My wife is far, far more of a planner than I am. Sometimes I get frustrated (and of course she gets frustrated with my more spontaneous approach to stuff), but learning to plan meals has been wonderful. By Thursday night, we usually know what we’re going to eat each night of the following week, allowing room for changes based on who gets home first or who’s the least exhausted or whatnot. We’ll sit around after dinner with the kids and make a weekly menu, and then I’ll use that to create an online grocery order.
(She is in turn far more spontaneous than her mom, who would, and this is not an exaggeration, be finalizing her Christmas dinner menu by late July.)
Rice and miscellaneous, or couscous and miscellaneous, or whatever-and-miscellaneous. I make rice and miscellaneous sometimes (or rice-and-veggies if the meat or whatever’s on the side).
If you’re using multiple grains, and/or if part of what you want to discuss is which grains to use, maybe “Grains and Miscellaneous”.
Well, you have kids. With us it is more whatever happens. I’ll be in the mood to cook for awhile and I make whatever I feel like making. Then, she’ll take the reins for a bit. Sometimes neither of us feels like cooking and I’ll go get a pizza.
She does the grocery shopping. I stop and grab whatever I need that we don’t have at home. And I frequently make meals using all the stuff that my gf bought, never used, and needs to be used up.
From the Spanish olla podrida comes the English world “olio,” which the OED describes as “A spiced meat and vegetable stew of Spanish and Portuguese origin. Hence: any dish containing a great variety of ingredients.”
I’m not sure I agree. Stews, breads, soups, and salads are all category names for extremely broad categories. The difference between gazpacho and miso soup is surely greater than the difference between paella and jambalaya.
Given that this style of dish crops up in lots of different cultures, I’m guessing it’s unlikely they’ve got a common ancestor. Maybe more likely a common instigating factor, which is something like, “Oh, I don’t know, boil up some [grain] and put in whatever you can find, I can’t be bothered”.
You can’t really have a style of cooking called “eh, that’ll do” though.
That’s insane. In July, you don’t know that the store will be out of brussel sprouts in December; you have no idea that your SIL will find a recipe for a cheesy potato casserole that won’t go well with your jello salad, or that your son will get engaged to a girl who’s allergic to EVERYTHING. Yeah, I understand planning ahead, but you don’t finalize those plans until you’re closer to the date!
My mother use to make a wide variety of meals out of leftovers. Or when times were tough, what ever was in the pantry and refrigerator. Some were good, some were okay, a few were bad. But there were all called goulash. One of our favorites as kids was canned mutton, macaroni, a brown gravy made from scratch and a big bag of mixed vegetables. Sprinkle cheese on top and bake it. I had a friend over for dinner one evening and that was served for dinner. He thought it was great till he sniffed the empty mutton can. First time I ever saw someone turn green.
I’ve always wondered how a somewhat specific dish like “goulash” (from Hungarian gulyás) came to be applied to a bunch of mish mash dishes in the US. I mean, I can see some things in common, but they’re quite different. Then again, “goulash” does sound like something that would describe a mish mash.
I think the closest term that already exists is “Hash”. Texas hash is a rice dish. Traditional hash is potato based, but the term generally covers chopped up food mixed together.
“Honey, do you want quinoa and chicken hash?”
I think that would imply quinoa, chicken and veggies all chopped up and cooked together. The added benefit to calling it hash is that you can throw a fried egg on top.
When I was a child, on rainy days, I had to wear thick, rubber boots that were called galoshes. For dinner, we sometimes had a dish of sundry ingredients that was called goulash. It confounded me, I must confess.
Stews and casseroles are both kinds of one-pot meal, just with different shapes of pots and cooking methods.
On the other hand, if you cook up rice in one pot and meat in another and veggies in another, and then just mix it all up prior to serving, that’s not a one-pot meal. I don’t know if the OP wants to include something like that.
I suggest calling such dishes melanges. It means nothing more than ‘mixture,’ but doesn’t seem otherwise in use so let’s pre-emptively grab it.
Tonight I am making a melange of barley (fresh cooked), squash (remainder of a chunk used in a previous recipe), corn (frozen from a bag), onions (fresh), some slivered ham (leftovers from Sunday dinner), spinach (from a partial bag), some toasted walnuts, and a dressing of oil and vinegar and whatever spices strike my fancy. Maybe some other left overs will catch my eye… Hmm. There about half a can of pineapple chunks. Maybe some of them?
When I was doing Living History at a 19th century fort, tourists would often ask what we poor grunts ate. We would always reply “Soup, stew, or hash. It all depends on how much water is in it.”
Casseroles, hotdishes, skillets, hashes, scrambles, one pots, pilafs, goulashes, grain bowls, I guess there is no one term that can cover a dish that is present in so many different forms across different cultures. If there is a recipe/name for a dish, then of course we will use that name like we always have. If it is a grain/veg/meat dish that we just make up based on what we have, we will call it…a Stevie Mix…or maybe a Seal Team Mix…or a Sir Mix a Lot.
