If you're lazy and cheap like me and you don't want to deal with cooking gourmet meals each night and yet you wish you could be eating gourmet meals each night, you might try power-cooking the weekends. I make hella stuff in bulk and freeze it so that I have a variety of tasty things on tap that can go as lunch or dinner. Variety is key so you can space things out or else things get old.
You can keep things cheap by cutting down on meat and basing your power-cooking on what's on sale at the time. I find that the protein can be made up in the form of tofu. My prefered lazy-slob way of preparing tofu is to slice up a 1/2-lb chunk and drizzle soy sauce and sesame oil over it, no cooking, fewer dirty dishes.
Dishes that I've found work well for power cooking:
---ratatouille (french veggie stew--to make it cheaper and healthier, start with any recipe, cut out the bell peppers, double the eggplant, 3-4x the zucchini, use canned tomatoes, and only use a minimum amount of oil--ingredients cheaper in summer) ---sauce bolognese (meat sauce for pasta, tasty and cheap any time of year if you start with basic sauce from a jar and spiff it up with your own herbs, adding butter makes it better, tastes better after being frozen, not particularly good for you) --butternut squash soup (chicken stock + butternut squash, could season in the onion/cream/thyme direction or the ginger direction, cheap in fall) --vegetable soup (another french classic--start with carrots, potatoes, leeks (not always cheap in the US--could substitute onions), and bouquet garni (tossing in a handfull of thyme will do), you can augment this with whatever other crap you have lying around (celery, frozen green beans, leftover pasta, ham, turnips, leafy green things, etc...) --tajine: moroccan dish--brown cheap meat (chicken, mutton/cheap lamb work well, maybe beef but I've never tried), pile on potatoes, carrots, onions, turnips, and either (prunes, almonds, cinnamon, ginger) or (green olives, garlic, lemon juice, cumin, ginger), add water, cover, and steam until veggies are done.
You can complement power food with fresh stuff, maybe leafy green stuff.
For lunches I like to do leftovers or pasta--seasoned with olive oil, butter, bolognese, or pesto ($2 at trader joes, I get 6-10 servings per jar), or soba (reasonably priced at trader joes but much cheaper at asian markets) seasoned with soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil.
I think the key to lunch is making stuff that doesn't feel like lunch (ie cold sandwiches that remind you of elementary school)
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Date: 2006-11-01 04:26 pm (UTC)You can keep things cheap by cutting down on meat and basing your power-cooking on what's on sale at the time. I find that the protein can be made up in the form of tofu. My prefered lazy-slob way of preparing tofu is to slice up a 1/2-lb chunk and drizzle soy sauce and sesame oil over it, no cooking, fewer dirty dishes.
Dishes that I've found work well for power cooking:
---ratatouille (french veggie stew--to make it cheaper and healthier, start with any recipe, cut out the bell peppers, double the eggplant, 3-4x the zucchini, use canned tomatoes, and only use a minimum amount of oil--ingredients cheaper in summer)
---sauce bolognese (meat sauce for pasta, tasty and cheap any time of year if you start with basic sauce from a jar and spiff it up with your own herbs, adding butter makes it better, tastes better after being frozen, not particularly good for you)
--butternut squash soup (chicken stock + butternut squash, could season in the onion/cream/thyme direction or the ginger direction, cheap in fall)
--vegetable soup (another french classic--start with carrots, potatoes, leeks (not always cheap in the US--could substitute onions), and bouquet garni (tossing in a handfull of thyme will do), you can augment this with whatever other crap you have lying around (celery, frozen green beans, leftover pasta, ham, turnips, leafy green things, etc...)
--tajine: moroccan dish--brown cheap meat (chicken, mutton/cheap lamb work well, maybe beef but I've never tried), pile on potatoes, carrots, onions, turnips, and either (prunes, almonds, cinnamon, ginger) or (green olives, garlic, lemon juice, cumin, ginger), add water, cover, and steam until veggies are done.
You can complement power food with fresh stuff, maybe leafy green stuff.
For lunches I like to do leftovers or pasta--seasoned with olive oil, butter, bolognese, or pesto ($2 at trader joes, I get 6-10 servings per jar), or soba (reasonably priced at trader joes but much cheaper at asian markets) seasoned with soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil.
I think the key to lunch is making stuff that doesn't feel like lunch (ie cold sandwiches that remind you of elementary school)