple syrup. (I'm guessing a bit over a teaspoon each of margarine and syrup.) Put back in the oven for two minutes. Take out again, and serve. People will probably want salt and pepper on this; almost certainly a bit of salt, as with most fresh vegetables. If you're doing half a squash per person, people can just mash their squash up gently in the squash shells with their forks, and eat. Otherwise, scoop the squash (with margarine and syrup) into a bowl, mash together, and serve. If you're not planning on diving in right away, cover the bowl.

On the subject of substitutions: I almost always use butter for the pilaf, but the family friend I got the base recipe from used margarine, and I've made it with margarine in recent years for a friend who has to avoid dairy. The squash, ditto, and I didn't really notice a difference. And the chicken doesn't have dairy to start with.

Re: ...and squash

[conuly]

The nieces won't eat squash, I don't know why. (When it comes to winter squash, anyway, I tend to prefer it with a bit of rosemary instead of syrup, sugar, or honey. But they won't eat it regardless, they're annoying that way.)

As far as substitutions go, our go-to substitution for butter in savory cooking is generally either olive oil or bacon fat. (Mmm... bacon....) But we can't substitute for cheese with cheese sauce, you know?

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

I almost had a heart attack when I saw the word culantro. I was like "who the fucks journal am I reading"?! And then I saw the "not the typo" bit, googled, and was like "Oh. She's not sane yet. Nevermind. :(" lol.


One of my FAVORITEEEEEEEE meals is 30 minutes meal I got from a rachel ray cookbook. Its a butternut squash + onion + chorizo + other stuff soup (chilli powder and some other stuff, if you think it sounds good, i will give you the recipe when I get home) and quesadillas with tomato, c*i*lantro (lol), cheese (which with Eva's dairy sensitivity would be bad, but maybe just for hers you can leave it out? IDK IDK), and whatever else you want to stick in there (I once put chicken tender strips chopped thinly, but didn't like it too much).

Its something I probably make once a week, its so good, and seriously fast to make.

[conuly]

Culantro!

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Well I know now! I googled!! I read. I found that it is not my secret lover, Cilantro. >:(

[conuly]

No, but it tastes very similar and it's easier to cut up without getting bits of culantro leaves all over the counter.

[conuly]

Plus, you can't confuse it for parsley.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

You can't confuse Cilantro for parsley unless you have some serious nasal issues!

[conuly]

Or it's slightly wilted from being in the fridge a few days. Or you absentmindedly planted the two side by side.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Yes, but once you start to cut it, the smell is enough to tell you it isn't parsley!

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

African Pineapple Peanut Stew

Yield: 4 servings

West African -inspired, this is a rich and very fresh-tasting stew, eclectic and surprising in its combination of ingredients. If you have a few extra leaves of kale, put them in; this stew can absorb lots of greens. Serve on rice, millet, or couscous, topped with crushed peanuts and chopped scallions.

1 cup chopped onions
2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 bunch kale or Swiss chard (4 cups sliced)
2 cups undrained canned crushed pineapple (20-ounce can)
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 tablespoon Tabasco or other hot pepper sauce
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
salt to taste
crushed skinless peanuts
chopped scallions

In a covered saucepan, saute' the onions and garlic in the oil for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until the onions are lightly browned. While the onions saute', wash the kale or Swiss chard. Remove and discard the large stems and any blemished leaves. Stack the leaves on a cutting surface and slice crosswise into 1-inch-thick slices.

Add the pineapple and its juice to the onions and bring to a simmer. Stir in the kale or chard, cover, and simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring a couple of times, until just tender. Mix in the peanut butter, Tabasco, and cilantro and simmer for 5 minutes. Add salt to taste, and serve.

PER 8 OZ SERVING: 225 CALORIES, 7.4 G PROTEIN, 12 G FAT, 25. 7 G CARBOHYDRATE, 169 MG SODIUM, 0 MG CHOLESTEROL

From Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home


( I often use spinach instead of kale, and serve it over long grain rice. )