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I just moved out recently and found myself quickly living off takeout and restaurant food. This is costing me too much money and will eventually cost me my health. My mother used to take care of meals when I lived with my parents and now my chickens have come home to roost as I coasted on that benefit for far too long. She's out of country and both my dad and I are hosed. I desperately need advice on how to make some easy healthy meals for my week without breaking the bank too much. I'm not particularly picky and have a fully stocked kitchen. I just need grocery shopping advice and some info on how to cook for one person and maybe on occasion, for two. Any help would be appreciated. Particularly planning advice. I'm a very busy person and I need my meal prep to be quick or at least planned in advance. I got a slow cooker which could be really helpful.
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Jan 30, 2017 04:44
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| # ? May 5, 2024 09:30 |
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This thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3442278 And http://www.budgetbytes.com Are your new best friends.
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Jan 30, 2017 04:58
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Kraftwerk posted:I got a slow cooker which could be really helpful. big if true.
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Jan 30, 2017 07:46
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A simple holdover until you learn some proper recipes is to just make some salad to go with your mac and cheese / ramen.
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Jan 30, 2017 09:39
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Read this free cookbook.
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Jan 30, 2017 16:14
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https://www.blueapron.com/
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Jan 30, 2017 23:45
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http://www.mealime.com/
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Jan 31, 2017 00:00
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Thanks everyone for the input. I especially like Mealime but I'll certainly want to follow some recipes on my own as well so I'll combine some of the others. This is great!
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Jan 31, 2017 00:48
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One thing about cooking for yourself, sometimes it may seem hard to cook just enough for your dinner. Don't hesitate to make more. Good for leftovers for lunch over the next couple days or when you don't feel like cooking. My go to meals were either a pasta dish (spaghetti with roasted veggies like zucchini and broccoli) and stir fry with rice. Both make great left overs. Making pasta usually last me the dinner plus 2-3 lunches. Last minute edit: With that crock pot, make some chili. You can freeze extra for another day or re-purpose it as chili mac (I've even mixed it with taco filling and rice and made a burrito). Pikal fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Jan 31, 2017 |
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Jan 31, 2017 04:59
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Buy a rice cooker and you can get by pretty far on that, too.
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Feb 1, 2017 04:09
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If you put beans in your chili (because let's face it beans are very cheap) it's good to make sure that you aren't using dried beans. Dried kidney beans if they don't reach a certain temperature will end up giving you food poisoning, and slow cookers are unlikely to reach that temperature. Using canned beans negates that whole problem.
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Feb 3, 2017 01:04
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Pikal posted:One thing about cooking for yourself, sometimes it may seem hard to cook just enough for your dinner. Don't hesitate to make more. Good for leftovers for lunch over the next couple days or when you don't feel like cooking. My go to meals were either a pasta dish (spaghetti with roasted veggies like zucchini and broccoli) and stir fry with rice. Both make great left overs. Making pasta usually last me the dinner plus 2-3 lunches. Curry is great for this, as the flavors just get better after a couple days in the fridge. Same for chili. Also, learn to make a good egg/tuna/chicken salad. Makes packing lunches a lot easier, and is a hell of a lot cheaper than decent deli meat. I tend to roll with a super simple egg salad : Hard boil and dice 8 eggs, mix with two tablespoons mustard, two tablespoons mayo, and a little salt and pepper. Celery seed or dill make nice additions, as does a bit of paprika. It's basically deviled eggs on a slice of bread. For chicken or tuna, same theory, can of either in water (drained) add a tablespoon mayo, a teaspoon or so of mustard, a tablespoon of pickle relish, and a little salt and pepper. To get fancy, add a splash of your preferred vinegar (raspberry balsamic works well), diced celery (or celery seed if you don't like the crunch). All of these measurements can just be eyeballed and adjusted to taste depending on how thick you like the consistency to be. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Feb 3, 2017 |
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Feb 3, 2017 01:38
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Keep us updated on your cooking progress so we may knowingly chuckle and offer kindly advice. Start slow, follow recipes as closely and carefully as you can at first until you have a better idea of how food works. Be careful with how hot your pan is. Know that you will gently caress up a few meals, it happens, it's fine. Keep a fire extinguisher and first aid kit handy. It's FINE, it HAPPENS, it's HOW WE LEARN. Are you at 'boil water', 'bake a potato', or 'fry bacon' level of skill?
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Feb 3, 2017 05:35
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Kraftwerk posted:I just moved out recently and found myself quickly living off takeout and restaurant food. This is costing me too much money and will eventually cost me my health. My mother used to take care of meals when I lived with my parents and now my chickens have come home to roost as I coasted on that benefit for far too long. She's out of country and both my dad and I are hosed. move back home and give them back the slow cooker. start there.
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Feb 3, 2017 09:10
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mindphlux posted:big if true. It was super helpful when I was learning to cook because it allowed me to just get comfortable chopping poo poo and improvising flavors
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Feb 3, 2017 17:34
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The Glumslinger posted:It was super helpful when I was learning to cook because it allowed me to just get comfortable chopping poo poo and improvising flavors That doesn't really have anything to do with the vessel. You could have done this in a big pot or dutch oven.
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Feb 3, 2017 21:15
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Pikal posted:One thing about cooking for yourself, sometimes it may seem hard to cook just enough for your dinner. Don't hesitate to make more. Good for leftovers for lunch over the next couple days or when you don't feel like cooking. My go to meals were either a pasta dish (spaghetti with roasted veggies like zucchini and broccoli) and stir fry with rice. Both make great left overs. Making pasta usually last me the dinner plus 2-3 lunches. Every time I make pasta with sauce and try to keep leftovers I end up with a miserable clumpy sticky mess after even one night in the fridge. Especially with fettucine. 
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Feb 4, 2017 00:38
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Ciaphas posted:Every time I make pasta with sauce and try to keep leftovers I end up with a miserable clumpy sticky mess after even one night in the fridge. Especially with fettucine. Use thicker noodles, store separately from the sauce. Ziti, Rigatoni, and Spaghetti work great.
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Feb 4, 2017 01:23
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Also pasta is cooked super quickly and easily. Just cook a lot of sauce, put in in jars and have it with freshly cooked pasta anytime you want.
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Feb 4, 2017 01:51
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Ciaphas posted:Every time I make pasta with sauce and try to keep leftovers I end up with a miserable clumpy sticky mess after even one night in the fridge. Especially with fettucine. And then you microwave and eat it? That's what pasta does when it's leftovers. Nothing wrong with that.
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Feb 4, 2017 10:55
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Well so far I have been using that meal lime app and have been successful with it. I'll probably try and make a nice stew in the slow cooker this weekend.
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Feb 4, 2017 18:06
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Ciaphas posted:Every time I make pasta with sauce and try to keep leftovers I end up with a miserable clumpy sticky mess after even one night in the fridge. Especially with fettucine. Let me guess. You are putting the noodles in a container and pouring the sauce over top to keep for leftovers right?
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Feb 5, 2017 01:44
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See if you can get osso bucco/beef shin. I dunno what prices are like in America but here in Aus it's around $15 per kilo and has a big marrow bone in the middle. This marrow will make your stew hell tasty and the gelatin in the bone will thicken it up. My recipe for a stew would be something like this (measurements are bad because i don't really measure when i cook) Onion 1-2 Celery 2-3 stalks Carrot 1-2 Bayleaf 1-2 Few cloves of garlic Mushroom i guess Osso bucco (4-6 pieces) Tomato paste (couple tablespoons?) Chicken stock Red wine Brown up the osso bucco in a pot that can go on the stove. While that's browning (or before you start) chop up the onion, celery and carrot. I like to dice the celery really fine because celery texture sucks but celery flavour is like a good bass player. Carrots i chop pretty fine too cos i hate em. Once the osso bucco has browned take it out and set it aside. Add the onion celery and carrot to the pot and add more olive oil if you think it needs it. Keep stirring it around until the onions are getting translucent. At this point i'll add the tomato paste, garlic and bayleaf and cook it off a bit because i think it cuts the acidity of the tomato. When that's been in there for a couple minutes add the red wine, (maybe like 250ml) and scrape up the stuff off the bottom of the pan. Unless you've turned that stuff into charcoal it will add a good flavour. Then i'll add the osso bucco, coat it a bit, then add about 500ml-1000ml chicken stock. I don't know what that is in America's moon-unit way of measuring poo poo. Just pretend i said 50 shmekels of liquid or whatever. Anyway lower the heat so it is gently simmering and just leave it for like 2.5-3 hours, stirring occasionally and checking if the bottom is burning. You don't want the bottom to burn as that will make your stew taste bad, so just check it reasonably often and keep stirring it around. When the meat is tender as i'll take the osso bucco out again, knock the marrow out of the bones into the stew (i normally do a 1/4 ratio of me eating the marrow to what marrow goes in.) pull apart or chop the meat into whatever sized chunks you want. At this point you can reduce the sauce if you think it needs it. Put it back in and simmer it for another half an hour or so. The same recipe will work in a slow cooker but keep in mind that slow cookers do not allow much liquid at all to escape your food. The best way around this is to simmer down your liquid before you add it. I normally combine the wine, chicken stock and bayleaf in one pot and reduce that while i am prepping and browning the other ingredients. The slow cooker i have has a brown setting which gets pretty hot so i normally use that at the end to simmer stuff down. Slow cookers are a useful tool initially as they will allow you to make meals cheap and easily, but as you keep cooking you will probably begin to find them restrictive. However, it should have allowed you to develop your skills to a point where you feel comfortable in experimenting and trying different cooking methods and techniques
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Feb 5, 2017 01:57
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Oh and also it is worth trying to develop your knife skills. You're gonna be chopping and slicing a ton if you are cooking for yourself and getting better at it will mean you prep stuff faster, better and safer. Check this Jacques Pepin vid on knife skills and then pretty much just watch all of his stuff on youtube cos he rips. https://youtu.be/nffGuGwCE3E
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Feb 5, 2017 01:59
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I swore I'd NEVER learn to cook. (I'm a woman from a deeply religious, take-your-shoes-away kinda place). Turns out that is not a valid plan when you live in a dorm and you don't get off work till after the caf closes. The cookbook I wish I had when I was that age is America's Test Kitchen's Cooking for Two cookbook. Not sure how big of an eater you are but these recipes are all designed for two adults, so you could have dinner and lunch the next day, or dinner and put the remainder in the freezer and you'll have a mix of leftover options after a couple weeks. ATK takes a lot of guesswork out of cooking- the recipes have a blurb at the beginning about why they prefer the methods they do. Often they cook a recipe many times to get it just right- I like to benefit from that knowledge.
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Feb 5, 2017 02:04
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Senior Funkenstien posted:Let me guess. You are putting the noodles in a container and pouring the sauce over top to keep for leftovers right? More like mixing the whole batch all at once and scooping aforesaid mix into tupperware to keep for leftovers, yeah. I'm starting to infer that you should keep the sauce and pasta separate until serving time, though.
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Feb 5, 2017 02:17
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Ciaphas posted:More like mixing the whole batch all at once and scooping aforesaid mix into tupperware to keep for leftovers, yeah. I'm starting to infer that you should keep the sauce and pasta separate until serving time, though. Yes. Finishing your pasta in sauce is nice and delicious, but does not help for storage. The great thing about keeping stuff seperate is that yo can make a GIANT POT of sauce (like a marinara, ragu, or bolognese), put it into 2-4 serving tupperware, freeze for like a year if you need, and take out, defrost and use as needed for a delicious easy meal in as long as it takes you to cook a fresh box of pasta / get your pasta from 1-4 days ago out of the fridge and top with a bit of mozzarella cheese. I also re-heat the mess on top of a big bed of fresh spinach to get my greens in, and because I love me some spinach. You can also learn to measure out pasta piecemeal and just boil up however much you want at a time, but some days, I just really want my drat meal in 5 minutes.
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Feb 5, 2017 05:09
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How much does that change with your creamy or cheesy sauces like an alfredo? The storability/reusability, I mean. That's always been my go-to when I wanna make pasta at home.
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Feb 5, 2017 07:53
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Ciaphas posted:How much does that change with your creamy or cheesy sauces like an alfredo? The storability/reusability, I mean. That's always been my go-to when I wanna make pasta at home. Alfredo sauce always breaks when I warm it up the next day Schneider Inside Her posted:See if you can get osso bucco/beef shin. I dunno what prices are like in America but here in Aus it's around $15 per kilo I love beef shanks but they are not cheap in the USA. They used to be, but with the latest foodie trend, they're like $8/lb and so are other things that used to be dirt cheap like oxtails
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Feb 5, 2017 18:07
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Bob Morales posted:Alfredo sauce always breaks when I warm it up the next day Gotta go to the ethnic markets for cheap weird cuts. The only thing that'll be cheap at most US chain grocers is the boneless skinless souless flavorless cruelty-packed chicken breasts.
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Feb 5, 2017 18:14
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Bob Morales posted:
It happened to lamb shanks here a while back. Used to be so cheap people would buy them to feed their dogs.
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Feb 6, 2017 01:41
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| # ? May 5, 2024 09:30 |
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Learn to roast a whole chicken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWLt6G85zC4 It's ~$8 and it'll give you 4 servings of delicious chicken, and all you need is an oven-safe pan and an oven.
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Feb 7, 2017 22:16
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