Agreed. Cereal. Bowl. Milk. Done.
I’ve started prepping for lazy days (or more accurately frantic insane days where I forget people actually need to eat)
I have several piles in the freezer:
meals that go directly into the oven - for the really bad days when I don’t think of food til it’s almost time for dinner
meals that go directly into the crockpot - for days when I’ve got time in the morning but I know the rest of the day is going down hill
meals that need to defrost before cooking - for the standard crazy days
All of these have reduced my “I’m too tired to even decide, call and order something and I’ll eat it” nights by at least 50%, and the cooking/prep days are actually fun because I do it with my friends and we get to connect while we work.
Cheaper too, we made 11 dinners for 4 for each house and the cost per serving was under $3.
Coupla brats in a skillet with a heaping helping of sauerkraut. Heat til hot. Plate with a dollop of tasty mustard. If your mother won’t shut up in your head, nuke a cupful of frozen veggies to put on the side.
Open a bag of salad leaf, add a carrot that I ran through a julienne and a packet of fresh pomegranate seeds plus a dressing of cider vinegar and rape seed oil with a little salt and pepper. Fry a pack of fresh chicken livers and add to the salad to wilt it. Serve.
Five minutes from start to finish for a light supper for two.
Spaghetti is easy if you’re not opposed to jar sauce. Brown some ground beef, dump the jar of sauce on top and heat while the spaghetti is boiling. Steam some frozen veggies on the side.
Zatarain’s jambalaya mix. We usually cut up some turkey sausage and toss it in. Again, steamed frozen veggies on the side.
Stir fry is pretty easy, but the prep work can take twice as long as the actual cooking.
Medium-lazy: garlic noodles.
Boil a bunch of spaghetti in salted water.
Drain, and saute a metric buttload of pressed garlic (like 10-12 cloves) in olive oil in the pasta pot.
Add the noodles and eat. Straight from the pot if you really wanna bach it up.
To make it slightly fancier, add some combination of parmesan, pepper, fresh basil, fresh tomato, fresh mozzarella. All of those together, and you’re almost leaving laziness behind and have a real meal. But they’re perfectly delicious just with noodles, oil, and garlic.
Wanna get really lazy? If it’s 11 pm and I’m super-hungry, I’ll slice a chunk of cheddar, wrap it in a piece of bread, and eat it standing in the kitchen.
I was thinking about this thread last night when I did something similar:
I had leftover noodles because I exhausted my meatballs and sauce, so I dumped a min-can of tomato paste into a bowl, threw in some chicken nuggets, and nuked them (covered) for a few minutes. I spooned it onto some of that leftover pasta (do not use Ramen; there’s another thread on foods that don’t go well together about that kind of mistake…) and sprinkled on some parmesian cheese (and various Italian-ish herbs & spices, just 'cause they were within reach). It was a quick Chicken Parmesiana that will use up the rest of the noodles.
–G!
This is the purpose of my bi-annual vat of split pea soup. the soup itself requires a good deal of work, but it’s also an enforced lazy day at home, requiring 3-4 hours of occasional stirring and checking but very little actual effort once the chopping is done.
Then there are 15-20 lazy meals in the deep freeze requiring nothing more than a trip to the microwave and it’s all there: meat, carrots, peas, legumes, and tons of leeks. Yummy!
Pretty much my entire oeuvre consists of meals where I can be eating within 15 minutes of noticing I’m hungry.
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Grilled cheese. Covered to death in its own thread.
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Quesadilla. If you don’t know how, ask. Couldn’t be much easier.
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Tuna-noodle “casserole” using Campbell’s shroom soup. (Make noodles. Dump in a can of tunafish and a can of soup. Mix up. Sprinkle with something crunchy, or top with cheese. Bake at 350 for 20m. Oops, didn’t meet the time deadline … but I can watch TV meanwhile. And the baking step is optional.)
sorry about the cheese theme here …
- Broiled Salmon [Single men pay attention, this is not only easy, but it’ll impress a date.] Put fresh or thawed salmon side fillet on a baking pan. Make sauce with 1/2 orange marmalade, 1/2 black bean sauce (I use Trader Joe’s, and I think I use the garlic – whichever type my wife buys.) Smear it on nice and thick. Broil for about 10 minutes, more or less depending on how well-done you like your salmon. I like mine rare, so I go about 8 minutes. It also depends on how thick the pieces are. No worries, there’s a 5 minute range (at least) between nearly raw and woody crap; you don’t have to nail it. The sauce that spills onto the pan will blacken and smoke a bit, no worries if it’s not extreme.
This salmon is WAY better than it sounds. It’s practically CUISINE. Of course, for the date you’ll have to add some sides; I just pull a leftover veggie or something out of the fridge.
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Supermarket broiled chook, as mentioned above. Fantastic! Where were these when I was single??? Don’t forget to toss the chook remains in the stock pot and boil with onions & any still good but not very appetizing carrots or whatnot, and make stock to freeze for later. Oh yeah, add a TBSP of vinegar to get the calcium into the broth.
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Cajun Pork Loin Chops. Smear your favorite brand of Cajun spices onto both sides of pork loin chops. (Wife watches for bargains, I cut them into 1" or 1 1/2" chops and freeze them in ziplock bags, 4 or 6 to a bag.) Heat up a nonstick pan on high (I use one of those square griddles). Slap those suckers on for about 2 or 3 minutes a side. Warning: smoky. The first time, make sure you have an extra to cut to test (or use a thermometer). They’re best just as the pink fades. Save the extras for leftovers; if you don’t overcook them the first time, they microwave great for a lunch. Serve with zapped frozen veggies, if you must.
For every one I have, my wife has a dozen, though she also knows how to improvise given what we actually have. You should see what she does with shrimp! I stick to the really easy ones.
Of course, there’s always grilling, which doesn’t take much time or effort, and you get to do it outdoors! Steaks and burgers are pretty quick and painless.
I’m hungry when I get home and don’t want to spoil dinner.
[ol]
[li]Slice a quarter-inch slab off a block of Colby-Jack cheese.[/li][li]Wrap a slice of cold cut turkey around it.[/li][li]Eat.[/li][/ol]
No bread, no mayo, no butter, no lettuce. No muss. No fuss.
dialdialdial… “Hello Paisano’s? Bring me a pepperoni pizza please!”
I think your crock pot must be bigger than mine.
Wasted hot dogs. 
Keeper! I’ll have to ask my wife to buy some Fritos next time she goes shopping.
I’m gonna try this, and of course, my wife will say “I do that all the time, silly. Why’d you have to go to the internet to learn that?” She’ll be right, of course.
Well yes, of course! Or with anything, not just sausage. Mushrooms, for me!
Of course, there’s always the good old steak and potato dinner. Done in 8 minutes, steak in the frying pan and potato in the microwave. Throw some spinach salad on the side. Faster than boxed mac and cheese!
We actually have a meal that we call Lazy Dinner. It is composed of a baguette, a chunk of some tasty cheese, some prosciutto or capicola or speck , and a variety of accompaniments such as olives, roasted tomatoes, artichoke hearts, carrot sticks, cold steamed asparagus, whatever looks good. Then we pick at it lazily in front of the TV.
Most nights of the week I eat something that’s *very *simple to prepare, *very *cheap, *very *fast, and *very *nutritious (albeit boring, I admit):
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Throw a bag of broccoli (or carrots and broccoli) in the microwave and set the timer for 3 minutes.
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Remove bag from microwave.
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Dump a few ounces of non-breaded, fully cooked, frozen diced chicken breast into a bowl.
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Put bowl in microwave. Heat for 3.5 minutes.
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Remove bowl from microwave. Open bag of broccoli and dump contents on top of the chicken.
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Throw some seasoning on it (spices, spicy mustard, soy sauce, etc.).
Very high in fiber, complex carbs, vitamins, protein, antioxidants, and other nutrients. Very low in calories and fat.
Once again, my mother’s recipe for “sludge”–Open can of soup and pour into pan. Add 1/2 can of water. Heat to boiling and take off stove. Stir while adding mashed potato flakes until it looks sludgy. Eat.
I still make this. A typical can of Chunky or Progressive soup and a 4 serving bag of potato flakes work fine.
I just made this one again last night. Put four boneless chicken breasts in a baking dish. Slice up an onion over the chicken. Drape a couple-three strips of raw pepper bacon over the chicken and onions. Sprinkle everything with some good paprika, if you are feeling fancy. Play video games while you bake it at 400 degrees. How long you bake it will depend on how thick the chicken breasts are. The hardest part is slicing the onion. I had this with some italian bread and salad out of a bag.
Pepper bellies were just the thing for those freezing Winter mornings in the high desert. At the snack window in high school, they cut the top of of an individual-serving bag of Fritos and ladled the chili into it. So it warmed your hands while you were eating it. I only made pepper bellies at home a couple of times since then, but it’s become a more frequent lazy meal since the SO moved in. (She went to the same high school.)
I used two pounds of ground beef, two packets of seasoning, and two cans of corn. I made the corn bread according to the corn meal box. I used a 13 x 8 glass baking dish and a 5 x 8 baking dish. I thought the amount of batter I put on top was too little. Upon baking, the corn bread was just about right. I used to baking containers because I didn’t want the corn bread to overflow. I could have just used the 13 x 8 dish.
I’ve just done a google search on “tamale pie” and discovered I didn’t have to make the cornbread batter. The one recipe I opened says to put ¾ cup cornmeal, ½ teaspoon salt, and two cups of cold water into a pan. Heat and stir until it’s thick, and add a tablespoon of butter and spoon it over the meat before baking. But I was too lazy the other day to look it up.
That sounds good – and easy. I believe there’s a chicken breast in the freezer. I think it might be good to quarter a couple of potatoes and arrange them around the meat so as to soak up the fat.
Good call. If I’d had a couple potatoes and/or a few baby carrots last night, I’d have thrown them in too. I didn’t though, and I was feeling lazy about cooking. What I really wanted to do was continue playing Fallout 3 with all the new mods I installed and finally got working.