No worries, dude. I’m still planning on making these tonight. How do the leftoverse reheat best? (Does the microwave work? Toaster oven?)
So as not to make this a complete hijack, I’ll suggest the OP look into SteamFresh brand frozen veggies. Fast, easy, impossible to screw up if you follow the dead-simple directions.
Oh, and apropos of nothing: broccoli is a thousand times tastier if it’s browned a bit instead of steamed or (heaven forbid!) boiled. Stir-fry some florets with ginger, garlic, red pepper flakes until the cut sides are browning, then add a bit of soy sauce and cover to let steam a minute or two. You can sprinkle just a teensy bit of sugar on the broccoli before you start cooking - it jump-starts the browning process.
I’ll be honest and say that I don’t really get what you’re asking for, or at least it seems to me you’re leaving some requirements out. But I’ll give it a go anyway.
If your carbs are mostly potato based, I personally like oven-baked potatoes the best. Just cut them into chunks, mix up with a little olive oil (just enough to coat the potatoes) and some seasoning, and bake in a fairly hot (220 C) oven until golden brown and done, roughly 35 minutes, probably a bit more. For seasoning, I use salt, pepper, some chopped garlic and whatever dried Italian spices I feel like.
Just make sure to stir the potatoes every 10 to 15 minutes. That will prevent uneven heating and burning.
You can mix in other veggies that don’t take as much time to cook about half way through the cooking time: carrots and onions work well for me.
If you don’t have any special reason to exclude pasta, I really would recommend looking into that: you can make a really satisfying main dish for two people out of some pasta, a few thin strips of bacon, a clove of garlic, half a can of tomatoes and just a bit of seasoning. The fun thing about Italian pasta is that most of the classic dishes are better using only a little sauce, based on only a few ingredients, and there’s lots of ingredients to choose from.
Those are all excellent suggestions. I’ve never heard of the sugar thing, I’m going to try it soon though! Roasting is also quite nice.
I maintain that most picky eaters (sans those w/ textural issues) or those who dislike vegetables just haven’t had food prepared to their liking. My SO’s little sister “hated” broccoli and eggs. Well, she hated boiled-to-death broccoli and she hated raw broccoli and she hated scrambled eggs made in a regular pan :smack:. She loves blanched broccoli, roasted broccoli, stir fried broccoli with garlic and pepper and scrambled eggs made in a nonstick pan! Quite a few posters have echoed this sentiment as well.
And if it’s just the two of you, I definitely recommend what **purplehorseshoe **touched upon, using the toaster oven. It’s not just for toasting! Especially with warmer weather coming it’s a godsend. It heats up far faster than an oven and does the same stuff. YMMV, but for me it takes away the “ohhhhh I don’t wanna waaaaaait for the oven to heat up”. It takes away the “hassle” of cooking in large part.
Week one report: We tried out stir fries with sliced rump steak this week with some success. It’s certainly a very quick easy meal to make, and we added hot sauce to it which was really tasty. But we got a frozen stir fry pack from the supermarket and it wasn’t quite what I expected. I think I’d rather buy fresh vegetables and chop them up.
I actually forgot about the sweet potatoes but they’ve been in a dark cupboard so I’m sure they’ll be fine this weekend!
My wife makes some oven-roasted potatoes like this; about a third of a cup of oil, potatoes cut into chunks, and Lipton onion soup mix. Put into a big Ziploc bag and toss around to coat, then bake. I think the recipe is printed on or in the Lipton onion soup box. Very yummy.
This stuff is really versatile and I add it to a lot of my marinades. And it has good flavor in spite of the heat, unlike so many uber-hot sauces that bring tons of heat and little else.
What kind of seasonings did you apply to the stir fry? Garlic and red pepper flakes would be good, also soy sauce and sesame oil and sriracha would be tasty, or fish sauce. Plain Tabasco might be weird. Fresh veggies are nice as well, you’ll get better texture but not necessarily better flavor from them, so if flavor is what you’re reaching for, see below.
In fact, I want to try out some new dressings/marinades/seasoning profiles myself, so I’m going to post a new thread specifically on that. I bet you’ll get some amazing answers on asian and stir-fry marinades/sauces from there. I’m going to wait till Monday though, since things are dead around here on the weekends :p.
QFT. I make these all the time, and they are also fantastic. It’s definitely on the Lipton onion soup box (avoid the subpar Campbell’s onion soup mix). I use olive oil, but I think anything’ll work. Tasty, tasty little morsels.
Salsa is a vibrantly flavorful and low-cal way to zip up just about anything. It’s particularly nice on grilled meats like steak or chicken thighs. A mild green tomatillo salsa makes a terrific salad dressing, too.
Since you tried stir frying, I’ll give you my simple stir fry sauce recipe, which goes with chicken, shrimp, probably beef (I’m sure, I just haven’t tried it), and all sorts of vegetables.
First, The Sauce: 1 and 1/3 cups soy sauce, 1/3 cup corn syrup, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper (or more if you love heat). Mix that up in a glass measuring cup, stirring well to dissolve the cornstarch and corn syrup. The pepper will just float, but that’s OK.
Cut your chicken into little chunklets or small strips, say 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch. Stir-fry those in some oil until almost done, a minute or so past the outsides turning white. Take the chicken out, put it in a bowl, and loosely cover it up. Put your veggies in the pan and toss them around until they soften a tiny bit, but not too much. Now, put the chicken back into the pan with the veggies (pour off any water the chicken let go first), and add the sauce. Bring the sauce to a boil to thicken, and you’re done. Spoon it all over rice and chow down.
OP, I found a really cool link (while trying to search for pita pizzas) that may be appealing to you if you’re looking for more structure and less individual guesswork in meal-making. Initially when the two of us were getting healthy (a vegetarian that ate too many carbs and me who subsisted on boxed mac and cheese and tuna helper) we utilized these mealplans to stay on the straight and narrow. Hereare 16 500 calorie dinners from EatingWell. 500 calories gets you an entree, a side and a dessert. The smoky corn and black bean pizza, 5 spice turkey and lettuce wraps and the Indian spiced chicken pitas are excellent and not too “ethnic”, so you won’t feel like it’s all unfamiliar. The very last slide has a ton of links to other options for 500 calorie dinners too. Some of the other meals in the slideshow I like quite a bit, but I won’t recommend them to you; I grew up seldom eating westernized meals and our current meals lean heavily vegetarian and spicy/ethnic, so they’re probably not (yet) to your liking.
Once you get the hang of it you branch out and serve what you like better for sides/desserts, sticking with the entrees. If you’re super “hungry” and don’t want dessert, you can always eat a bigger entree portion too. We’re big fans of green leaf lettuce salads with cukes, carrots, garbanzo beans and broccoli with a really simple vinagrette and steamed veggies on the side. His desserts are often peanuts + chocolate chips and mine are Skinny Cow desserts, so now we moreso stick just to the entrees.
You need to be a little careful with this, as commercial salsas can have a lot of sugar in them. Make your own salsa (it’s really easy) or just use it sparingly.