What do you eat when no one’s looking?
As food bloggers… Wow, am I really a food blogger? Nah, I’m a garden eater blogger… Anyway, as people who sometimes (or often) write about food (that’s better) I think we all have a tendency to put our best foot forward and feature meals and ingredients that show us at our best.
I’ve seen comments about it in places, and thought it myself, and had it come up in conversation. For instance, my dad has been known to ask my mom why she doesn’t cook the way I do when they visit or like the pictures he sees here. I’m always reminding him that we don’t eat that way all the time. That we eat burgers and plain buttered noodles and grilled cheese sandwiches just like everyone else – at least at our house we do.
I was thinking about it again tonight as I decided what to make for dinner. It needed to be something both quick (I’ve got an OLS recap to do) and use some of the quickly multiplying veggies in the fridge. In the end I’m having boiled potatoes, carrots and green beans with a touch of butter and parmesan. That’s it. No fancy sauteing or herbs or stock. Just garden fresh veggies cooked until tender tossed with fresh cream butter and imported parmesan.
On other nights we eat toast and fried eggs, pancakes with syrup, tuna melts under the broiler, loose meat tacos, chicken salad, pizza, simple noodles with bought pesto, brown rice and steamed broccoli, you get the idea. Most of it is local, almost all of it that isn’t is at least organic, and most of it is made from scratch. But it’s not sophisticated or complicated and it’s rarely blog worthy. Or maybe it is and I just don’t realize it.
Anyway, I want to know. What do you eat when no one’s looking?
(and no, you don’t have to be a “food” blogger to comment… I want to hear from anyone that reads this post)
One Local Summer meals are usually one of just two — maybe three on a good week — meals we cook from scratch. The rest of the week, we either eat out, or forage from the freezer. It’s all good and local (at least the stuff at home) but it’s not pretty.
I cook a lot of foods in big batches and freeze them in 2-person containers: chile verde for tacos, beef stew, shepherd’s pie, curries of all sorts. Every Friday we have some sort of pasta with homemade (frozen) sauce… usually rigatoni bolognese, but sometimes linguine and meatballs, or polenta and oxtail ragu; Cameron handles everything while I plan the menu for the next week and plot our our market lists. The rest of the week, we eat an awful lot of chili, sloppy Joes, enchiladas. While the main course is reheating, Cameron makes a salad, and I boil the noodles, steam the rice, or toast the bread. We drink a glass of wine and talk about our crazy office mates.
Saturday is usually our big cook-at-home meal, where we pull out the stops with the best stuff from the market. Sunday is much the same, but since the marketing is done we have more time to invite friends over for dinner or prep another meal for later in the week.
We both love to cook, but with long work weeks and an hour commute each way (Cam on his motorcycle, me on transit) cooking for fun isn’t something we get to do a lot outside of the weekends.
We eat a LOT of something we call “hash,” which is in the “piles” family of meals. I think more normal people may call this “one-pot dishes” or similar. Hash is derived from corned beef hash, and basically is like stir fry except with no sauce, and with potatoes in the pan instead of rice on the plate. Or else it is like home fries, except with a bunch more vegetables.
Saute your onion or garlic or leek or whatever in some olive oil (imported). At the same time, boil some cubed or sliced potatoes. Add to the pan whatever other veggies you’ve got fresh (or left over), chopped to about the same size as the potatoes. Blanch the green beans or whatever if you need to ahead of time. Put greens in the pan just shortly after the onions, so they have more time to saute; you might need to add a little bit of water to braise/steam a bit. If you have beets, I like to cube and roast them first and then add them. If you have a leftover chicken in the fridge, pick off bits of meat and add them. Or if you have some sausage in the freezer, you can slice it (thawed) and cook it up in the pan first, and then you don’t need as much, or any, olive oil to cook your veggies. Remove the cooked meat and set aside until veggies are mostly cooked. Ground beef also works.
Add the cubed potatoes — make sure to take them out of the water while still firm, not mushy and disintegratey yet — to the pan. Add the reserved cooked meat, if any, at the same time. Let everything meld and warm for a bit. Top with whatever herbs you’ve got too much of right now, and maybe a fried fresh egg. A grate or two of good (imported) parmesan cheese also works wonders here.
Other things in the “piles” family: pasta dishes where the same rules as above apply, but penne is used instead of potatoes. This works well with more summery vegetables, including tomatoes (which I put on the grill very briefly). Stir fry. Braised meat and greens on top of rice. Roasted root vegetables.
I love the piles family.
We still eat far to much processed food. I have been having much more frequent flares with my fibromyalgia and migraines and often just don’t have it left in me to cook come suppertime. Our family’s favorite freezer food is frozen pizza. It appears right now the scratch favorite is chicken soup. Our tomato plants didn’t set fruit so right now the only homegrown food we have are the eggs we are just starting to get from our chickens. Until we have some success with home gardening most of my family’s fare is still going to be standard supermarket meat, produce and products. The cost at the farmstands is still often prohibitive for my family here in Fort Worth and there is still no guarantee of local produce at the farmstands around here. It can be from 100′s of miles away and still be from Texas! But still I hope to get to a place in life where I am more of the solution and less of the problem. To steal from T. Kennedy…”the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
To add to what lauren wrote above, we also eat a lot (esp. with the chicks laying) from the fritatta or quiche family. Basically, bake eggs with stuff in them until it’s done. Eat half for dinner and take the rest to work in the morning.
Now that we’ve found a source for awesome fresh tortillas we’re experimenting with burritos or piles on tortillas.
If I were still living by myself I’d probably be cooking “fancier” stuff–as it is, most of the time it’s sandwiches and soup, or fried rice, or a casserole, or pizza, or some other thing with minimal preparation that will provide lots of leftovers. They are mostly from scratch, though, come to think of it, except for my husband’s chicken nuggets and (cringe) Beefaroni.
We go the breakfast route for supper lots of the time. Peanutbutter and crackers or grilled cheese sandwiches or baked potatoes each alone or with maybe a dish of canned fruit make up many quickie meals.
Oranges. Mandarins. Not apples, I still don’t like them. Dried apricots and sultanas. Two types of cheese, grabbed out of the fridge still in their packets, with crackers. In summer (it’s still winter in southern Australia) the fruits change to wonderful juicy peaches and plums and berries.
I just discovered fruit this year after a lifetime without it, and I’m enchanted! Except for the apples.
When left to my own devices I will eat nothing but garlic bruscetta (too much garlic on it to be garlic bread) and noodles with butter and garlic… not a vegetable in sight! Or I’ll bread and fry zucchini and eat it with a hard-boiled egg. If I’m home alone I’ll cook french lentils in red wine and eat nothing but that for days. I definitely eat better when the spotlight is on me!
I read somewhere once, that said the average person ate 7 1/2 grilled cheese sandwiches per year. I don’t know who they surveyed, but in my family, we eat more than 7 1/2 a month! Nothing like cheese oozing out from between 2 pieces of bread, and not always homemade bread either. With 3 little ones and a newborn baby, I don’t always find the time to make my own bread, so we buy bread more often than I like.
Sandwiches are king here, lots of pb&j (the j being one of my homemade jams), honey (local) sandwiches, BLTs (home grown tomatoes and local bacon), and ham and cheese.
Pasta is also a big favorite, and I make lots of scratch sauces to go with it. Not always local and not always organic, but I would say at least 75% of our meals are “eco-conscious”.
Great question, Laura. One of our favorite variations on the “piles” theme is beans and rice. This basic format allows for endless combinations and permutations of types of beans, vegetables, seasonings and sometimes, meats. When I was working way too many hours a week, the “Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home (Fast and Easy Recipes for Any Day)” cookbook became my best friend. Tons of ideas for things that were fast and easy but also delicious. They have Carribean Black Beans, Cajun Skillet Beans, and Back-Eyed Peas with Spinach. Then, there is the old standby of red beans and rice. And, when we don’t want to stick with just the vegetarian version, we sometimes add locally made chicken sausage or various types of leftover meat. Still basically cooking from scratch (if using canned beans or canned tomatoes can be considered “from scratch”), and quite a few options available within the local criteria.
A big salad, made on Saturday or Sunday from fresh produce, really does last for several days around this house, and becomes the basis for many quick weeknight meals. Variations include grilled protein on the salad itself, along with some kind of bread or cracker, soup from the freezer and salad, pasta with an easy, quick sauce and salad, etc., etc.
This time of year, it’s also a great way to use up some of the veggies.
Anita – for some strange reason it makes me feel better to know that you and Cameron don’t eat such beautiful meals all the time. I wish I was organized enough to stock the freezer with actual meals, but alas I’m not and so we often have “grazing” nights instead.
Lauren – how funny, we eat a lot of “hash” too! It’s one of the few meals that Mike is consistently in charge of as he’s way more patient with the potatoes than I am. “Piles” make a pretty regular appearance as well.
Kristi J – you’ll get there eventually, I believe we all will. Frozen pizza is a favorite around here as well. We don’t even try to pretend that it’s organic or local, but it sure is a good option for a rushed night.
Garth – good to see you. We eat A LOT of eggs around here. Mostly fried or poached though. I suck at making omelets and while I should make more eggs bakes and quiches than I do, it somehow never comes to mind when I’m deciding what to make.
Jenni – ooooh, beefaroni. The taste of my childhood, although actually my soft spot is for spaghetti-o’s. I keep secretly hoping that they’ll come out with a “natural” or organic version so that I can indulge…
J – cheese, salami and crackers make a frequent appearance around here for lunch and sometimes dinner if I’m home alone. Baked potatoes are always on Mike’s wishlist as well.
Nicole – how did you make it so long without fruit? And now I want an orange…
Anne – all of those sound like good options to me. When Mike is gone I can eat an artichoke with lemon butter every night and be perfectly happy. Or spaghetti squash with butter and salt. Or toast and jam with a fried egg. I’m a creature of habit and can happily eat the exact same thing for days on end.
Jenny – only 7 1/2? That doesn’t seem very accurate. We average way more than that around here!
Joan – cans of plain ingredients totally count as from scratch in my book. Beans and rice – not something we eat often around here. Maybe I should re-evaluate that.
Kim – mmmmm. We do the big bowl of salad as well. Lettuce with whatever is available and then we eat it for a few nights. It’s a great shortcut as while I love salad I hate making it.
Mike’s Hard Cranberry Lemonade, piece of Tillamook cheddar cheese, some crappy store olives, Stacy’s Naked Pita chips and green onions.
None from my garden. Only the Tillamook cheddar is within 100 miles.