TubeNet

I'm quickly tiring of eating the same old thing week after week and well, who better to ask about food than a bunch of tuba players? So, please share with me your wealth of culinary knowledge so that I might finally eat something different. What do you all do when you're in need of quick, (semi)home cooked eats?

Thanks,

Wes "readying his fork and knife" T.

A big bowl of grits with salt and butter , toast and a big,cold glass of milk to wash it all down !!!

I am not a tuba player BTW,I am a euphonium player .

Knowing how to cook is a valuable skill--we rarely eat out, mostly because I'm a better cook than the guy behind the swinging doors in a restaurant. But then, he's under pressure to turn out a lot of food really fast, so I don't blame him.

Last night was French onion soup en croute and a salad with a hot loaf of bread.

(Hint: when you go to the supermarket bakery where they sell all of the fancy loaves of bread, just ask if you can buy a loaf of the frozen stuff they use. Then pop it into your oven and you've got fresh hot bread right away that's TONS better than what's out on the counter).

One thing that's helped my education is participating in the local CSA (community-sponsored agriculture) program. For a fixed amount per week, you get a box of locally grown produce. Sometimes, I'll get veggies that I've never seen before, like raab or burdock and I go scurrying to the computer to find out how one prepares it.

Tonight is butternut squash enchiladas. Don't laugh--they're great. I spent less than 45 minutes making them.

When I was single, I'd take an evening and cook a mess of stuff, then put it into Tupperware containers in the refrigerator for the next few days.

You could also invite someone who is a good cook over, cook up a double portion of whatever, and participate by peeling, chopping and cleaning up--and learnng.

I don't buy the "poor single guy who doesn't know how to cook, so he has to go to Carl's Jr." schtick. Cooking's easy compared to many other things in life.

I´m with you here, Chuck.
There are tons of dishes that work real quick and are easy to do. Starting from there, one can gradually increase the level of cooking performance.

Really fast and easy: Spaghetti aglio olio con peperoncino.
Description for dummies:
- fill large pot with water. Add 2-3 teaspoons of salt and 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil. Set on stove.
- while water heats up: peel garlic in desired quantity (the more the better). Crush or cut in tiny cubes.
- cut 1-2 or more small hot peppers in slices. (Careful, don´t rub your eyes with pepper-stained fingers!!! THAT HURTS!!!)
-when water´s boiling: dump desired amount of spaghetti (or other noodles) and let boil for a couple of minutes.
- take noodles out of water when soft enough for you.
- Heat deep frying pan. Add considerable amount of olive oil, add crushed or cut garlic and peppers. Dump noodles in pan.
- stirr and serve. The idea is NOT to fry the noodles, but just cover them with heated and seasoned olive oil.

Takes about 10 minutes and is delicious. For variation, add some cut up breakfast sausages, onions, vegetables...
Cheap, quick, and not very messy.

I love this topic. Get back to you later.

Next one. Takes a little longer, but is great to vary.
Pancakes

Dough: 2-3 eggs, 1/2 pound of flour, 1/3 pint of milk (Works great with plain water or a mixture, too), salt.
Mix ingredients. Add water or milk until you get a liquid. Add salt until dough tastes slightly over-salted. Let rest for half an hour (flour needs to soak).

Pour dough in hot frying pan to make plate-sized, 3-4 mm thick (err... thin) pancakes. Use fat (oil, butter, pork fat works great) if you like.

Serve hot, cover with jam, syrup, or sugar.
Variants: put slices of potatoes or sausages in pan before pouring dough. Bacon works great, too.
Really yummy: baked-in slices of apple. In this case: put sugar on pancake. add a little rum (more than 54% alcohol), turn down the light and set rum on fire.

tubeast wrote:.....
- cut 1-2 or more small hot peppers in slices. (Careful, don´t rub your eyes with pepper-stained fingers!!! THAT HURTS!!!).....

Nor visit the bathroom without washing your hands at least half a dozen times... Otherwise it will hurt BADLY!

My best kitchen investment ever: a wok...

Cut up meat, onions, garlic, chillies and some vegetables (crunchy ones work best) in small pieces. Get your wok really, really, REALLY hot, add a little bit of oil (it should smoke) and throw in ingredients one by one. Actual cooking only takes minutes. (cutting everything is another matter if you've got lousy knife skills...)
Plenty of detailed recipes are available online.

tubeast wrote:Next one. Takes a little longer, but is great to vary.
Pancakes

Dough: 2-3 eggs, 1/2 pound of flour, 1/3 pint of milk (Works great with plain water or a mixture, too), salt.
......

Next time you make them, replace some or all of the liquid with beer. You get wonderful tasting (of course..) and extra fluffy pancakes that way.

Best dinner recipie I found:

Take one IrishScottish tuba player
Add one (or two depending on taste or skill) French Belgian woman who loves to cook. Italian is an acceptable substitute.

Mix frequently with lots of spice until married,or at least until inseparable.

Enjoy.

Sorry. Yesterday was the 14th

Quick but tasty egg sandwich-great for drop in guests-only takes minutes.
In a fry pan, fry fat-free baloney until done in fat free butter. Make two pieces of toast and butter them. Drop two eggs in the fry pan (Now inundated with butter and baloney drippings)-break the eggs and fry until done. Drop fried baloney onto the toast. Drop one fried egg on the toast and then a slice of pepper-jack cheese-followed by the second egg, cover and serve with a paper towel (napkin too small).
Tastes so good it'll make your bulldog break his chain.

Here's a flavorful 5 minute meal if you have all the ingredients. It is sort of a mock falafel - using Boca burgers (which are not as inexpensive as I would like though). This is the only way I will eat a Boca burger - definitely not a hamburger substitute. The recipe is quite good though.

Cut a slit in the boca burgers plastic wrapper and microwave for 1-2 min. (whatever the package recomends).
While that is cooking, cut a pita bread in half, slather the inside with hummus, add some lettuce and tomato. When the boca burger is done, cut it in half and insert into the prepared pita. Enjoy

Actually this takes less than five minutes, unless you (preferably) make your own hummus, then it takes 5 minutes (and substantially reduces the cost).
Hummus: Drain a can or Garbonzo beans, chickpeas, navy beans, or any other whitish bean (I skip the fancy expensive beans) . Dump into your food processor, add 2 tablespoons or so of tahinni (sesame seed paste) add as much crushed garlic as you like (2 cloves is OK, 5-7 will give a can's worth of beans some zing). Add the juice of half a lemon. Start of the processor and add olive oil until the consistency is still just a bit too thick. Now taste and adjust. You may need more garlic, maybe more lemon juice, a pinch of salt, whatever you like. Add some other herbs, some roasted red peppers if you like. Turn on the processor and add more oil until you get the consistency you want. I NEVER measure the oil. I just add it until the consistency is right. I'm really not sure how much I add. I just pour it out of the bottle into the processor, maybe 4-5 tablespoons? Hummus is NOT low calorie.

Use the extra hummus straight up with cut up pitas, or crackers or on vegetables. It keeps for about a week in the refrigerator

This is a common summer dinner for us when it is hot, and especially if we have ripe tomatoes in the garden.

For easy, I've found that a Crock-Pot is the BEST kitchen tool.

One of my favorite recipes is (probably mistakenly) called Spanish Chicken:

-Put about 4 pounds of chicken (not boneless/skinless; a combination of whole breasts and legs is the best way to go) in the crock pot.

-Combine a small can of tomato paste and 1/2 (comes out to 6 oz) beer, then pour over chicken.

-Dump a whole jar of olives into the crock-pot, juice and all.

-Season with paprika, salt and pepper to taste.

-Cook on low for 12 hours.

-Serve over cooked rice or pasta.

The whole thing takes about five minutes to prepare and you have dinner waiting when you get home (With the accompanying smells when you open the door... yeeeaaaah, buddy). Plus, if you make it in the morning, you have an excuse to drink half a beer with breakfast!

tubeast wrote:- cut 1-2 or more small hot peppers in slices. (Careful, don´t rub your eyes with pepper-stained fingers!!! THAT HURTS!!!)

You can say that again! I find that rubbing some cooking oil into my hands before cutting hot peppers keeps the pepper oil out of the skin and makes it simple to wash it off. And remember, with peppers, it's the SEEDS that are the really hot part!

Hanging around a good cook for awhile is very educational--there are tons of little tricks of the trade that can make life easier. For example, how do you pick out a ripe cantaloupe or a ripe watermelon or a ripe eggplant? When preparing a meal, a good cook usually has several things going on at once--there is a rhythm and form to cooking. I can't see how anyone who loves to make music would not also enjoy cooking--music for the stomach!

One of my favourite meals lately is farce (or stuffing, dressing, whatever you like to call it) without the turkey.

It's so simple:

Chop up cooked potato and bread. (I like multigrain or poppy seed for this purpose) Mix them together in a bowl. Add whole fresh (or frozen, or dried) cranberries, a chopped up onion, celery, maybe a few almonds, olive oil, butter, salt, fresh ground pepper, rosemary, etc. (You can add any ingredient you like- my housemate suggested sausage, which would probably be really great, but I haven't tried it yet.) Chuck all the ingredients in a bowl or a clay pot (covered) and pop it in the microwave for 20 minutes. Everything steams together and when it's done it tastes just like it came out of a turkey. Delicious.

Here's one more: Cover a Greek pita with a layer of pesto. Throw on some artichoke hearts, sun dried tomatos, red onion, and thinly sliced zucchini. Top with feta cheese and bake it for a few minutes.

Two other big favourites at my house lately have been linguine carbonara and Thai chicken with pasta and peanut sauce. We love food.

Or if none of those appeal to you, try this:

the elephant wrote:A brick of dry Ramen noodles between two thick, room temperature slabs of SPAM serves as a rather nice meal for you and someone you love.

My new favorite fast food is banh mi, which I first ate this December in Vietnam. It's a sandwich on a French bread baguette, with fresh Asian vegetables and various meat and vegetarian fillings. You can eat that with pho, which is a very hearty soup with all kinds of meat, vegetables, and noodles. The most Vietnamese type of beverage to drink with this meal is Pepsi or Coke.

There is a chain that sells banh mi in the Southwestern United States--Lee's Sandwiches.

mamaliga cu brinza (very traditional Romanian food) is my favorite food,
it is yellow corn grits and cheese.

Quick, easy, cheap and tasty; just make sure that the yellow grits are cooked enough!

Include some tuica (plum brandy) and you have my favorite meal.

pofta buna!
Mark

Mark E. Chachich wrote:mamaliga cu brinza (very traditional Romanian food) is my favorite food,
it is yellow corn grits and cheese.

There's a Romanian potato soup with tomatoes and sour cream that I make on occasion. Very tasty and loads better than your run-of-the-mill potato soup.

Macaroni and cheese is my choice for a fast food fix. The boxed kind isn't as good as homemade, but takes only 15 minutes. Add sliced weenies or tiny sausages to the boiling water a minute or two before taking out the pasta if you need more protein.

If you are a real foodie, check out

http://www.chowhound.com

for restaurant reviews, recipies and general food talk.

"Quick" and "(semi)home-cooked" sounds like you aren't looking for something complicated and sophisticated, just something a little different but easy and -- well, you said it, quick.

Here's a quick & easy one, that's also very healthy and a new favorite of mine. Take a frozen salmon filet or two -- I purchase them locally in pre-frozen individual filets at Kroger or Sams -- and place in a skillet with just a dab of water, cover and place over a burner on medium. While that thaws and begins to steam, prepare some raw spinach for cooking (clean it, remove as much stem as you like, etc.) When the salmon is fully thawed, salt a bit if you like and add the spinach (pack the pan FULL; spinach really cooks down a lot). Allow to steam for 4 or 5 minutes, remove from the stove and serve the salmon on a bed of the cooked spinach. The flavors of the salmon and spinach really complement one another well. Total time from walking in the door to sitting at the table: about 15 minutes, tops, with nothing to "pull out of the freezer" before work. I'll even run home at lunch and fix this -- and get back to work before the end of my lunch hour!

I've thought that adding a bit of dry white wine to this as it cooks would be even better, but haven't had any on hand to try it with. I have tried adding a bit of olive oil, and it was good -- but not really any better than without.

Another fairly quick and easy one is to cover the bottom of a baking dish with chicken breasts, mix cream of chicken & cream of mushroom canned soups (I use the low-fat variety, and they work FINE ) with just enough water, beer or white wine that you can pour it over the chicken, then top with Stovetop Stuffing mix, prepared with just enough water to moisten it (one box for a 9x9 pan; if you're preparing more, increase the amount of stuffing proportionally). Pop it in the oven for about 25-35 minutes at 375 degrees, and it's ready. You can start with frozen chicken, and give it an extra 10-15 minutes. Yeah, it takes a while to cook, but prep time is about 5 minutes, and it is GOOD, baby! Use the cooking time to fix a nice salad, or just unwind a little.
___________________________
Joe Baker, who is going to go home and do the salmon & spinach thing in a few minutes!

Thanks everyone for all of the ideas! Now to print out this whole thread and take it to the grocery store.... Keep 'em comin'

Real quick, real easy, real nice:

- get chicken breast, about a pint of cream and/or sour cream (no, not sweetened whipped topping!!) and instant onion soup.
- cut up chicken to preferred serving size and fry for a short (!!) time in deep frying pan.
- Mix cream and instant onion soup, add milk or water to get preferred viscosity. Pour over chicken and let cook on small flame (don´t let burn).
- add real onions ad lib., generally the soup does it already.
maybe use fried onions as decoration.
- serve with noodles, potatoes or rice