Quick Cooking

[livingdeb]

I recently happened upon a forum where someone asked people for ideas on quick cooking. I believe it was a cooking forum, so everyone was all about the stir fries and the crockpots and other things that aren't that quick.

My favorite treatment of what I think of when I think of quick cooking comes from Peg Bracken's I Hate To Cook Book (1960, but still available, I believe). She says:

[T]he reluctant solo cook is rather a creature of habit, who tends to major in one--and only one--of several eating patterns.

1. The English Muffin (or soft roll) with Something on It
2. The Egg with Something under It
3. The Milkshake with Something in It
4. The Soup with Something beside It
5. The Baked Potato with Something over It

That is, when the chips are down, and the freezer contains mainly what you don't feel like thawing or eating, it will be one of these you revert to.

Does one of these describe you?

Sometimes in the summer I am a milkshake person. I try to make them healthy, so I normally put a banana and frozen berries in. Or sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie spice (this gives it a pumpkin pie a la mode flavor that people besides me actually like, although apparently this sounds disgusting). I like peanut butter shakes. And of course chocolate. And chocolate peanut butter.

Ms. Bracken recommends frozen or canned fruit; rum, brandy, or whiskey; instant coffee; sliced bananas; thawed frozen fruit-juice concentrates; and fruit, chocolate, or caramel syrup. Plus a raw egg for nutrition. She also recommends vanilla ice cream if you can store only one flavor. And she highly recommends a blender.

But mostly I am not a milkshake person, but the type to make a Macaroni and Cheese with Something in It. Normally I just add garlic and extra cheese, plus replace the butter with cream cheese (half the calories). You can put any leftovers in, too, like milk or butter milk or sour cream or yogurt and like meats or vegetables.

Comments

Default dinners

[(Anonymous)]

(sally)

In my reluctant solo cook days, I had several default meals I fell back on with about equal frequency: bread or crackers with peanut butter, cheese, or tuna (cat. 1); eggs (cat. 2); canned soup (cat. 4); oatmeal; frozen dinners and other prepared foods (frozen egg rolls, vegetarian corn dogs, etc.).

I guess frozen dinners weren't as good, varied, and quick to heat up in 1960 as in 1999 and the whole frozen "meal in a bag" thing seems pretty new also. In general, I think the expansion of easy prepared or semi-prepared food options has changed things significantly from when she came up with that list. I can imagine a lot of people defaulting to prepared/frozen foods rather than going to the trouble of making, say, a baked potato (even though that too is a lot faster now with microwaves so common) and figuring out what to put on it. Unless of course she is explicitly restricting "cooking" to refer to starting with only real ingredients and no prepared foods (well, aside from the obvious point that nobody who is a reluctant solo cook makes their own English muffins). But in my experience, it's the rare RSC who doesn't have a frozen pizza or whatever in their fridge but has a bunch of perishable foods on hand from which to make dinner, however minimal. (Catsup, however, absolutely.)

Of course, I assume her characterization of these eating patterns is just a joke anyway, sourced from a study at MSU (Making Shit Up) and not based on any deep investigation of the matter, but she must have thought it would resonate with people. I don't know that it would be as effective a list now as when she wrote it. You know, like "where's category 19: microwave popcorn?"

I know one of your readers was historically a big-time #6: Pasta with jarred sauce and parmesan. She kind of still is, though now with more vegetables.

Is your Mac and Cheese from a box like Annie's or do you start from scratch?

Re: Default dinners

[(Anonymous)]

(Tam)

Yep, my big historical dinner option was spaghetti with jar sauce, often with ground turkey and always with parmesan. These days I tend to cook that in advance, not so much on the fly, and include spinach, onions, mushrooms, and garbanzo beans. But that's taking it pretty much out of the realm of last-minute cooking.

I also like mac 'n cheese (from a box) with fish (canned tuna or salmon, or fresh white fish like tilapia) and maybe spinach if I feel the need for a vegetable. (Now that you can't get the spinach in bags it's not so easy to just put spinach in everything. It's a real pity.)

A can of chili (usually Amy's) also works well for me.

Re: Default dinners

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Yep, I assume MSU also.

My memory of TV dinners is from the 70's is that they were not so great. I still think most are not so great, but I do like some of them. No microwave popcorn back then; I don't even know if they had jiffy pop yet. I think her focus was on things that didn't take much hands-on time, even if they took a while from start to finish. Thus, the baked potatoes. And her perspective is that of a fifties housewife, expected to cook proper meals for the family, but sometimes when they're all out you can just make something easy for yourself that you wouldn't normally want to serve to other people.

Nowadays you'd have to mention ramen noodles with something in it, right?

I use a box for my mac and cheese. I haven't found a good way to make the sauce without the yellow salt powder yet, but I haven't tried enough. I'm not wild about the one whole wheat mac and cheese I've found (Annie's) and the other with lots of fiber is no longer available around here (DeBole's with jerusalem artichoke hearts), so I really ought to try again.

Re: Default dinners

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Or there's R's combination--spaghetti with chili and extra onions, garlic and cheese (which he calls chili mac). I also like his chicken surprise (soup with rice mixed in), but the perfect soup seems no longer to be being made. So sad.