Cooking for one.

[Bigmallly]

Cheers RL, gonna have to do a bit of time management.

[veggiechicken]

I agree, cooking etc is a chore (although others enjoy it, the novelty has worn off for me). So look for the quick options - but not the micro meals!. Build a meal around pasta (5 minutes), rice (12 mins) or potatoes (boiled 20 mins, micro jacket 8 mins). Add fish, meat or beans and a mixture of whatever fresh veg you have, a dollop of spices, or herbs and slap it on your plate. 30 minutes max, that's all I allow from start to plate!

[Bigmallly]

I've recently bought a halogen oven which I love so was thinking of plenty of stew/casserole type meals bulked up with veggies as it's huge.

[veggiechicken]

Cook in bulk, divvy it up and freeze. Make a different casserole/stew each week and freeze.
Each morning before you go to work , pull a box out of the freezer to defrost and heat up when you're home. What's all the fuss about? Not sympathy, I hope!!

[Bigmallly]

I may even pull 2 boxes out. One for dinner (or do you call it lunch) & one for tea (or do you call it dinner)......

[veggiechicken]

I just call it food

[Bigmallly]

Well I'd call that a result. While chatting to you guys, I've just made a lamb stew, divvy'd up into 5 portions..........sorted.

[veggiechicken]

Good on you BM! I just managed to make coffee!

[Bigmallly]

I've only got 5 raised beds of veg to plan now...............

[Scarlet]

Good on you BM! I just managed to make coffee!

Coffee!?? At this time of the night?

[veggiechicken]

Why not? Nothing keeps me awake!

[Two_Sheds]

I have been living off micro meals which is the easy option but not necessarily the best.

Cheap rubbish meat, too much fat & salt to cover up the lack of flavour ~ but now you're making your own micro-meals. Lamb stew last night, chicken tonight?
OH makes himself packet pasta, every day. It takes 10 mins to microwave.
Real pasta, with real cheese, also takes 10 mins to cook.

?????

[Bigmallly]

Morning TS, thanks for the tip. I know we shouldn't eat micro meals, it's just the convenience.

[donnakebab]

I make lots of soups. I like to have a couple of meals a week that don't have any meat in, and they are easy to freeze into portions. OH has slowly come round to this way of thinking having been a meat and two veg man all his life. You can put anything in a soup and you can make it to any consistency (if you have a blender) sometimes I blend and sometimes I leave it chunky and as thick as a stew. With some nice crusty bread it's a good wholesome meal.

My daughter came home for a visit last weekend and I asked her what meals they would be having with us. She said we're into parsnips and sweet potato at the moment. So I made parsnip and ginger soup with crusty granary bread. It went down a treat. It was so good I'm going to make my parsnip bed bigger this year!

[Alison]

I find that if I eat the highly processed stuff in supermarket type ping meals I lack energy and don't feel satisfied so I struggle to see them as convenient. That alone would spur me into making something decent and on the whole I don't mind cooking every day as it helps me unwind after work. That said, if you're running late you need something quick so as I mentioned earlier I batch cook. Yesterday evening I made a kale and mushroom lasagne from the HFW veg book with my kale glut, a cottage pie with the carrots and a load of banana bread with some manky bananas I rescued from the fruit bowl at work. With the exception of 2 portions of the cottage pie the rest is split up and in the freezer for quick food in the week. I've currently got a load of dried beans from last year in soak and will be making up a bit pan of chilli tomorrow night, again loads of that will be frozen for future use.

Also agree with whoever said about growing what you like, I grow a lot of different things with very little of some things which gives me variety and also protects against losses as you rarely lose all varieties but often all of one thing can go wrong.