smiles Thanks Sqrl. Like I said I usually just toss something together and it usually ends up good. I have been cooking for awhile myself and try to find interesting recipes to try. My only problem is I still live at home and have to think of Mom’s allergies and my Brother doesn’t like fancy weird stuff.
I look forward to having my own place so I can try out all these recipes that I can’t now.
I would suggest to any serious cook that they get a subscription to * Fine Cooking *. The magazine is put out by Taunton’s, if that helps. They have gourmet dishes, but the articles are written on the average-chef level. You will need to know the lingo though- julianne, mince, deglaze, etc.
YUM! Mangos and avocados. I used to mix avocados with blood oranges. They were really quite tasty but only in the salad. It was too much when I made guacamole out of them.
I have read Fine Cooking before but prefer Gourmet. I am very comfortable in the kitchen overall. Anyway, I think I will pick up a copy since the recipes in it are almost always quicker than they are in Gourmet and still very tasty.
Last night, as I said, I was going to eat out. MY bf and I ate at the Outback Steakhouse (yeah, I know it isn’t anything like the food in Australia. They eat anything.) and we both had NY Strips. They were ok. I threw about 1/3 of my steak away because it was all fat. I got perhaps the worst cut of meat at a steakhouse that I have ever seen. It still tasted pretty good though.
Perhaps I will make a lasagna tonight. I make a more unusual lasagna since I don’t like riccota cheese or cottage cheese. (Some people substitute cottage cheese for riccota.) They both taste nasty to me and to top it off, they remind me of yeast infections.
I will make a salad of some kind and foccaccia bread. To make the foccaccia, follow the recipe for pizza dough and after you roll it out top with tons of rosemary and olive oil. You will make fingertip depth depressions in the dough to catch more of the olive oil, bake in the oven on the pizza stone. (You can leave the stone in the oven while baking the lasagna or you can take out the entire shelf (the stone will be much to hot to set anywhere and set it on top of the stove after you clean it off a little.
First I will boil the noodles (lasagna noodles) al dente. I will then set them out to cool on a towel.
Brown about a pound of ground beef with some salt, pepper, and sweet basil then mix the tomatoes listed below into it.
I am going to make the sauce that goes in them leaving the skins on the tomatoes. First I will wash and chop a few roma tomatoes and then wash and blend about twice the amount of the chopped tomatoes. This will add a very nice texture to the sauce. I will then put them in a skillet on a medium flame and mix in salt, pepper, tons of garlic, basil, oregano, rosemary (you can’t have enough rosemary), and fresh chopped green onions (scallions). I will keep it on the medium flame stirring constantly until it starts to thicken.
In a casserole dish, line the bottom with the noodles. Put a layer of the sauce atop it, then a layer of mozzerella cheese, then a layer of parmesan, and if you like a small layer of goat cheese, repeat the process until the dish is filled skipping the goat cheese layer every other one. The top should just have the mozzerella and parmesan and no sauce. But you guys new that.
Put in the oven and bake until the cheese is melted and browned.
You should be able to have the foccaccia cooked by the time you are ready to put the lasagna in the oven. And then while the lasagna is in the oven you can make your salads.
YUM!
HUGS!
Sqrl
**SqrlCub[\b] - HELP! Each night I come home from work and choose the top box in the freezer and zap it. I need a guy that can cook. Heterosexual would be nice too, but at this point I’m not too picky! 
Although there’s still the vet…he likes to cook. I have to think up a reason to take my dogs in to see him.
StG
What do you need StGermain? I will be happy to help with something. I would be afraid to go the vet for food. You never know if they will be sneaky about it and either try to feed you dog food or cat parts. Those sneaky vets, you never know when you can trust them. (On a side note, I sang in a gay men’s chorus for a while and one of the guys was a vet. I pierced his nipples for him. It was pretty funny. He was the only person I have ever seen who had anasthesia before and after the piercings. Also, his were the ones that healed the fastest. He took dog/cat antibiotics. It was really quite entertaining when you were there. Sigh, I guess you just had to be there. I laughed because at the time I didn’t know that certain medications were essentially the same.)
HUGS!
Sqrl
Cubbie (Just like the Mouseketeer) I just would like something better than “Microwave for on High for 5 minutes”. I work all day, feed my horse, and get home around 7:00. hungry. tired. So I reach in, pull out a box and zap it.
StG
Most of the chicken breast recipes posted so far would be a quick meal. The fajita chicken pizza that I posted took about an hour to make including rising time for the dough. Cheffies rice dish that I talked about earlier takes just a little longer than it takes the rice to cook. The roasted potatoes take about 45 minutes. So you know, I have a very tiny kitchen. I am just happy that I have a full sized stove. A friend up in Harrisburg has a half sized stove. Now that really sucks.
Other things that are quick (depending on how much work you want to do) are quesadillas. I always make my tortillas from scratch so they take about 15 minutes longer. You can add meat or other things into the grill to cook those.
I also make bean and cheese tacos for breakfast on most weekends. They take about 45 minutes to complete. Again, I make the flour tortillas.
Most recipes take a bit longer than 5 minutes to cook but are under an hour except for wok cooking. Wok cooking is only time consuming becuase of the prep time. Invest in a good electric wok (you don’t even need to get a special one to put on the stove) and you should be able to have a good cooked meal in about 15-25 minutes (which includes the prep time…assuming you work moderately fast). There are many recipes to cook in the wok. I usually don’t cook with it but my bf does sometimes. I really like the way the vegetables turn out in the wok and many of the other things are nice too.
If you are interested I will ask him what he cooked last in it and post it here. I remember some delicious stir fry and curried chicken.
HUGS!
Sqrl
SqrlCub - Are there meals that cam be prepared in advance, or mostly prepared? And remember, I’m cooking for one and don’t like to waste money making too much food. Will most of it keep in the fridge/freezer for a second meal later on?
{{{hugs}}}
Hmm… let’s see. There are things that you can do that will make a decent meal quickly that require nearly no preparation from you. The one that pops quickest to mind is the tortellini/ravioli in the plastic box. They are basically prepared for you where you will only need to add the requisite sauce to them while heating. Spaghetti and meat sauce or squash sauce (YUM…you brown squash instead of meat) is an extremely quick meal to fix. You can even do it without the meat or squash entirely. If you buy the canned sauce, you can always put whatever is left in another lidded container. I do this frequently anyway.
Another thing that isn’t necessarily quick but will be ready to eat by the time you get home are crock pot recipes. We did a thread about that a while back. You can get a decent crock pot for under $20. What you make in the crock pot will probably last you several days as they tend to be stew type things and will only increase in flavour.
Here are the two big links.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=19497
and http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=14433
The crock pot is wonderful in many ways simply because you can turn it on and leave. It cooks slowly and tastes delicious. If you go to those threads I posted a Magyar stew (not a goulash) and borracho beans. The borracho beans I make into refried the next day and will typically make chalupas out of them and bean and cheese tacos. (I mentioned those for breakfast earlier. I want some now.) The Magyar stew I tend to eat more often in the winter since it is a stew but I could eat that now too. You can actually make that in a large skillet as well. It cooks a lot faster in a skillet since the crockpot generally takes 4-10 hours depending on what you are cooking.
You also asked about refridgerating or freezing. Most anything will refridgerate. I would never suggest putting meat in the freezer though after it has been cooked. So if you make too much meat, plan on having it the next day or throw it away. I have found stews keep for a while in the refridgerator and can even be frozen with meat without them getting too nasty. I suppose the broth that it is in helps keep it from completely dessicating. Come to think about it. Almost anything that has a watery type of base to it freezes well after cooking.
What other things can you prep beforehand. In a wok you can prep most of the vegetables (except for lettuce or cabbage…but that is only a personal preference) up to a few days beforehand as long as you keep them in an airtight container. Even the meat you can prep before you freeze it if you have a lot of time. You don’t even have to use it for a wok. Sometimes when I buy meat for the express purpose of making fajitas, I will wash it and then cut it into strips before freezing it. Oftentimes I will even put all the spices in with it in a big bag. That way I just have to take it out and let it thaw. During that time it will get an automatic marinade. It just takes more preparation on my part to get that done. You must remember that the net time it takes you to prepare a meal will still be the same just the cooking time will be different. If you do all your prep work for the week (that is really stretching it) on Sunday then your cooking time, assuming everything is thawed and ready to go won’t include that during the week. You already know what I am saying along those lines, so I won’t insult your intelligence. I will be happy to help with whatever else I know.
Oh, Mrs. Dash on roasted potatoes is really good.
HUGS!
Sqrl
I would suggest the following tip to enhance this dish: before cooking the rice, steep the saffron in the liquid you’re planning on using for a while over low heat to make sure the saffronly goodness is evenly distributed.
I actually do that Cheffy. I meant to say something there but was a little distracted. I usually also melt some butter in with the saffron in the water, but not too much. You don’t want to overpower the saffron taste (especially since it is at least $10 per .1 to .5 oz container. Yes I may have the decimal point wrong. It may be .01 to .05 oz. It is ghastly expensive but tastes so good.
Cheffie, while you are here, what else can you freeze easily?
HUGS!
Sqrl