Really, really quick simple food

"David Hare-Scott" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

We are moving house and it looks like there will be period of about a week
when we will be working 15-18 hour days. During some of this time
kitchens
will be very basic as most ingredients and equipment will be packed.
Where
we live take-away and home-delivery food is not available.

The last time we moved we tried frozen TV dinners, they were HORRIBLE!
This
is not snobery, that stuff does not qualify as food! And some was soooo
salty. I vividly recall thinking that I was starving hungry and needed
calories to keep going but considered giving it to the dog Assuming he
would eat it. Well yes he would, he would eat me if he was hungry and I
sat
still for too long.

So what food can I prepare?

- It must require very basic ingredients and equipment..
- It should be filling and reasonably tasty.
- It should be so quick and simple to make that a brain-dead removalist
can
do it at 10PM before collapsing into bed.
- It doesn't need to be balanced (this is only a week).

I would go for a slow cooker. Bung everything in and let it go for the day.
That way you will have good hot food after a hard day.

"David Hare-Scott" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

The last time we moved we tried frozen TV dinners, they were HORRIBLE!
This
is not snobery, that stuff does not qualify as food! And some was soooo
salty. I vividly recall thinking that I was starving hungry and needed
calories to keep going but considered giving it to the dog Assuming he
would eat it. Well yes he would, he would eat me if he was hungry and I
sat
still for too long.

It would help to know what you have, it sounds like you have a freezer
and an oven/stove/microwave? If you have that, you're golden. Just make
up casseroles, etc., and you're fine for a week. Ingredients for pizzas,
for
sandwiches, anything. Also, where do you live? UK?

nancy

David Hare-Scott said:

- It must require very basic ingredients and equipment..
- It should be filling and reasonably tasty.
- It should be so quick and simple to make that a brain-dead removalist can
do it at 10PM before collapsing into bed.
- It doesn't need to be balanced (this is only a week).

From my experience last year (kitchen renovation, 4 weeks without a
kitchen, with 2 kids): Salads (for greens, buy the convenience stuff,
already cleaned - also, tomatoes are easy to prep), with a DIY
dressing of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper drizzled on
(much better than that awful commercial stuff which passes as salad
dressing), grilled meat, cold cuts (but good ones - prosciutto, good
quality ham, etc.), rotisserie chicken. Get invited :-) And go to the
restaurant a few times too. Oh, and I second the slow cooker advice
(pork roast, BBQ sauce, potatoes... there you go!).

Nathalie in Switzerland

"David Hare-Scott" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

We are moving house and it looks like there will be period of about a
week
when we will be working 15-18 hour days. During some of this time
kitchens
will be very basic as most ingredients and equipment will be packed.
Where
we live take-away and home-delivery food is not available.

So what food can I prepare?

- It must require very basic ingredients and equipment..
- It should be filling and reasonably tasty.
- It should be so quick and simple to make that a brain-dead
removalist can
do it at 10PM before collapsing into bed.
- It doesn't need to be balanced (this is only a week).

David, when we moved several years ago, we were in the same boat, and we
ate just a few things:
- pancakes from just-add-water Hungry Jack mix, with butter & syrup
- cold cereal with milk
- quesadillas - lay a flour tortilla on a work surface. Top with
shredded cheese (we used the shredded stuff in the bag). If you're
feeling fancy, spoon on some salsa. Top with another tortilla.
Meanwhile, heat a frying pan on med-high -- no need to grease it.
Carefully put the quesadilla in. Cover pan loosely. Cook for a minute,
flip w/ a spatula, cook for another minute on other side. Remove from
pan, cut w/ pizza cutter or sharp knife. Add sour cream if desired.

That was literally all we ate for the first week. We did just fine.
(We got a couple of kittens shortly after we moved, and we named one of
them Quesadilla.)

Good luck -- I hope everything goes your way on the move!!

Chris

David Hare-Scott <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

We are moving house and it looks like there will be period
of about a week when we will be working 15-18 hour days.
During some of this time kitchens will be very basic as most
ingredients and equipment will be packed. Where we live
take-away and home-delivery food is not available.

[snip]

Quoted message said:

So what food can I prepare?

- It must require very basic ingredients and equipment..
- It should be filling and reasonably tasty.
- It should be so quick and simple to make that a brain-dead
removalist can do it at 10PM before collapsing into bed.
- It doesn't need to be balanced (this is only a week).

Mac-n-Cheese
Plain pasta (maybe with butter)
Sandwiches
Lasagna
Hamburger helper-style casseroles
Pot roast or stews
Grilled Chicken
Salads

You can do all of these with toss-away equipment, too. The casseroles
can be made in the oven within 45-60 minutes after mixing everything.
There's minimal effort (on the cook's part, too) so the cooking shifts
can be shared and not dumped on one person. Paper plates and Dixie forks
are key here, too. Box all the plates and Pyrex and you're good to go.
If you have a hibachi, or Smokey Joe, you can have a lot more variety
but casseroles and sandwiches (or salads) meet the criteria you've
listed.

The Ranger

Nathalie Chiva wrote on 20 Sep 2005 in rec.food.cooking

Quoted message said:

David Hare-Scott said:

- It must require very basic ingredients and equipment..
- It should be filling and reasonably tasty.
- It should be so quick and simple to make that a brain-dead
removalist can do it at 10PM before collapsing into bed.
- It doesn't need to be balanced (this is only a week).

From my experience last year (kitchen renovation, 4 weeks without a
kitchen, with 2 kids): Salads (for greens, buy the convenience stuff,
already cleaned - also, tomatoes are easy to prep), with a DIY
dressing of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper drizzled on
(much better than that awful commercial stuff which passes as salad
dressing), grilled meat, cold cuts (but good ones - prosciutto, good
quality ham, etc.), rotisserie chicken. Get invited :-) And go to the
restaurant a few times too. Oh, and I second the slow cooker advice
(pork roast, BBQ sauce, potatoes... there you go!).

Nathalie in Switzerland

Make mini pot pies...reheat them.
Beef pot pies, Pork hot pies or a poultry style. Basically a pot pie is a
thick stew in a pie shell.

Lasagna? Mac and Cheese? Chilli Mac? Most any casserole?

All this stuff can be made in quanity ahead, sized for servings and frozen.

--
The eyes are the mirrors....
But the ears...Ah the ears.
The ears keep the hat up.

David Hare-Scott said:

We are moving house and it looks like there will be period of about a week
when we will be working 15-18 hour days. During some of this time kitchens
will be very basic as most ingredients and equipment will be packed. Where
we live take-away and home-delivery food is not available.

The last time we moved we tried frozen TV dinners, they were HORRIBLE! This
is not snobery, that stuff does not qualify as food! And some was soooo
salty. I vividly recall thinking that I was starving hungry and needed
calories to keep going but considered giving it to the dog Assuming he
would eat it. Well yes he would, he would eat me if he was hungry and I sat
still for too long.

So what food can I prepare?

- It must require very basic ingredients and equipment..
- It should be filling and reasonably tasty.
- It should be so quick and simple to make that a brain-dead removalist can
do it at 10PM before collapsing into bed.
- It doesn't need to be balanced (this is only a week).

David

We're on our fifth month with no kitchen. I've been making a lot of
dishes in the microwave. We have very little kitchen equipment out and
reuse the same few pieces of equipment and dishes over and over. One
particular favorite I've come up with is chicken thighs with spinach
and soy sauce. I fill a casserole dish with skinless boneless chicken
thighs, insert some cloves of garlic (I've been buying jarred
pre-roasted cloves but raw would work)and pickled sushi ginger around
the pieces of chicken, and pour some soy sauce (or tamari) over the
chicken. Season with pepper and anything else you like. Cover and
microwave on high 6 minutes. Turn the chicken pieces over and
microwave 6 more minutes. Spread baby spinach (the pre-washed kind in
a clamshell) over the top, recover and cook on high another 2 minutes.
You don't really need the garlic and ginger, but I keep those on hand,
so I used them when I first concocted this.

I've also done this with chicken thighs, garlic, and bottled barbeque
sauce.

The prewashed greens are good for salad with whatever dressing you have
on hand. I've also been buying prewashed, presliced mushrooms (we
don't have an easily accessible water supply, so I'm using prewashed
things wherever possible), which are good in a lot of dishes.

Boboli pizzas are quick. I make the tiny ones because I only have a
toaster oven, but the large would be more filling. I use Contadina
bottled pizza sauce, presliced mushrooms and nicoise olives for that.

I agree on the frozen foods, but with only so many options, we end up
eating them sometimes. I've found that Amy's Organics are good,
especially the enchiladas and burritos. And I've been buying precooked
brown rice that goes in the microwave for 3 minutes (Rice Expressions,
but there are probably other brands). There are also a number of boxed
Thai and Indian dishes, some of which come with rice, that are pretty
tasty. You might need to make more than one box for a filling meal,
though. Trader Joes has an excellent boxed Thai tuna curry with
potatoes and onions that I serve with the frozen brown rice. And that
brown rice along with the chicken, spinach, and soy sauce is a pretty
hearty meal. It takes about 20 minutes to make, start to finish, and
most of that is cooking time, during which you can do other things.
This all presumes you have a microwave and it's not packed up yet.

And we eat a lot of sandwiches!

Hope this helps,
Pat

"David Hare-Scott" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

We are moving house and it looks like there will be period of about a week
when we will be working 15-18 hour days. During some of this time

kitchens

Quoted message said:

will be very basic as most ingredients and equipment will be packed.

Where

Quoted message said:

we live take-away and home-delivery food is not available.

The last time we moved we tried frozen TV dinners, they were HORRIBLE!

This

Quoted message said:

is not snobery, that stuff does not qualify as food! And some was soooo
salty. I vividly recall thinking that I was starving hungry and needed
calories to keep going but considered giving it to the dog Assuming he
would eat it. Well yes he would, he would eat me if he was hungry and I

sat

Quoted message said:

still for too long.

So what food can I prepare?

- It must require very basic ingredients and equipment..
- It should be filling and reasonably tasty.
- It should be so quick and simple to make that a brain-dead removalist

can

Quoted message said:

do it at 10PM before collapsing into bed.
- It doesn't need to be balanced (this is only a week).

David

I completely remodeled my kitchen this year. I know simple ;-)! The easiest,
quickest meal for me was grilled cheese sandwiches. I'm not talking Wonder
white bread and American cheese. I'd use an artisan sour dough (an excellent
one from Fox & Obel here in Chicago) and a wide variety of great cheeses
like aged cheddar and reggiano parmesan or cotswold or gruyere and parmesan
etc. Sometimes I'd add a slice of lightly sautéed salami or ham. I also ate
more than my fair share of grilled Reuben sandwiches (very lean corned beef
from a great deli in Skokie, killer good house made sauerkraut from Fox &
Obel, sauce made from mayo, ketchup, chopped cornichons and horseradish,
gruyere and bakery rye bread - one of those is sounding like a very good
idea right now!). I always have several bags of home made pasta sauces in
the freezer (Bolognese, marinara and pesto) and used them, nuked as
appropriate, with various varieties of pasta. I made a fair number of
quesadillas with sautéed and drained chorizo, Chihuahua cheese and maybe
some sautéed onions and poblanos. These are very easy and very quick with
minimal clean up (washing dishes in the bathroom sink makes clean up an
important consideration!).

Kate

David Hare-Scott said:

We are moving house and it looks like there will be period of about a week
when we will be working 15-18 hour days. During some of this time kitchens
will be very basic as most ingredients and equipment will be packed. Where
we live take-away and home-delivery food is not available.

The last time we moved we tried frozen TV dinners, they were HORRIBLE! This
is not snobery, that stuff does not qualify as food! And some was soooo
salty. I vividly recall thinking that I was starving hungry and needed
calories to keep going but considered giving it to the dog Assuming he
would eat it. Well yes he would, he would eat me if he was hungry and I sat
still for too long.

So what food can I prepare?

- It must require very basic ingredients and equipment..
- It should be filling and reasonably tasty.
- It should be so quick and simple to make that a brain-dead removalist can
do it at 10PM before collapsing into bed.
- It doesn't need to be balanced (this is only a week).

David

Keep one frying pan out and one saucepan, plus a decent knife and
cutting board.

Fried eggs with any trimmings that need to be eaten
Rice with any trimmings that need to be eaten
Pasta with bought sauce; drain the pasta, add the sauce and heat in the
same pan
Instant noodles with any vegs that need to be eaten
Tinned soup, bread and butter
Sandwiches with some fruit
Plenty of ready to heat foods in supermarket
Empty-the-fridge soup: anything that needs to be eaten simmered while
you work

Thankyou all for such thoughtful answers and good ideas.

David