Hello friends! I like food. I like food a lot and I'm a pretty proficient cook and have done the bulk of the cooking in my house since I was a teenager.
Sadly, I don't live in a great place for take out so when I don't feel like cooking I need back up plans. There are some recipes I yank out when I don't feel like spending a lot of time in front of my stove, and I thought we could use this topic to spread the "I don't want to cook tonight because I'm just straight up lazy" love!
My favorite easy recipe is a fried egg over brown rice topped with a bit of pesto. It's super delicious and pretty filling.
Cooking in the Quarter life Crisis
19 posts in this topic.
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Mushrooms on toast and scrambled egg. Sadly it requires creme fraiche which isn't something I would keep in the house but grab some and you're golden. Toast some sourdough or equally tasty bread, fry up some mushrooms and then put a dollop of creme fraiche in the pan and wait until it reduces, and scramble some eggs in the other. Butter your bread and then put the eggs on one slice and mushrooms on the other, and loads of spinach on the side. The best.
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This may be a Finnish thing, but like the classic "student food" (as in cheap and fast) over here is plain macaroni and tuna with ketchup. Like. You boil your pasta and dump a can of tuna on it and season with ketchup xD obviously there's no taste whatsoever, but I admit having this as recently as a couple of weeks ago...
Another thing I like to do is toast some bread, spread ketchup on it, put tuna on it (seriously... Why do both of these features those things), slice cheese on top and stick it in the oven until the cheese has melted nicely. It's like a quick mini pizza! And you could do this with any toppings you like.
I actually don't eat (aka dislike or even hate) mushrooms and eggs (I use eggs a lot in baking but I don't eat eggs in any form on their own, as eggs) so it's funny both of your suggestions included those xD -
Jacket potatoes are good if you have time but not much energy (just remember to skewer them first or you're in explosion territory...) and chicken leg bits can also be thrown in an oven and ignored for about the same length of time. My go-to low-brain dinner is chicken, diced and fried, with pasta, some kind of boilable veg, and grated cheese.
Dems: your ketchup tuna toast reminds me of the pizza bagels I used to do at uni - bagel, halved, spread with tomato purée, sprinkled with cheese and microwaved. They'd probably be less soggy done in an oven/grill! -
Man. So my go to is cooked rice, yogurt with some salt. Like it's pure carbs but so good on a summer night.
I sometimes add pickles/seasoning mustard to it. Or mint chutney is the best to pair with.
And like rice and yogurt is a must-have in any Indian house, so yeah always stocked on those.
Othertimes, for a more substantial meal, I mix rice with cooked lentils. Rice and beans, if you will.
Otherwise it's peanut butter on bread or crackers or something. -
I have a cheese problem, and will happily eat the baked pita chips from trader joes with a giant chunk of jarlsberg.
If it's cold, then I'll go boxed mac and cheese (annies, usually), and tuna. I have no idea where this came from, but that's how I've always eaten it. Yep.
For summer, though, honestly? sliced cheese, crackers, and fruit. sometimes hard boiled egg.
Also, anything you can do in a toaster oven, so open faced tuna melts? Garlic cheese bread? Mini pizza? DONE. I also used to do quesadillas in a mini convection oven... I should try that in the toaster. And speaking, of, there is definitely chicken and salsa in the crockpot right now. Use it for nachos, burritos, or quesadillas. And, actually. Quesadillas using the mini tortillas and the panini press? Perfection. -
Cook up some box mac'n'cheese (I like the stuff with the cheese sauce, not the cheese powder), add salsa and ground beef (you can do just salsa if you don't eat meat, but I certainly do eat meat). It's quick, easy, and delicious as heck. Actually, last time I used black bean salsa and chorizo instead of ground beef, which was even better.
Scrambled eggs on toast (aaaaaaalways on toast, I literally will not eat eggs without toast to put them on). I love this because you can basically put whatever you want in the scrambled eggs - cheese, garlic, spices, veggies - and top them with basically anything you want, too.
Slightly longer only because of the nonpackage stuff, but I also love to make red beans & rice (Vigo brand, out of the bag) and cook up a yellow onion, red pepper, and Italian sausage to throw into it at the end.
If I'm really hungry and really lazy, cereal. -
@Meshugenah - my life is crippled without Traer Joe's and their stir fry and salad and everything. ;.;
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omg @Lava. They used to make this stir-fry mix I could just live on (I mean, I'd add onion, but I have a weakness for caramelized onion) and now I can't find it anymore. I'm not sure if it was a uni-town specific thing, but UGH. I am still so disappointed. It had all the good stuff I like, and nothing gross (i.e. those mini corn alien things and red onion). srsly, it was all broccoli, water chestnuts, a teeny bit of peppers, carrots, and snap peas. It was glorious, because I could buy the mix and have two meals out of it, once I added rice and then either chicken or egg.
Anyway. Basically I love trader joes and it's a problem. -
I'm a vegetarian, and my staples for when I don't want to cook and I don't want any of the leftovers I have (I <3 leftovers) are:
*Kraft mac & cheese - I usually add peas or I eat it with a veggie burger for protein (mac & cheese never gets old!!)
*pancakes - this is my favorite recipe, and all of the ingredients are things you probably have on hand anyway
*Veggie burger - a roommate in college told me to try peanut butter on my bun with a veggie burger and it's <3
*peanut butter toast and an egg - (eaten separately :p)
*CEREAL - sometimes you just need a cold bowl of cereal <3 -
I buy plantains in bulk. I can fry them, add salt, lemon. Bam. I can also add an egg to go with it. Or salami. Or tuna. Or whatever kind of cold cut or protein you have lying around. Dinner in 5 minutes.
OR if you have 20 minutes, you can just peel and have it boil in some water or bake in the oven. Mash it up as you would a potato with some butter, salt. You can add cheese (like any is good, but I recommend a white cheese for frying/ or mozerella would work fine) Also good with caramelized onions.
But if all else fails and the laziness takes over.
Toast + avocado spread
Toast + hummus spread
Toast + tuna/ creamcheese, or just plain toast and cream cheese
Toast + banana
Toast + peanut butter (and banana)
Toast + nutella
Toast + pesto sauce
Toast + leftovers, like....dude. When I ran out of bread and was too lazy to get more, I'd fry up my own yeast-less flatbread. Flour, milk, butter, and oil. Bam. -
My go to for YEARS has been tuna pasta salad. I always manage to have a tin of tuna/bag of pasta in the cupboard and generally some veggies/salady stuff hanging out in the fridge with polish mayonnaise (honestly their mayonnaise is amazing). And it's that easy like, cook pasta, chop veggies, put all together. I think I made it for @Demeter once actually?
More recently, if I have tofu about, I make like scrambled tofu with egg/rice noodles, sweetcorn, mushrooms, sometimes spinach. Whatever I feel like throwing in. And then usually a poached egg on top. Dead easy and quick. My favourite! -
@Carlito after you mentioned having peanut butter with a veggie burger I fully expected the peanut butter toast with eggs to be peanut butter toast with eggs.
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Yay for bread and eggs! I see a theme here... My favorite quick-fix is french toast! (Not healthy at all after I put tons of maple syrup and butter on them, but who cares?). Chili or any soup that you can just leave on the stove and forget about is also one of my favorites, because you can make a bunch of it at one time and freeze for later. If I'm really not doing any real cooking whatsoever though, my go-to is nachos. Chips, Salsa, Cheese, Olives + the magic of Microwave Ovens.
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I have a few super easy meals:
- English Muffin+ breakfast sausage patty+ egg. You can add melted cheese to it if you enjoy that. It's a pretty solid dupe for the Starbucks breakfast sandwitch
- Fried rice! I literally just cook up a cup of rice, fry up whatever meat I'm using (usually back bacon), toss in the rice, add buckets of spices (turmeric and cumin, usually) make a well in the centre, crack an egg in, mix it around, crack another egg in, done.
Back when I was ignoring my allergies, I'd make Mexican pretty religiously. One can of beans+ one cup or rice fried together (with spices, obviously) and I could make burritos, nachos, tacos... anything I needed protein and filler for. Quesadillas required a little bit of work to mash the beans (I never could think of using refried beans... needed the stability of freshly mashed beans) but sooo good.
I also rather enjoyed curried potato soup with chicken broth for some protein. Boiling potatoes in broth with curry, then blend and serve over rice.
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