Quick and easy

[gonecountry]

Since moving to the country now I have to cook. Not an expert. Tired of everything I know how to cook. Looking for quick and Easy things. Sometimes someone else's variation of a well known receipe is welcomed! We do chicken breasts, cube steak, pork chops and hamburger. Family is tired of everything. Suggestions PLEASE!!!

[Pat]

Cornbread made with chopped sweet onions, minced jalapeño peppers (if you are not into bland,) whole kernel corn, and crushed crisp fried bacon (even Jennie O extra lean turkey bacon,) all in the batter and some brown sugar or molasses in the batter too.

Buy smoked ham hocks and crock pot a batch of pinto beans with the ham hocks in it. A drop or two of liquid smoke if the hocks are not strongly flavored. Alternately a little BBQ sauce can be added to the individual's taste in your bowl not the pot.

Baked yams go good with the above. Not the cooked and canned variety but whole ones from the market baked and served with a little brown sugar and butter. If you tend toward being a health freak there is brown sugar substitute and there are good heart smart butter substitutes with no trans fat and no sat fat. The yams are chock full of fiber and beta carotene and can substitute for desert. The beans have good fiber and protein. If you are totally obsessing over animal fat, cook the beans today and let them cool. The fat rises to the top and hardens where you can remove and dispose of it. Reheating the beans for consumption the next day will have them tasting better than eating them on day one anyway. If you have access to ground New Mexico chili peppers, sprinkle some in the beans to enhance color and taste. THEY ARE NOT HOT! You can get whole dried NM chilis at Wal*mart. They are not dry enough to powder so heat them on very low heat in the oven till they are dry and easily crumble. Pull out the stems first and ignore the seeds. After they crumble easily, put them in the blender or food processor and powder them. Put in sealed container. They are good on fried eggs, omelets, steamed veggies, and many other dishes including gravy on toast or biscuits. Great appetizing color and nice flavor. I like it sprinkled on popcorn.

When skimming the hardened fat from the beans with ham, do not remove the gelatin. The fat will be white (without NM chili peppers) and hard. The fat will be on top of the gelatin. The gelatin will seem more like Jello and is not to be discarded as it is very good for you and has taken in a lot of flavor.

If any of your bunch has real problems with beans due to gas there is an enzyme product in liquid form called "Beano" which can be taken with the first bite of beans and it will go a long way to preventing gas. It is safe in any reasonable dose. It is 100% natural, an enzyme that breaks down the complex molecules causing the problem and your digestion can easily handle the simpler molecules.

There are a lot of good cooks on here and hopefully Bird and some of the others will chime in with some of their mouthwatering recipes.

Cornbread (for the uninitiated) is simple to make and relatively fast from inspiration to consumption. If you start the yams (actually sweet potatos but darker than other varieties) first, they will be cooking while you are making the cornbread (on day two if you want to skim the fat off the beans.)

Beans and ham hocks in a crock pot take a while but with precious little intervention so they are really dead easy too.

The above describe a delicious meal with a relatively short prep time. A salad is fine with the above or just some sliced tomatoes with cottage cheese or raw veggies with a dip, up to you and your imagination, I just wanted to suggest the general direction.

Warning, this is real food, not at all like fast food, instant anything, or frozen heat and eat. It might become habit forming.

Pat

[egon]

Pat likes to cook! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Take the easy way. Go on a sabbatical for two days! [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Bird]

Gosh, Pat, I just got back from eating an old fashioned banana split at Braum's and you go and make me hungry again.

I smoked a large brisket for dinner Easter Sunday, so I've diced a number of left over slices, and tomorrow will be about as simple, quick, and easy cooking as there is. I'll just dump that meat, 3 or 4 cans of mixed vegetables (I used to use VegAll, but now use Walmart's Great Value Vegetable Medley), a couple of small cans of tomato sauce, maybe one can of V-8, and a little salt & pepper into the crock pot for a pot of vegetable/beef soup. Now those who want crackers with it, if there are any of those, are welcome to them, since I keep both saltines and club crackers on hand (I especially like them with salads), but with the soup, I'll have cornbread. Pat's recipes above all sound great to me, but with my soup, I'll just have plain cornbread and while it's pretty easy to make "from scratch", I'm lazy. I'm just gonna use Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix (just add milk and egg).

[Pat]

Egon, Saying I like to cook is as revealing as saying the Pope is Catholic. ho hum...

GoneCountry, If by accident any of the suggestions we make here just happen to please your crew then the next time (assuming the particular recipe is amenable) you make something like that (I assume you will make little exploratory variations) make extra and freeze some for a heat and eat meal another day. Chili, soup, stew (except big chunks of potato) and lots of other things freeze well. Sometimes leftovers hit the spot but too much of a good thing day after day leads to your current problem. So, instead of trotting out the same thing on the second day, freeze it and pull it out days or weeks later when it is NEW again.

Like Mexican style food? Le gusta a usted comida Mexicana? Here is a simple approach that got me rave reviews...

Put a thin layer of Bisquick dough on the bottom of a pressure cooker or a stock pot or similar. Then spread a thin layer of "taco" meat followed by a thin layer of dough followed by a thin layer of refried beans (with some sauce stirred in maybe) and then repeat the process till you have all you want to make.

This can be slow cooked on the stove top. It can be baked in the oven if you have the right pan. It can be cooked in the crock pot.

Sometimes I have gone to a friend's or relative's house and my gift to them is I cook supper. I did the above dish for my wife's sister and BIL. He made fun of the concoction but later in the evening when I went into the kitchen to get a drink of water the truth was revealed. He was there with a fork scraping the last of the stuff out of the pan and eating it with gusto. He looks up sheepishly at me and says, I'm busted, huh?

More later. I don't want to hog the show. There are lots of good cooks on this site. I'll be back later after others get a chance to make suggestions.

Pat

[egon]

Okay, okay pat; you and Bird treat "Food" as Cuisine. Some of us refer to it as fuel! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Bird]

Yep, Egon, some of you eat to live, while others of us live to eat. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Egon, We have already had the essen oder fressen discussion!

Eat to live, live to eat... I'm somewhere in the middle. You have to eat to live. A lot of time is spent in activities related to eating. Working to get the $ to buy food, growing your food, preparing it, serving it, eating it, cleaning up from eating it and on and on.

Since so much of your life involves eating, why not make it a pleasant and rewarding activity? Water and Purina dog chow or monkey chow will probably serve to sustain your life but it will not be so pleasant as the variety of tastes and textures and combinations that are easily available for not much more effort than just "fuel."

I think you doth protest overmuch! If you had so little interest in food as you say you would not be an avid reader of and quick responder to posts here which go far beyond food as fuel. I think you are putting us on.

Pat

[egon]

I've been caught out again Pat! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] How did you realize I can heat up a mean can of beans or have my own secret recipe for Craft Dinner? [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Hondo]

Seasoning is often the key. That, plus cooking method and the judicial use of fresh herbs can make a big difference. Take an ordinary boneless, skinless chicken breast. Throw it in a skillet. Not much to it, is there? But pound it flat (in a plastic bag or between sheets of cling wrap), smear a little grainy mustard down the center, put a little cheese (goat cheese, or maybe a bit of Monterey jack) on top of that, and place a few leaves of fresh basil or tarragon on the cheese, and maybe a piece of roasted red pepper (either from a jar or freshly roasted) then roll it up. Tie it or use toothpicks to hold it together. Throw it on the grill. Baste it with a seasoned butter or perhaps a fruit-based sauce (I知 partial to a papaya-lime-serrano sauce). Serve it with some fresh green beans. Shoot, you may want to roast the green beans (toss them in a little olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, place in the oven at 400 for about 15 minutes). That� good eating.

Or take that same boneless, skinless chicken breast. Dredge it in some seasoned flour (I take a few tablespoons of all purpose flour, add some chile powder and maybe a dried herb or some smoked paprika whatever strikes me) and saut it in olive oil or butter. Throw in some minced garlic and/or chopped green onions. When it� done, remove the chicken and make a little sauce in the pan: throw in a half cup of white wine, maybe a teaspoon or two of lemon juice, and a pat of butter. Cook it down a bit. Scrape up any of the browned bits stuck to the bottom of the skillet. There you are. Garnish it with some chopped basil or cilantro. Looks good, tastes even better.

Or back to the grill. Make a brown sugar and chile powder rub (I use a mixture of ancho chile powder, cayenne pepper, paprika and ground mustard but then I have easy access to these ingredients). Rub this on the flattened chicken breast. Grill it. It値l get a little black (the sugar), but thatçâ€â€Â�´ okay, because youæ±ÂÂÂ*e going to slice the chicken into strips, and use them as the basis for a chicken sandwich. My wife and I make chicken é€â€ÂÂ�eubens with these, using rye bread, swiss cheese, Thousand Island dressing, and sourkraut.

Anyway, just some ideas?ut I could go on and on. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]