Docb
Moderator
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
Just spent an hour and a half in the kitchen and have enough veg soup for a week, a batch of chocolate brownie and a three portion chicken, ham and mushroom pie which will be topped with filo pastry left over from my experiments earlier in the week which has been sitting in the fridge.
Its not that I am some super efficient genius cook, its more I stopped and thought a bit before I started. You see, there is a lot of hanging around when cooking and if you can fill in the gaps, you can get a lot more done than you might imagine.
So, first to start was the soup... pile the veg into pressure cooker and throw in a couple of chicken thighs and set it off. While that was doing its thing I made a batch of brownie mix. OK, I've made enough of that in the past so I could go round the kitchen and gather the bits and pieces and make it without thinking too hard. By the time that was in and baking, the soup had finished cooking. Out came the thighs and onto the chopping board to cool and the veg blitzed to a soup.
Brownie now ready and out onto cooling rack.
Another couple of onions chopped, some leftover ham, mushrooms and a couple of cloves of garlic retrieved from fridge and prepared for cooking. Pan on hob, oil/butter in pan and onion fried. Add garlic, the chopped up chicken (It falls off the bone), the mushrooms and chopped up ham and fry for a bit. Add a decent glug of wine and some of the veg soup - no need for a cube. Let it boil a bit to reduce and there is my pie filling. Will be topped with the filo at the last minute before baking whilst some veg steams..
No recipe calling for long lists of obscure ingredients, no arty pictures telling you what it must look like. Just a pile of stuff that will be good to eat and make life easy for the next few days.
So all you reluctant cooks out there I encourage you to have a go. Think more about having a stocked veg basket and a bit of a store cupboard. Use recipe books by all means but think of them as giving ideas rather than bibles to follow. When you are going to cook, think about how you might integrate things to get more than one meal out of the time you spend in the kitchen.
Its not that I am some super efficient genius cook, its more I stopped and thought a bit before I started. You see, there is a lot of hanging around when cooking and if you can fill in the gaps, you can get a lot more done than you might imagine.
So, first to start was the soup... pile the veg into pressure cooker and throw in a couple of chicken thighs and set it off. While that was doing its thing I made a batch of brownie mix. OK, I've made enough of that in the past so I could go round the kitchen and gather the bits and pieces and make it without thinking too hard. By the time that was in and baking, the soup had finished cooking. Out came the thighs and onto the chopping board to cool and the veg blitzed to a soup.
Brownie now ready and out onto cooling rack.
Another couple of onions chopped, some leftover ham, mushrooms and a couple of cloves of garlic retrieved from fridge and prepared for cooking. Pan on hob, oil/butter in pan and onion fried. Add garlic, the chopped up chicken (It falls off the bone), the mushrooms and chopped up ham and fry for a bit. Add a decent glug of wine and some of the veg soup - no need for a cube. Let it boil a bit to reduce and there is my pie filling. Will be topped with the filo at the last minute before baking whilst some veg steams..
No recipe calling for long lists of obscure ingredients, no arty pictures telling you what it must look like. Just a pile of stuff that will be good to eat and make life easy for the next few days.
So all you reluctant cooks out there I encourage you to have a go. Think more about having a stocked veg basket and a bit of a store cupboard. Use recipe books by all means but think of them as giving ideas rather than bibles to follow. When you are going to cook, think about how you might integrate things to get more than one meal out of the time you spend in the kitchen.
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