Cooking/Recipes

[giadrosich]

For those of you who cook, either for your family or if you're on your own, I need some ideas.

 

I've seriously got to update my cooking skills with cheap, easy to make food that has some semblance of health. Fresh veggies are out--they're too expensive for the one paycheck coming in. I need frozen foods, unfortunately.

 

My main meals I have is a lot of chicken. Chicken is pretty inexpensive when I get it frozen in 5lb bags, and it lasts a while. Meat is scarce, mainly because me and my husband don't eat a lot of it, except when I make burgers or tacos. We like chicken a whole lot more.

 

So if you buy food for the house or something, or have a great recipe that doesn't take 4,000 ingredients (seriously, I tried looking online, and it's crazy the amount of stuff you need for something), please let me know. I'm just trying to make the kitchen fun again.

[Mellow]

Gumbo is a pretty easy dish to make, and a delicious one at that. You could just use chicken for it if you didn't have the money for sausages and crawfish/shrimp. The spices required are pretty inexpensive, at least the last time I checked. Oh, and of course the onions and okra. But those are also pretty easy and cheap to come by. I could toss you a guide (not really a recipe, per se, because Gumbo is a lot like sweet tea in the South. Every person makes it differently, and you'd be cooking to taste), if you are at all interested.

[Porto881]

My parents used to make something they called goulash (even though it's not actual goulash), which is essentially just white rice, canned veggies (I use corn, peas, and extra green green beans), and ground beef with some basic spices (pepper, season salt and garlic salt for the meat, regular salt and/or butter to taste). I use ground turkey as a (slightly) healthier and (somewhat) less expensive alternative, but you can use chicken too if you want. Tastes pretty good and it's somewhat healthy. If you get a little extra cash, you can always swap the canned stuff for fresh or organic and the white rice for long grain brown rice for some extra healthy num nums. Serves a lot too, I make it once and it lasts for like 2 days at 2 meals a day.

[HeavyZ]

Spaghetti is cheap and you can make a ton of it at once. Boil noodles, add sauce, mushrooms, hamburger meat, and if you like then onions. It doesn't get any cheaper when you consider how much you can make at once. To make it a little healthier just get the whole grain wheat noodles. Buying wheat products doesn't mean anything unless it says it is made with 100% whole wheat.

 

Oh, and chicken pot pie, I don't know how healthy you would consider canned veggies, but you could make a decent pot pie with a mixed can.

[Gump]

I'm mostly a baker. Developed my own recipes for cookies and brownies after my aunt taught me when I was a bit younger.

 

However, there is one delight that I developed with chicken. What you need is puff pastry shells, chicken, mashed potato, and a vegetable of your choosing (I prefer broccoli, I love mah broccoli). Bake the puff pastry in the oven for however long it takes, a light coating of butter is suggested but not required. Next, prepare the mashed potatoes. Not much to say here. Now, for your chicken, use a combination of butter, garlic and onion and saute the chicken (diced) in it. Prepare your vegetable next.

 

Now for serving...

 

Take the covers off the pastry shells. Fill the bottom with a little bit of chicken. Next, put the mash potatoes on top of it. Put the vegetable on the side or on top of the mash potatoes. Next, use the remaining chicken and put it on top of the potatoes. Then done. Delicious <3

[giadrosich]

All of these sound pretty good, thanks for the ideas.

 

I'm not one for Gumbo, my grandparents always made that, and it was pretty spicy from what I remember. I love sweet tea, and yeah, everyone in the south makes it different.

 

I'll have to see if I can get my husband to each chicken pot pie, I really like it, but he hates pie crust. I wonder if I could use biscuit mix instead of crust...I'll have to try that one day and see how it comes out. It'll be smooshier, but might not taste bad.

 

Yeah, for spaghetti, I always buy angel hair wheat noodles. Really yummy, that's what I grew up on. That and whole wheat bread.

 

We do eat a LOT of rice, and I don't skimp on rice either. Rice and olive oil are probably my most expensive kitchen necessities. I get Jasmine Rice and shortgrain sushi rice for occasional sushi (fake sushi, I fill it with shrimp and cooked fish).

[Porto881]

what you can do about the chicken pot pie thing is maybe get those Pillsbury crescent rolls and unroll em, stuff everything inside, and roll em back up. 

[giadrosich]

They might get soggy that way though unless I just use dry ingredients. I'll have to experiment.

[HeavyZ]

I've tried it with the biscuit mix instead, trust me you'll want to go with the crescent rolls instead haha. I'd try using a little flour to keep the them from getting soggy.