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The benefits of doing three things at the same time.

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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.
 
I have at least least 50 recipe books on the shelf but rarely get one out when I come to cook anything but just use for ideas, with the exception of the Times Calendar Cook Book which I must have had for 50 years and always use for the Xmas cake and pudding recipe. I deviated this year and made a suetless pud and substituted chopped figs for apricots and it definitely was not as good.
My daughter and I had a pud off on New Years Day and she had also made a suetless one, the consensus was mine was better for flavour and hers for texture or else people were just being kind.
 
So all you reluctant cooks out there I encourage you to have a go.
I had a go this week. Chilli in the slow cooker. Bought the ingredients, followed a recipe, cooked it all day…. Beyond inedible I’ve never tasted something as spicy in that in my life. The entire thing (meals for the whole week) went directly in the bin and I had toast instead.
 
Not as impressive as @Docb but yesterday, I whizzed up some red Thai curry paste whilst waiting for my bread to prove. Then, as the butter bean curry was gently simmering, I gave my bread dough another knead.
As it was sourdough, it didn’t get baked until this morning. While I was playing Tiny Epic Zombies.

(And the remains of the curry paste is now frozen into the ice cube tray for future quick meals.)
 
I had a go this week. Chilli in the slow cooker. Bought the ingredients, followed a recipe, cooked it all day…. Beyond inedible I’ve never tasted something as spicy in that in my life. The entire thing (meals for the whole week) went directly in the bin and I had toast instead.
If you add fresh chili you never know how hot it is. How awful to put all that effort in and not like it. Did you try adding yoghurt to the portion you ate? If I'm eating with people with a variety of heat sensitivities that is what we do though I haven't cooked a chili in the last year.
 
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.
I usually struggle to do one thing at a time effectively 🙄. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!
 
If you add fresh chili you never know how hot it is. How awful to put all that effort in and not like it. Did you try adding yoghurt to the portion you ate? If I'm eating with people with a variety of heat sensitivities that is what we do though I haven't cooked a chili in the last year.
I didn’t think strawberry yoghurt would help really, and only had that in.

Haven’t redone any shopping for a different meal plan as do have some bits of stuff in the freezer so this weeks revised meal plan is whatever I can find in
 
I didn’t think strawberry yoghurt would help really, and only had that in.

Haven’t redone any shopping for a different meal plan as do have some bits of stuff in the freezer so this weeks revised meal plan is whatever I can find in
Chilli with strawberry yogurt? Sounds like a Heston Blumenthal creation ...

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The strawberry yoghurt may have been fine.
I made the mistake of putting the amount of a Thai paste it said into a curry and it was inedible. I added a tin coconut milk and then yoghurt and it was still too hot. I fished out the chicken and veg and added that to another tin coconut milk with some ground almonds. It was still hot but edible.
I think it should have been 1 TEASPOON of paste not table spoon.
 
I had a go this week. Chilli in the slow cooker. Bought the ingredients, followed a recipe, cooked it all day…. Beyond inedible I’ve never tasted something as spicy in that in my life. The entire thing (meals for the whole week) went directly in the bin and I had toast instead.

Oh dear @Lucyr. Fresh chillies can be a bit interesting if that is what you were using. Have another go but this time use a lot less chilli - you can always use more. Did you put fresh ginger in it? If not then it is a way of getting a bit of heat in a dish with a minimum amount of chilli. Also, a pot of plain yoghourt should be part of your store cupboard (in the fridge but you know what I mean) to recover over chillied chilli dishes as suggested by @saffron15.

@Leadinglights has got the idea, nothing (except something burnt to a crisp and really black to the core) is irrecoverable. Sometimes it needs a bit of ingenuity and when it comes to over spicing, an awful lot of dilution.
 
The strawberry yoghurt may have been fine.
I made the mistake of putting the amount of a Thai paste it said into a curry and it was inedible. I added a tin coconut milk and then yoghurt and it was still too hot. I fished out the chicken and veg and added that to another tin coconut milk with some ground almonds. It was still hot but edible.
I think it should have been 1 TEASPOON of paste not table spoon.
A table spoon of curry paste?! 😱. I'm not surprised it was inedible :care:.
 
Also, a pot of plain yoghourt should be part of your store cupboard (in the fridge but you know what I mean) to recover over chillied chilli dishes as suggested by @saffron15.
I can’t buy yoghurt every week just in case I make chilli…
 
I had a go this week. Chilli in the slow cooker. Bought the ingredients, followed a recipe, cooked it all day…. Beyond inedible I’ve never tasted something as spicy in that in my life. The entire thing (meals for the whole week) went directly in the bin and I had toast instead.
I once made a chilli con carne but was using a new chilli paste, I misread the jar and put the whole jar in (it was only a small jar) but like yours, it was inedible. When I later re-read the instructions, I should have just put a small amount in, not the whole jar, Doh! You live and learn though, so will not make that mistake again.... 😎
 
People react spicy foods differently. My son in law made curries which were incredibly hot being from Pakistan and I always had to have some yoghurt on the side but I made Fajitas which to me were fine for hotness but he thought they were too hot.
 
A table spoon of curry paste?! 😱. I'm not surprised it was inedible :care:.
The recipes in my Thai cookbook recommend 1 tablespoon of paste (for 4 people). I now make my own paste and, although it depends upon the chillis used, it is much milder than the paste we have bought from the Thai supermarket. The stuff you get from UK supermarkets is mild in comparison.
 
I had occasion to get out one of my many cook books to look up a braised red cabbage recipe to do something with the cabbage which has been lurking in the fridge.
Sure enough one was in Making the Most of your Glorious Glut by Sherman, a good one for any allotmenters.
But other good ones.
Low Carb Revolution by Annie Bell
Diabetes weight loss Cookbook by Caldesi
Keto Kitchen by Palmer
Pinch of Nom Quick and Easy
A Soup for every Day by the Covent Garden Soup Co (365 soups or casseroles)
 
Second the use of preprepared "pastes" rather than faffing about with lots of separate spices. I tend to go for Pateks who have a range of styles, from mild and aromatic to the really hot. Why Pateks? Because that is what the chef at a very good local take away used for some of the more unusual dishes they did.
 
Second the use of preprepared "pastes" rather than faffing about with lots of separate spices. I tend to go for Pateks who have a range of styles, from mild and aromatic to the really hot. Why Pateks? Because that is what the chef at a very good local take away used for some of the more unusual dishes they did.
Since I developed diabetes, I've decided that, as my life expectancy's reduced, I'm not prepared to waste time on anything that I don't enjoy doing, if there are reasonable shortcuts. Grinding spices would definitely count as a waste of time for me if there's a decent pre-prepared alternative.
 
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