The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: Astatine on December 11, 2017, 11:46:58 PM
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Keeping this Aussie-only because convenience foods vary so much in different countries.
What foods do you eat when you have run out of spoons? Link to spoon theory here (https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/) if you're not familiar with the concept. Given we're on MMM, we'll assume that we're mostly trying to avoid takeaway or eating out as the standard default, but anything else is fair game. Edit: like frozen meals, tinned food, pre-prepared food, stuff with minimal prep.
Edit: Healthy is a) relative and differs from person to person and b) it's all about being fed with hopefully at least one macronutrient addressed in a meal (carbs, fat, protein, fruit or veggies as a bodgy nutritional starting point). There will be no shaming in this thread :)
I'll start.
Our standard no spoons meal is 1 red capsicum and 1 peeled carrot cut into sticks, served with a couple of slices of low fat Aldi cheese (which we always have on hand in the fridge). Serves two.
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Not particularly healthy, but packets of pasta+sauce (the kind you cook up with milk and butter, e.g. Alfredo from Aldi) help me when I'm low on spoons AND desperate for something comforting.
Heinz big red tomato soup + hot buttered toast.
Sweet potato cooked whole in the microwave, eaten with butter, salt and pepper.
Avocado on toast.
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I think healthy is a) relative and differs from person to person and b) it's all about being fed with hopefully at least one macronutrient addressed in a meal (carbs, fat, protein, fruit or veggies as a bodgy nutritional starting point). There will be no shaming in this thread :)
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'On the menu' brand frozen meals available at Woolies for about $3 per meal and sometimes available at other supermarkets like Supabarn or IGA (might be available at Coles but I never go there).
The tastiest ones are beef ragu, spaghetti and meatballs, beef lasagna and veggie lasagna. The cheese or chicken based ones are edible but a bit meh.
Edit: DH and I have been low on spoons for months so we have tested many of the Aldi and Woolies frozen meals. 'On the menu' brand is the tastiest in our opinion and bonus, tends to be close to the cheapest.
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Oh this is easy. Cheese and Vegemite sandwiches :)
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Heinz big red tomato soup + hot buttered toast.
Heinz big red tomato soup with a cheese toastie.
Eggs. Scrambled eggs on toast. Boiled eggs with Vegemite soldiers. Hard-boiled eggs with carrot sticks and cheese.
Smoothies. You can pack in a lot of nutrients and it only takes 30 seconds to blend. Also handy if someone isn’t up to proper meals.
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- Muesli with yoghurt (or soy milk)
- Smoothies
- Fruit
- Nuts
- Hot Twiggy sticks
- Cheese and crackers
- Canned fish
- Boiled eggs with soy sauce and pepper
- Vegemite and butter toast
- Miso soup with tofu and veggies
- Weetbix or muesli bars
- Chocolate Up & Go
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US, but most of these are not particularly American. Most are quicker than throwing something frozen in the oven.
My husband doesn't have any spoons for meal planning. If I didn't feed him something else once in awhile, he would have the same menu everyday:
-Hash made of rehydrated potatoes, 1/4 onion, two sausage links, served with two eggs
-Kale salad mix, shredded rotisserie chicken, feta, olives craisins
-pasta shells with copious amounts of Parmesan cheese. Will add sauce if he has leftover shells to heat up.
-Oranges galore, pretzels and cheese as needed
I have a spoon or two, and thus more variety, but the fall backs are:
-quesadillas: corn tortillas, salsa, maybe avocado, grilled veg when I have an extra spoon available
-Ramen with onion, peppers and mushrooms, add an egg
-Milk with instant coffee or yogurt for breakfast
-chopped up cabbage with chicken for protein and either vinegar and soy sauce or husband's left over salad dressing
Our guilty pleasure is super cheap frozen pizza, but that I'd brand specific.
Husband can also eat copious amounts of three bean salad: one can each garbanzo, kidney and green beans, dressed with oil, vinegar, black pepper and a smidge of sugar.
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Not Australian, but this isn't specific to the food itself. Almost all our dinners are cooked in big batches on the weekend, most of the batches frozen and then cycled through during the week. Avoids having to do too much during the week, and avoids eating the same thing multiple times in a row.
A couple of current favorites: https://www.budgetbytes.com/2011/10/turmeric-chicken/ and https://www.budgetbytes.com/2015/12/slow-cooker-chicken-tikka-masala/. We do both in the crockpot now, and shred the chicken because it seems to do better in the freezer. We cook rice day of (20 minutes), but rice does ok (not great) in the freezer, so you could do the whole thing ahead of time if you want. If you want to kick it up a notch https://www.budgetbytes.com/2010/09/naan/ does well in the freezer too.
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oats with whey protein and olive oil.
juice as a side dish.
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Postpartum I came up with this and it was immensely helpful. It takes a minute to make and it's fairly well balanced.
Add these three things to a pot and heat up:
Can of minestrone soup
Can of beans like white kidney beans or navy beans (drain off liquid first, rinse if you have the energy)
Handful of baby spinach or torn up regular spinach.
Eat as a soup.
If you want to go a step further (though I usually didn't )
- need more fat? add a little oil or grate cheese on top
- need more carbs? Make a rice cooker of rice and serve over rice
- need more protein? Add some dry TVP (veggie protein) and a little more water and heat an extra few minutes till it rehydrates. I've also added small bits of sausage before.
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Vegemite toast. Add an egg if you want a bit more protein.
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At the end of a long day at work when I can barely stand up straight or string two words together, my go-to is a tin of chunky soup. I always keep a shelf of tinned soups in the cupboard.
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Oh this is easy. Cheese and Vegemite sandwiches :)
Vegemite toast. Add an egg if you want a bit more protein.
See, this is why it's important to have Aussie-specific threads!
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1 single serve pouch flavoured microwave rice, one pouch frozen steam fresh veggies, 1 85g tin tuna,
nuke first two ingredients, stir all together in a mixing bowl, eat from said mixing bowl while watching trashy tv.
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At the end of a long day at work when I can barely stand up straight or string two words together, my go-to is a tin of chunky soup. I always keep a shelf of tinned soups in the cupboard.
DH and I lived on tinned soup for a week when we both came down with the lurgy from hell last year. (reheating frozen leftovers was too hard but tinned soup was a bit less effort)
1 single serve pouch flavoured microwave rice, one pouch frozen steam fresh veggies, 1 85g tin tuna,
nuke first two ingredients, stir all together in a mixing bowl, eat from said mixing bowl while watching trashy tv.
We're having a veggie version of that for dinner tonight.
1 ripe avocado, 1 85g tin of plain tuna, couple of chopped up cherry tomatoes and a bit of cucumber, bit of red onion and some lemon juice, all mashed together. (if DH didn't have the energy to chop the tomatoes, cucumber and red onion, it would have just been avocado, tuna and lemon juice)
Another suggestion: Aldi's meal replacement shakes, mixed with about 300 or 400ml of milk. I like the strawberry and coffee flavoured ones, the vanilla and chocolate ones were meh.
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Weetbix with milk. Normally left until mushy because I'm too tired to chew.
Oat porridge, made with quick oats & water in microwave. Sir through jam or frozen fruit, and yoghurt if you can have dairy for extra protein.
I've taken to keeping extra tubs of home made Hommus in the freezer, though these are best defrosted in the fridge from the day before. Serve with veg of your choice. Or just crackers.
Fruit + fetta, yoghurt or aged cheddar.
We made a batch of Super Boring Bolognaise (onion, garlic, olive oil, 1 kg mince, tin of chopped tomatoes, sachet tomato paste, salt & pepper, spoon of Vegemite) at the start of some weeks and eat that on pasta, bread or corn chips for every non-breakfast meal until it runs out. I've discovered is delicious with caramelised onions from a jar and some mayo. You could swap some mince for tinned beans. You could eat it on lettuce leaves. Adding soy sauce might give it an Asian flavour so you can have Mexican for lunch (use salsa, serve on corn chips) and Asian for dinner (use soy sauce and kewpie mayo, serve on lettuce leaves).
We had mince the last 2 weeks, so next week is chicken. Wrap chicken breast in baking paper (season with olive oil, salt, pepper). Lie on couch for 30-40 minutes. Enjoy perfectly cooked, most chicken breast. Scales up or down easily. If you need to eat chicken with something, microwave frozen veg and/or cook rice in microwave... Though that's starting to get into needing at least 1 soon. This makes us at least 2 dinners.
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Totally off topic, I apologize but I have never read about the Spoon Theory and am really glad I opened this thread (even if I am not Aussie).
My DH has MS and this will be a great way to explain it to people who feel the need to comment "but he doesn't look sick".
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Tonight was fresh (or least, not frozen) meat pies from a small supermarket heated in the oven and served with tomato sauce.
Totally off topic, I apologize but I have never read about the Spoon Theory and am really glad I opened this thread (even if I am not Aussie).
My DH has MS and this will be a great way to explain it to people who feel the need to comment "but he doesn't look sick".
No need to apologise, glad it was helpful for you :)
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Not a no-spoons meal, but today I discovered I don't even need to finely chop & sautee onion when making soup. I chopped into 6 chunky pieces and dumped it in the pot with the various root vegetables. It still pureed with the stick blender without any problems and the flavour came through nicely.
Closer to a no-spoons meal: Coles sells a really nice brand of mini turkish breads, which I slice in half and freeze. They are great as a base for pizza (sauce + leftovers + cheese), with soup, toasted and with an egg on top, whatever. Yum.
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Not an Aussie, just stealing your ideas
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Our standard no spoons meal is 1 red capsicum and 1 peeled carrot cut into sticks, served with a couple of slices of low fat Aldi cheese (which we always have on hand in the fridge). Serves two.
Mine is similar. Some veggie sticks, hummus and maybe pita bread or pita chips if available.
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I have no suggestion for you but that spoons thing was the best thing i read all week. Thanks for the link.
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I don't mean to be a downer (and I'm not Australian), but maybe if that's happening it would be a good idea to take a hard look at your entire meal system? If I found myself hungry, too tired to cook, and with nothing prepared in advance, the first thing I would think would be "Wow, I screwed up big time, and need to find a permanent solution so this bullshit never happens again!".
That could take the form of freezer meals, crock pot meals, weekend bulk meal prep (my personal system), or even just keeping sandwich supplies on hand at all times. I personally don't think systems that require daily effort are sustainable for most people.
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Not an Aussie, but my biggest no spoons workaround is to make sure I order the groceries online and have them delivered. When I put the order in, I make sure to include things like pre-chopped fresh veggies, bagged salad, paper plates and all the other easy to eat foods.
Not having to go out and then schlep the heavy things home is key to having more spoons available for other stuff. Like actually eating.
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I don't mean to be a downer (and I'm not Australian), but maybe if that's happening it would be a good idea to take a hard look at your entire meal system? If I found myself hungry, too tired to cook, and with nothing prepared in advance, the first thing I would think would be "Wow, I screwed up big time, and need to find a permanent solution so this bullshit never happens again!".
That could take the form of freezer meals, crock pot meals, weekend bulk meal prep (my personal system), or even just keeping sandwich supplies on hand at all times. I personally don't think systems that require daily effort are sustainable for most people.
When you're dealing with chronic illness, sometimes even really excellent systems fail.
Did you read the linked explanation of Spoon Theory? That might help with some insight into what people are dealing with :-)
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I don't mean to be a downer (and I'm not Australian), but maybe if that's happening it would be a good idea to take a hard look at your entire meal system? If I found myself hungry, too tired to cook, and with nothing prepared in advance, the first thing I would think would be "Wow, I screwed up big time, and need to find a permanent solution so this bullshit never happens again!".
That could take the form of freezer meals, crock pot meals, weekend bulk meal prep (my personal system), or even just keeping sandwich supplies on hand at all times. I personally don't think systems that require daily effort are sustainable for most people.
When you're dealing with chronic illness, sometimes even really excellent systems fail.
Did you read the linked explanation of Spoon Theory? That might help with some insight into what people are dealing with :-)
I did read it. It see me like having really airtight systems could help hat sort of situation even more than a regular healthy person. You could modify that so much to make things easier. Quit shaving your legs if it's too difficult. Why on earth would you have clothes with buttons if you struggle with that? I'm 100% healthy and don't own anything with buttons because I'm too lazy to spend my time buttoning things. Find a hairstyle that works on both good and bad days. Make two giant crock pot meals on the weekend and eat that all week. Yes, chronic illness sucks, but there are workarounds for everything.
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HAH is nicer than me. Did you not read there is to be no shaming in this thread?
And maybe take a moment to be grateful that you have never needed to be in this situation.
I'm pretty cranky btw. There is no need for you to post in this thread. It's the MMM forum, all of us know about making crockpot meals and freezing them. This is all about when you don't have the spoons to do that. I have had the energy to cook 3 times (yes 3) in the past 6 months.
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My first questions on MMM, years ago, were about this very topic. I cried when I got shamed.
Later, on my own, I managed to use my fancy blender to replace some of the meals out. Not all, but some. So now I stands up for my blender in any Vitamix thread.
For me, pursuing financial independence IS my long term change to one day cut my work hours so that I can use more of my limited energy on food.
Oh! And I figured out last year to buy a microwave. It helps, even if all I can do is microwave popcorn
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I think being chronically ill is something you just can't 'get' if you haven't been through it.
Zikoris, we are talking about being too ill to cook even a simple slow cooker meal, for an ongoing period of time (weeks, months, years). Or maybe you can scrape together the energy to make one big batch of something easy in the slow cooker, but then after throwing it up all night after a flare-up you desperately don't want to eat it again the very next night. Maybe the reality is that as somebody who is 100% healthy, you can't relate to these issues (hence why you refer to it as having screwed up big time, and as bullshit - truly inappropriate language). That's my most diplomatic interpretation of your post - that you just don't understand what it is we're talking about.
My first questions on MMM, years ago, were about this very topic. I cried when I got shamed.
I am so sorry you had that experience.
For me, pursuing financial independence IS my long term change to one day cut my work hours so that I can use more of my limited energy on food.
Oh! And I figured out last year to buy a microwave. It helps, even if all I can do is microwave popcorn
That's one of the big reasons I cut down to part-time work a couple of years ago. I couldn't get to work five days a week AND complete basic self-care like getting myself fed, or getting myself fed with something more complex than salt and vinegar chips.
Microwaves are excellent. I am also a big fan of my food processor, which does my chopping, slicing and grating to give my arthritic hands a break.
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I buy 1kg (14 bits) of frozen white fish from coles $7... will do 7 meals. This can then served with a salad/in a wrap/with a side of deb (instant mash)... living in a hot climate i basically always have salad items in the fridge.
Heinz also makes a product called curry beans. They often go on special for $1.50. Then i just whack some rice in the rice cooker and adds some herbs on top (if my current herb plant is alive... hot climate kills plants).
I also am fortunate enough that my work provides delicious healthy staff meals, so i feel no guilt in having a cheese toastie dinner if i had a big chicken salad at lunch, fresh fruit for snacks etc.
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ANZAC biscuits are a current easy favourite of mine. I use SR flour instead of bicarb+boiling water+plain flour; I use olive oil instead of butter. That makes it a pantry meal (I also use about half the sugar):
http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/anzac-biscuits/cc4e2031-8b63-48e7-8eff-b2637f472180
Edited to add my recipe, because the linked one sounds too complex.
Put in bowl 1 cup each of SR flour, fine dessicated coconut and rolled oats
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons water (add an extra if adding dried fruit)
2 tablespoons golden syrup
Put bowl on scales. Add 125g olive oil.
Mix.
Spread on baking tray
20 mi utes in 150-180degC oven.
Cool and break off to snack as desired.
I add whatever seeds/nuts/ dried fruit we have in the pantry (pepitas and sultanas was excellent). Then I have enough energy to get through my day with baby even if he takes No Naps (or all naps on me).
It all sounds more complicated than I've found it so far. Must review my no spoons meals and add some from this thread.
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Melody, I'm curious how you cook your frozen fish?
And Ducky, that sounds delicious. Canola oil also works in ANZAC bikkies (I've been too nervous to try olive oil in case you can taste it so I use canola oil instead).
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And Ducky, that sounds delicious. Canola oil also works in ANZAC bikkies (I've been too nervous to try olive oil in case you can taste it so I use canola oil instead).
I've used olive oil and couldn't taste it - but I might be less sensitive to tastes than you are.
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My easy go to meal at the moment is frozen food + hot chips baked in the oven.
Sometimes that frozen food might be crumbed fish fillets, sausage rolls, pizza, or things like samosas/spring rolls. In our woolies there is a 'dynasty banquet' in a big purple box that has spring rolls, samosas and money bags.
Another thing to maybe try - when I was a kid we used to do a lot of hiking, and often we would get given a can of 'big eats' for dinner. I remember these being nice even after being cooked over a campfire. I think there were flavours like beef stew, stroganoff etc, but it has been a while. They could be easily heated up in a microwave, and are fairly big cans.
Other foods we have done: eggs/spaghetti/baked beans on toast. Nachos (layers of corn chips, baked beans and cheese baked in oven), salad rolls. (Burger bun with things like cheese, beetroot, lettuce, tomato, sliced ham, tomato)
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I was thinking about this thread at dinner. Thanks for the link to the article!
I definitely was out of spoons today... two out of three kids sick with flu and I'm fighting it. Plus the oldest most helpful one has his hand in a cast. I ended up browning some ground beef, chopped onions, and chopped carrots. Mixed them with some leftover cooked rice, frozen peas, and lots of ketchup. Had omelets cooked in butter on the side. Sort of a fake fried rice. It exhausted me and used up some of tomorrow's spoons which is too bad because I need them.
More ideas.
Storebought pizza dough wrapped around hot dog and baked in toaster oven.
Hotdogs and beans... dump can of beans into baking pan, chop wieners in thirds, sprinkle brown sugar and squirt ketchup on top. Bake at 350 until heated through, then mix a bit with spoon.
hot pasta, dump some uncooked sauce or pesto on top and mix around.
Except we've had all these in the last two weeks so kids are sick of them. You can get away with a lot more if you don't have kids.
Here is also a great bunch of recipes that I printed out 10 years ago. Some are very little work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/dining/18mini.html
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Easy meal: sliced tomatoes with some salt & pepper on water crackers. Add protein with hummus* or cheese.
*I'm not actually sure how to spell hummus so I spell it a different way every time...
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My first questions on MMM, years ago, were about this very topic. I cried when I got shamed.
I'm so sorry :(
tbh I was very close to tears this morning. I was very angry to start with and then switched to very upset. It hasn't been an easy year for me, medical-wise (even though I haven't had anything life-threatening this year other than the usual background stuff).
Later, on my own, I managed to use my fancy blender to replace some of the meals out. Not all, but some. So now I stands up for my blender in any Vitamix thread.
For me, pursuing financial independence IS my long term change to one day cut my work hours so that I can use more of my limited energy on food.
Oh! And I figured out last year to buy a microwave. It helps, even if all I can do is microwave popcorn
:) That's awesome you were able to work out some solutions and systems that work for you! In part that's why I wanted to start this thread because we all have our own workarounds for no/low spoon food, but when you're really tired/rundown/no extra energy, it's so hard to be creative and think of new things. So we can all piggy back off each other's systems and try new things if they seem like they might work for us.
<3
*I'm not actually sure how to spell hummus so I spell it a different way every time...
*Same.
Today's lunch:
Carrot sticks
Capsicum sticks
Few slices of cucumber
A couple of slices of Red Leicester cheese (fancy! tastes a bit like creamy cheddar)
SSS brand hommous*
Chunk of liverwurst (because my iron levels tend to be low and vegetarian meals are usually less effort than meat based ones)
Dijon mustard for the liverwurst
It was delicious and felt fancy because there was a variety of food. :)
Another meal that we do often is get the kale slaw (which comes with a yummy yoghurt/garlic dressing to mix through) which we get from Aldi or Woolies. And have a couple of pieces of low-fat cheese on the side for a bit of protein.
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Homemade potato wedges. Cut up a potato or two, onto a baking tray with olive oil and salt (or more spices, if you feel up to it). Bake. Low impact, but you do need to have time. I've done these when I've been home sick from work. I just go back to bed while they cook.
Supermarket BBQ chicken with salad or steamed (microwaved) frozen broccoli and cauliflower.
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I am lucky that I'm not in any way sensitive to dairy, because it's been the one thing that's managed to get some calories (and protein, fat, and carbs) into me when I had next to zero spoons.
For the first month after my brain surgery, I consumed almost nothing but whole milk, about 1/2 gallon a day. It had almost no flavor (good, because everything including water tasted Wrong), kept me full, had no smell, and I could get it myself (walking to the kitchen, pouring the milk, and walking back to the bed/sofa was literally the maximum I was capable of doing).
I still drink a glass of it for breakfast, and sometimes another for dinner. I am slowly getting spoons back, but still usually only eat one time per day, and it's usually leftovers from a restaurant meal or take-out food. I cook something simple about once every two weeks when I suddenly find myself with an almost normal supply of spoons.
It's not ideal, but I'm alive.
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It doesn't matter how you eat your food. The small tins of flavoured tuna are really cheap, and a can on a bread roll , with a whole tomato (not cut up) as a side, and a lettuce leaf or two, can be a lunch. Most salad vegetables don't need to be cut up, and this can save your hands and wrists. I don't peel carrots. Salad vegetables that really need to be cut have been gradually eliminated (I always hated cucumber). I have been known to eat a whole red pepper. When I feel like it, I do cut up salad vegetables, I just don't feel obliged to.
Most of the year (not now, it's far too hot) for tea we have soup which we cook on Sunday and have until Thursday night, with slices of toast. On Friday night and Saturday night we have something different.
One of the advantages of these sorts of meals is that they also don't generate many dishes, so there is very little in the way of dish washing. The bowls get washed each night, and the soup pot gets washed when it is emptied on Friday, having spent the week in the fridge. SO really likes the Woollies Select box meals for one - for instance the Satay Chicken. We chop up some vegetables, nuke them for 3 minutes, and then add the sauce and nuke the rice at the same time, so it turns into a meal for two rather than one.
I am a fan of a sandwich press, which cooks just about anything you grill or fry without making a mess, and you just wipe it clean. Pancakes - just pour in some batter, put it on the closest setting, close the lid, and you instantly have a pancake (same for omelets...). Same with chips (they take a bit longer). When I was recovering from my accident, I really couldn't stand around for long, waiting for food to cook. My back would start to ache if I did any amount of stirring or cutting. If I sat down while food was cooking, I would sometimes go to sleep. Changing to the microwave and sandwich press as my main cooking implements was a game changer for me because they eliminated that problem area. When I had a bit of energy, I cooked a meal from the microwave recipe book and gradually learnt how cooking with a microwave (as against heating up) differed from conventional cooking, so now I can cook most things in a microwave. Of course, its biggest down side is the absence of browning - that's where the sandwich press comes in. This also means our energy bills are lower because we are using more energy efficient cooking methods.
I'm sure you've seen my chicken stock recipe - which again, eliminates having a stove top going for more than a few minutes, and you will note that it doesn't involve much cutting (the onion gets cut three times - and that's if I'm feeling like it - and not peeled). I grow most of my vegetables and all our fruit, so I preserve or freeze them after having cut them to appropriate sizes, which eliminates doing that work when I am not feeling up to it.
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I am lucky that I'm not in any way sensitive to dairy, because it's been the one thing that's managed to get some calories (and protein, fat, and carbs) into me when I had next to zero spoons.
For the first month after my brain surgery, I consumed almost nothing but whole milk, about 1/2 gallon a day. It had almost no flavor (good, because everything including water tasted Wrong), kept me full, had no smell, and I could get it myself (walking to the kitchen, pouring the milk, and walking back to the bed/sofa was literally the maximum I was capable of doing).
I still drink a glass of it for breakfast, and sometimes another for dinner. I am slowly getting spoons back, but still usually only eat one time per day, and it's usually leftovers from a restaurant meal or take-out food. I cook something simple about once every two weeks when I suddenly find myself with an almost normal supply of spoons.
It's not ideal, but I'm alive.
Dairy is amazing. I had to eliminate it from my diet a few months ago (temporary) and it's definitely hard to find something that hits as many nutrients and is as easy for me to eat over and over.
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Despite being summer, it is cold, wet and stormy outside, and we are sick. I though of this thread, and instead of getting Macca's delivered (tempting for the calorie hit), I fried 2 eggs and stuck them in my leftover potato soup. That requires leftover soup, but I'm pretty sure I have a tin of tomato soup for tomorrow's dinner.
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Despite being summer, it is cold, wet and stormy outside, and we are sick. I though of this thread, and instead of getting Macca's delivered (tempting for the calorie hit), I fried 2 eggs and stuck them in my leftover potato soup. That requires leftover soup, but I'm pretty sure I have a tin of tomato soup for tomorrow's dinner.
We had a left overs night too. Had some left over mince mixture (what we called in growing up, think it might also be known as chil, so nuked that, added some tomato, canned beetroot, grated cheese and lettuce to a tortilla. Nice and filling.
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I abandon standard meal definitions. Some old cheddar and a prepped veg like raw baby carrots straight from the bag. Also a protein powder you like, add a scoop of it, some milk/cream/equivalent nondairy in a blender, pulse and drink. My basic requirements are no cooking required, no more than 2 minutes standing up, fairly non-spillable.
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I've just remembered another one!
Get a couple of small to medium potatoes. Prick the skins a few times with a fork. Nuke in the microwave until soft/cooked. Then add plain yoghurt (or sour cream if you have it) and maybe a small tin of tuna. Eat.
Sadly I can't eat this one any more because I made the mistake of eating plain microwaved potatoes in their skins (no tuna) when I was going through chemo. I thought it would be bland enough that I would not develop an aversion. I was wrong. Luckily I can still eat plain boiled potatoes and roast potatoes. ie brains are weird.
Tonight we're having the avocado/tuna/finely chopped red onion and tomato with lemon juice for dinner. Plus some capsicum sticks to eat it with. (DH has been treating his vitamin D deficiency and miraculously our dinners have become a bit more interesting :D I hope it's a genuine trend and not a one-off.)
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Pretty much this.
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Dammit PDM, now I wants all of that, especially the chicken.
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Dammit PDM, now I wants all of that, especially the chicken.
+1 yuuuuuum.
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Not an Australian, but have experience of low spoons in the past, and it may well happen again.
Pre-sliced bread freezes well and you can toast it from frozen (might need putting through the toaster twice. Combine with:
- Scrambled or fried egg (bonus points for including any kind of vegetable - E.g. Frozen spinach, frozen peas, tin of beans...)
- Cheese and then grill. Serve with random condiment of choice. Bonus points for putting something under the cheese first (e.g. Sliced tomatoes, ham, marmite/vegemite, pesto, tinned tuna, even tomato puree...)
- Tin of soup
I have never done it but am told sliced cheese freezes well, and presumably you can put that under the grill frozen. Maybe something to experiment with when you do have a few spoons in case it all ends in tears!
I got a mandoline a year or so ago and love it for slicing or julienning large quantities of stuff at once and then freezing, so it cooks from frozen very quickly. Imagine being able to mix frozen julienned carrots into your scrambled egg and have them defrost/cook immediately, or put sliced frozen (insert thing here) under your frozen cheese and have it all get hot under the grill.
The biggest spoon help for me these days is actually having a short list of what we call "panic dinners" than can be made immediately from available shelf stable or instant-cook frozen foods. It only ever has three or four things on it so we don't have to make some massive CHOICE. At the moment it's: pesto pasta, halloumi and tinned bean salad, burritos*. I switch up the list once in a while, but not having to actually think is the biggest help.
Also, tortellini cook from frozen in about five minutes and come with many helpful vaguely nutritional fillings. Add jar of sauce, or if you're all out just add butter and random dried herbs. I have a friend with a disability that makes it hard for her to lift and manipulate things, and she has what I would call a chip strainer to make pasta. Like a big wire mesh container with a handle that sits inside the pan. Put the water in the pan and the pasta in the chip strainer. When done, lift chip strainer and pasta auto-drains. Leave the water til cool and then tip away with less peril!
*Panic burritos involve heating up a tin of beans, adding some spices, and putting inside a corn tortilla (we can buy Old El Paso ones here that are shelf-stable until you open the packet). Planned burritos can involve many fun condiments, salad items and so on.
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Thought of another one from when I was extremely sick when pregnant with my second. Protein bars. I was able to tolerate sweet foods, but my doctor wanted me to get at least some protein. So I bought some super high calorie protein bars meant for body builders. Half of one bar was apparently enough to sustain me for a day.
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Oh this is easy. Cheese and Vegemite toasted sandwiches :)
FTFY.
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Our food for those times when we have no energy left is to make mashed potatoes and spinach. Combine a package of frozen or canned spinach, some mashed potato flakes, and some sort of milk (regular, plant milk, etc.). Microwave, mix up and eat. An option is to add cheese or some sort of fat to increase the calories.
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I've had a few low spoon periods over the years unfortunately. The food has evolved, and become healthier and more moustachian. These days:
- baby carrots raw. So cheap and easy.
- hommus. Woolworths sells a big tub for $5. I try and keep on in my fridge. Carrots can be dipped in it. Or rice crackers...there are so many supermarket varieties now that they always have some discounted heavily.
- boiled eggs (from mum and dad's happy chooks), boil up about 7 at a time (what fits in my saucepan).
- those Heinz Bean cans are ok, and often on special, though I'm not the biggest fan of the flavour.
- vegemite on toast (discounted bread that I've frozen). Stuff that often goes on top (in various combos); Hommus; cheese; tomatos; avocado; sliced boiled egg
- country ladle brand vegetable soups (Ministrone, Garden Vegetable,...). Buy up when on special, invariably every few weeks at major supermarkets. The Heinz brand is similarly good and cheap but I avoid them after Mum pointed out they use imported vegetables (food miles, etc...). I keep cans of this at work and often have one for lunch.
- nuts. Every few weeks I mix up a tub of a variety of nuts. I then put them into these small (appx 100ml) Decor brand containers that I got cheap years ago. Most of them go in a drawer at work, some at home. Its extremely healthy.
-my morning oats. If I'm low on spoons I always try and force myself to put them in a bowl, and add cold water. If spoons low I don't bother opening the jar of chia seeds in the fridge and tipping some in. Sometimes I do fail to do this (one of my Baddasity aims for 2018 is to not miss a single morning oat day).
-bananas. Lately I've been buying more of them. My daughter needs fruit to take to Kindy. I make sure there are at least a couple spare for me.
Hope you all have more spoons today :-)
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I had gluten free Oreos for breakfast this morning. Calories yes, nutrients no. But by starting with calories I can add nutrients later.
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I don't have a chronic illness, and am not Australian. I have friends and acquaintances, however, with CFS, Lupus, and Fibro though.
Probably the one time I remember having "no spoons" for a solid month was when kid #2 was 15 months old, and I got bronchitis. I would wake up, take a shower, eat breakfast, and fall asleep on the couch while sitting up. I am so lucky to have a husband who was able to juggle his job, all of the cooking, chores, and childcare for that month. Even when I was able to get back to work, it took all of my energy.
No spoons meals:
string cheese and dried fruit or apples
Nuts and fruit
Smoothies (frozen fruit, ice, water, protein powder)
Yogurt
raw veggies and store bought hummus
frozen pizza
Some low-spoon meals:
quesadillas or grilled cheese (these require a spoon)
thai chicken curry (rice in rice cooker, can of coconut milk, can of chicken, mixed frozen veg)
canned or boxed soup
plain pasta with butter and parmesan
scrambled eggs on tortillas
bagel with cream cheese
I try to eat veg with every meal, so there are always frozen veggies in my freezer. Plain or mixed. Microwave or roast.
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@Eucalyptus or anyone else: what's the easiest way to peel boiled eggs? Even when I'm not low on energy, it all just seems too hard and fiddly.
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@Eucalyptus or anyone else: what's the easiest way to peel boiled eggs? Even when I'm not low on energy, it all just seems too hard and fiddly.
Soak them in cold/ice water for a few minutes until they get to room temperature before trying to peel them, it's so much easier than peeling them warm. Still a bit annoying, though. Also, boiled eggs keep well in the fridge, and pickled eggs even longer, so I've started making half a dozen whenever I'm running low, and just toss them in the same jar of pickling brine I've been using for 6 months.
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The spoon explains chronic illness so well!
Our go to quick meals are toasted cheese sandwich, ravioli from aldi with steamed broccoli. Hommus with vegetables, avocado toast, boiled eggs. Back when we had a microwave I had batches of tomato sauce frozen and all I had to do was boil some pasta and microwave the sauce. There's a place near where we live that make Zaatar for $1.50 so I'll sometimes get that with the kids.
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I'll add that when I was sick (hyperemesis gravidarum ) I drank hot chocolate. It was the only fluid I could tolerate for most of my pregnancy and it didn't hurt so much to vomit up because the fat coats your oesophagus to protect it from the bile. I wasn't able to spend more than a few seconds in the kitchen without vomiting from the smells so preparing hot chocolate with the microwave gave me some independence.
I also ate a lot of nutella, I was only able to keep a small amount of solids down so I had to make them count calorie wise and the less chewing the less likely I was to vomit so hot chocolate and Nutella pretty much got me through without ending up in hospital. When calorie consumption wasn't so important I had spinach and leek soup. Fry leeks and onions in butter then add full fat milk. Add baby spinach leaves and when wilted blend with a stick blender.
When my kids were infants a friend taught me the easy chicken soup recipe. 1 chicken in a saucepan with water and some soy. Roughly cut carrots and onions, or other veggies, simmer for an hour then 10 mins before finishing add some pasta. I loved how easy and nutritious it is.
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@Eucalyptus or anyone else: what's the easiest way to peel boiled eggs? Even when I'm not low on energy, it all just seems too hard and fiddly.
I heard somewhere that putting them into hot water rather than cold means they are less likely to stick to their shells. Haven't actually tested it myself though.
Also, I peel mine under cool running water, with something lie a sieve (when I remember) to collect the shells.
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When my kids were infants a friend taught me the easy chicken soup recipe. 1 chicken in a saucepan with water and some soy. Roughly cut carrots and onions, or other veggies, simmer for an hour then 10 mins before finishing add some pasta. I loved how easy and nutritious it is.
+1 we have a slow cooker, and I dumped 2 chicken breasts, rough cut veg and enough stock to cover in. Cooked on high for 4 hours. That was a "low spoons" meal, but made enough for 3 days worth of meals (YMMV depending on how much you eat & number of people). We could have added more liquid to make it last longer. A boring beef stew can be made the same way: meat + veg + liquid. It won't be as nice as if you add some herbs and brown the outside of the meat first etc, but it will be edible.
My no spoons meal of the day is a baked potato with baked beans tipped over it for the last 5-10 minutes of cooking.
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@Eucalyptus or anyone else: what's the easiest way to peel boiled eggs? Even when I'm not low on energy, it all just seems too hard and fiddly.
The trick is a few different things. Main point is making sure you have older eggs. Fresh eggs don't have enough air in between the shell and the membrane, so they are always harder to peel. Eggs a few weeks old are going to have a larger air pocket, usually at the fat end, so it is easier to get under the membrane and just slide the shell right off in almost one piece.
I boil the eggs this way: start out with cool water, add eggs, start heating. As soon as they reach a bubbly boil (slightly more than a simmer, but less than full on boiling), I turn off the heat, cover the pan with the lid and let it set according to whether I want soft or hard boiled. 12 minutes for hard, 6 minutes for slightly soft (I like a tiny bit of custardy texture sometimes in the centers). But you'll need to test the "doneness" yourself (google cook times for soft/hard boiled to confirm what I put down).
Once the timer goes off, drain water, add ice and cool water and leave until the eggs are cooled down enough to touch/pick up (but still warmish since fridge-cold eggs are a bit harder to peel). Proceed with peeling by cracking up shell and pinch off the large end first, and slide your finger/thumb under the membrane area around the surface of the egg to remove shell. I usually am able to remove them in one large spiral if not slipping off the bottom half of the shell in one piece this way. I do this over a garbage can and it goes VERY quickly.
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Thank you!
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@Eucalyptus or anyone else: what's the easiest way to peel boiled eggs? Even when I'm not low on energy, it all just seems too hard and fiddly.
Alternative suggestion: bash them on the counter round the middle, cut in half with a knife, eat out of the shell with a teaspoon. No peeling required! But slightly more washing up.
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Eggs: some great replies!
Mum and Dad (and myself as a kid) always wrote on the date the eggs were laid. I can strongly confirm that the biggest factor in how easy they are to peel is age. We'd use older eggs for boiling, newer ones for everything else.
I also use a cold water, bring to boil, then turn off method. I usually chuck a tea towel on top. I don't normally think about the time, I just leave them there for at least half an hour, usually chuck my tea towel on top. They turn out great.
Spoon tactics: boil eggs when your spoons are a little higher. They'll keep for a few days in the fridge.
Oh, another spoon tactic that is probably important for nutrition for many eating spoon meals: I keep Vegan multivitamins on my kitchen bench. If you aren't getting much meat and perhaps no or low dairy, you need Vitamin B12 after a while. The Vegan Multivitamins have this. Your protein might be good and balanced from beans, eggs, vegetables, nuts, and grain sources, but you'll still likely miss the B12. Having the multivitamins on the bench, as well as my big container of fish oil, means that I feel fine about my nutrition on spoon days.
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I have an egg peeling trick. Put the egg in a tumbler with a small amount (inch?) of water, hand over the end and shake (over the sink). Does require energy for a few seconds but the shell will fall off.
I keep the kitchen stocked with the following things for bad weeks. None of it will go off so we'll be ok if I'm too tired to shop / think about meals. In theory I have the energy to batch cook but I never do.
- breaded frozen fish, frozen mash and veg. The fish is just plonk on baking tray for 20mins - we have 1.5 each, one's not enough. The mash is 3 mins in microwave. Frozen veg is a godsend - zero prep but nutritious, so I always have peas, corn plus one other in the freezer.
- "Posh pasta" from the chiller section with a creamy or meaty sauce. The expiry on these is a month or so, so you can keep them in the fridge for a long time for emergencies. I boil the pasta and then put the sauce in the same pan once drained to heat up.
- Chunky tinned soup, although I find them too salty so add frozen peas and more water.
- spaghetti and pesto - we add frozen veg to the pasta while cooking.
- tinned tomatoes and rice - cook rice but add a tin of chopped toms to the water. Serve with cheese if you have it. I keep grated mozzarella for pizza in the freezer so I have that if the fridge is empty.
- frozen pizza - add tuna or other stuff if I can be arsed.
- frozen gyoza - these are microwavable in 5 mins and a great when I need something quickly. We mostly have them as a starter when dinner is going to be late.
- tins of plain tuna and pasta.
- microwave scrambled egg - approx 2 mins but you do need to keep stopping and stirring. Getting the tub clean after is probably more effort than using a fry pan tho!
- jars of simmer curry sauce & 90 second microwave rice - I keep frozen meat in the freezer but of course when I'm tired I forget to get it out, so I pick up already chopped meat on the way home, plonk in pan, add sauce and frozen veg. Of course, this is also a tasty meal with just veg.
I also always always have oats and milk on hand. We have a uht milk in the pantry for emergencies. I try to always have cheese, yoghurt and eggs in the fridge but fresh stuff is harder to maintain. I buy a dozen eggs at a time as they don't go off quickly.
What I do find is - too many quicky meals and I start to need a meal with some decent chunks of meat. That's where the fish is great but also when I might get takeaway Thai or a big chicken salad from a place that puts a whole breast in.
Other than that, I do have a few meals that I've repeated so often that I can do a cheat's version in my sleep. Eg sometimes I can pick up things like already chopped chicken and microwave rice on my way home and do Tom Ka Gai (basically poach chicken in tin of coconut milk and water with ginger (jar in fridge) chilli, fish sauce and frozen veg). Given more energy I make a more proper one with bashed lemongrass and whatnot.
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When my kids were infants a friend taught me the easy chicken soup recipe. 1 chicken in a saucepan with water and some soy. Roughly cut carrots and onions, or other veggies, simmer for an hour then 10 mins before finishing add some pasta. I loved how easy and nutritious it is.
+1 we have a slow cooker, and I dumped 2 chicken breasts, rough cut veg and enough stock to cover in. Cooked on high for 4 hours. That was a "low spoons" meal, but made enough for 3 days worth of meals (YMMV depending on how much you eat & number of people). We could have added more liquid to make it last longer. A boring beef stew can be made the same way: meat + veg + liquid. It won't be as nice as if you add some herbs and brown the outside of the meat first etc, but it will be edible.
My no spoons meal of the day is a baked potato with baked beans tipped over it for the last 5-10 minutes of cooking.
M kids will love that potato recipe! Usually I just hand them the can of baked beans and a spoon...
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When my kids were infants a friend taught me the easy chicken soup recipe. 1 chicken in a saucepan with water and some soy. Roughly cut carrots and onions, or other veggies, simmer for an hour then 10 mins before finishing add some pasta. I loved how easy and nutritious it is.
+1 we have a slow cooker, and I dumped 2 chicken breasts, rough cut veg and enough stock to cover in. Cooked on high for 4 hours. That was a "low spoons" meal, but made enough for 3 days worth of meals (YMMV depending on how much you eat & number of people). We could have added more liquid to make it last longer. A boring beef stew can be made the same way: meat + veg + liquid. It won't be as nice as if you add some herbs and brown the outside of the meat first etc, but it will be edible.
My no spoons meal of the day is a baked potato with baked beans tipped over it for the last 5-10 minutes of cooking.
M kids will love that potato recipe! Usually I just hand them the can of baked beans and a spoon...
Hey AV, that's pretty much how I do all my slow cooker meals now, once I realised the outcome is nearly the same as more effort. I add a can of chopped toms to beef stew also. I used to get dirty potatoes but now get washed, cut them in half and bang, straight in.
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DH and I contracted noroviris over Christmas, which led me to discovering an excellent low spoons meal: egg drop soup and rice from the Chinese takeout. $9 US got enough of both for 3 meals for the two of us. I'm feeling a bit better than him so I added frozen peas to mine.
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Tonight's low spoons dinner, served in a bento box because fancy :D
SSS brand hommous from Woolies
carrot sticks
red capsicum sticks
Greek feta cheese from Aldi
1 sliced pickle
leftover roasted red capsicum strips from a few days ago
Yum! (dessert was a couple of choccies from a Favourites box - Xmas pressie from a neighbour)
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My dinner is the same as last night & my morning tea - a chicken sandwich. We poached 2 extra chicken breasts when we made chicken soup, then took them out for sandwiches.
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Heinz Beanz Creations tins are now on sale at Coles*. 2 for $3.
(As mentioned by myself and others up-thread)
John West small flavoured Tuna tins are also $1 at the moment (half price). I find the John West ones better than the Coles brand (though I rarely by fish any more), and likely the JW is more sustainably sourced.
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The Bento Box looks yum! My dinner was a zero chop special: ready chopped chicken plopped in a bowl with dollops of yoghurt and tandoori paste and mixed about then empty onto a Pyrex dish, baked in oven for 30 mins. Oh I lied because I added a mini eggplant cut in half. Served with rice cooked with peas. I pottered in the kitchen cleaning up while it cooked so I feel like I'm winning.
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Tonight we had fish and chips. The chips were a $2 bag from coles, gluten free as per youngest child request. In the oven for about 40 minutes. The basa is fried in the kambrook electric pan for about 8 minutes in butter. Fed a family of 4 for under $7 with low effort. Not the best health wise, but good for a night when we couldn't be bothered.
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Tonight we had fish and chips. The chips were a $2 bag from coles, gluten free as per youngest child request. In the oven for about 40 minutes. The basa is fried in the kambrook electric pan for about 8 minutes in butter. Fed a family of 4 for under $7 with low effort. Not the best health wise, but good for a night when we couldn't be bothered.
Sounds good. Sometimes you gotta do it. $7 is pretty cheap. Fish is good for you even cooked that way for the most part.
I try and eat a baby carrot or two if I'm naughty and have a fish and chips meal. Makes me feel better.
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I like to keep a few "emergency" meals in a corner of the freezer - perogies, frozen pizza, frozen lasagne. The trick is to not use them when I'm feeling lazy but to use them when I'm actually out of spoons.
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Tonight we had fish and chips. The chips were a $2 bag from coles, gluten free as per youngest child request. In the oven for about 40 minutes. The basa is fried in the kambrook electric pan for about 8 minutes in butter. Fed a family of 4 for under $7 with low effort. Not the best health wise, but gGood for a night when we couldn't be bothered.
Sounds good. Sometimes you gotta do it. $7 is pretty cheap. Fish is good for you even cooked that way for the most part.
I try and eat a baby carrot or two if I'm naughty and have a fish and chips meal. Makes me feel better.
FTFY
No food shaming in this thread, not even of your own food. The point is to be fed and therefore alive. :)
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A tbs tomato paste on flatbread, beans and cheese on top. Heat it up in oven for 10 mins.
Rice pud in pressure cooker. Or slow cooker.
I make soup packs (onions, carrots, celery)for the freezer and throw them in the slow cooker w a can of beans.
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Tonight we had fish and chips. The chips were a $2 bag from coles, gluten free as per youngest child request. In the oven for about 40 minutes. The basa is fried in the kambrook electric pan for about 8 minutes in butter. Fed a family of 4 for under $7 with low effort. Not the best health wise, but gGood for a night when we couldn't be bothered.
Sounds good. Sometimes you gotta do it. $7 is pretty cheap. Fish is good for you even cooked that way for the most part.
I try and eat a baby carrot or two if I'm naughty and have a fish and chips meal. Makes me feel better.
FTFY
No food shaming in this thread, not even of your own food. The point is to be fed and therefore alive. :)
Good catch! Wasn't meant to be shaming at all, apologies!
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Tonight we had fish and chips. The chips were a $2 bag from coles, gluten free as per youngest child request. In the oven for about 40 minutes. The basa is fried in the kambrook electric pan for about 8 minutes in butter. Fed a family of 4 for under $7 with low effort. Not the best health wise, but gGood for a night when we couldn't be bothered.
Sounds good. Sometimes you gotta do it. $7 is pretty cheap. Fish is good for you even cooked that way for the most part.
I try and eat a baby carrot or two if I'm naughty and have a fish and chips meal. Makes me feel better.
FTFY
No food shaming in this thread, not even of your own food. The point is to be fed and therefore alive. :)
Good catch! Wasn't meant to be shaming at all, apologies!
No worries! I was a bit worried later that I'd been too harsh (I'm known IRL for being blunt and direct even though I work very hard on being polite and tactful...)
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Asatine, you're lovely! Thanks for looking out for everyone :)
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Asatine, you're lovely! Thanks for looking out for everyone :)
I'm mostly looking out for myself if I'm 100% honest. :) I'm not coping super well at the moment with food being labelled good, bad, healthy, unhealthy etc.
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When I am low on spoons, my standard for "Excellent meal! Well done!" is "Is there literally one nutrient in this that is not sugar/carbs?" Protein, calcium, vitamins and fibre all count. So cheese on toast is definitely a win, and even a doughnut and an apple would count as an adequately nutritious meal. Bonus points for remembering to take a multivitamin. If you're managing some calories and a multivitamin, you're doing OK.
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I'm a type 1 diabetic. Sugar is literally a lifesaver for me when my blood glucose levels are dangerously low.
I have a friend who has advanced kidney disease. Too much fruit and veg will literally kill him (or put him on premature dialysis).
There is no one uniformly 'healthy' diet.
And if one adds in a history of disordered eating...
(And arrrgh I'm so overthinking things. I don't want to pass judgement on those who label their food healthy/unhealthy either. But want to give extra context)
I should possibly only post when 100% sober. This is possibly not the case tonight ;)
tl;dr: I love you all! I have many hang ups around food, some physical/practical, some emotional/embedded in a trauma history
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Anyway. Getting back on topic. Tonight's dinner is leftover coleslaw (dressing is a mix of whole egg mayo and live culture natural yoghurt) and a sausage.
Future meals will likely be a cold sausage and some veggie sticks. Plus Dijon mustard because I love mustard.
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PTF in spite of lack of Aussieness, because I've been terribly low on spoons the last six months.
Go to meals for me include:
Pasta with frozen veggies (usually broccoli), cheese and butter (just throw veg in a couple of minutes before pasta is done, one pot meal)
Faux quesadillas which are basically tortillas with sliced cheese and whatever else is handy, put in the toaster oven for 3-4 minutes. This has supplanted my cheese on toast meals - just as quick but easier to do variations and added nutritious items you have laying around.
Rotisserie chicken soup - pick off meat, toss carcass in Instant Pot with salt and water for easy stock... then make soup by heating stock with pasta, frozen veg, and the meat from the chicken.
Ditto, but put in a can of beans and tomato puree instead of the meat and it's minestrone.
Frozen pizza - I save the "crumbs" from the bottom of the frozen broccoli and cauliflower bags to put on frozen pizzas for a slight boost in vitamins and flavor. Plus whatever else is handy - leftover meats, flavorful cheese, etc.
I am pretty sure frozen vegetables are the only reason I don't have some sort of disease associated with long sea voyages in the 1700s.
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I'm a type 1 diabetic. Sugar is literally a lifesaver for me when my blood glucose levels are dangerously low.
I have a friend who has advanced kidney disease. Too much fruit and veg will literally kill him (or put him on premature dialysis).
There is no one uniformly 'healthy' diet.
And if one adds in a history of disordered eating...
(And arrrgh I'm so overthinking things. I don't want to pass judgement on those who label their food healthy/unhealthy either. But want to give extra context)
I should possibly only post when 100% sober. This is possibly not the case tonight ;)
tl;dr: I love you all! I have many hang ups around food, some physical/practical, some emotional/embedded in a trauma history
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Not sure if this was in reply to me or not, but I think we're in the same ballpark! Set your own standards and keep them achievable!
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I wasn't sure what did would be available when I visited my parents this weekend, so I took 2 tins of baked beans down. I ate a whole tin in one sitting and it was excellently filling.
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Have we covered seed/ nut/ dried fruit mixes? A handful or two of that will fill my belly pretty well, either to go with something less filling like a piece of fresh fruit or to give me enough energy to open the tin of beans to go on my toast (or other easy meal).
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I wasn't sure what did would be available when I visited my parents this weekend, so I took 2 tins of baked beans down. I ate a whole tin in one sitting and it was excellently filling.
That reminds me, I sometimes eat tinned chickpeas or tinned corn to stave off hunger. Tinned tuna also works.
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I wasn't sure what did would be available when I visited my parents this weekend, so I took 2 tins of baked beans down. I ate a whole tin in one sitting and it was excellently filling.
Weather forecast at your parents: windy!
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Not Aussie, but have lupus. Luckily, have only rarely been in a low/no spoons situation. But, when that happens, refrigerated cheese tortellini (cooks in 3 minutes) with jarred tomato sauce. If I'm feeling bonus points, shelled edamame that just needs to be boiled & drained.
Minimal spoons: any kind of toast with peanut butter. Grab a few carrots out of the bag, call it a day.
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Also not Australian, which will be perfectly evident as I sing the praises of peanut butter. Do you guys love peanut butter like Americans do yet? ;) MaybeBabyMustache gets it!
I've found that yogurt is an excellent way to build a protein-rich meal without too much effort. Stir some raw oats into it. If you've got the energy, dice an apple (or whatever fresh fruit is in season) into it and stir with cinnamon. Meal replacement powders and whey proteins taste great when stirred into yogurt, too. I think it tastes like pudding. Mmmm...pudding.
Bonus: big tubs of yogurt tend to keep for a week weeks in the fridge. And you can go as fancy (Greek! Skyr!) or as basic as you'd like. I buy the plain whole milk yogurt tubs from Aldi.
Astatine - I want to thank you for all you've shared in this thread and in your personal journal. I'm generally a higher-on-spoons person, but your experiences have really shifted my perspective on how I judge the ableness of others. Your honesty about your struggles is extremely eye-opening for me, and you've inspired me to continue to work to be more compassionate and empathetic for everyone, especially people who don't "look sick." Keep up the badassity.
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Astatine - I want to thank you for all you've shared in this thread and in your personal journal. I'm generally a higher-on-spoons person, but your experiences have really shifted my perspective on how I judge the ableness of others. Your honesty about your struggles is extremely eye-opening for me, and you've inspired me to continue to work to be more compassionate and empathetic for everyone, especially people who don't "look sick." Keep up the badassity.
Awww, you're so kind, thank you. I'm glad I've helped with the 'doesn't look sick/disabled' understanding. Huzzah!
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PSA for Aussies: Latina pasta for tortellini and ravioli etc is the only brand worth trying. DH and I occasionally get sucked into a cheaper brand and inevitably we are disappointed. Learn from our trial and error ;)
Since Monday, I have eaten about 5 quest bars, plus occasional real food.
Thank you bar food
I had to google Quest bars. Turns out they are protein bars. That can be the 'new thing I learnt today'.
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I have never done it but am told sliced cheese freezes well, and presumably you can put that under the grill frozen. Maybe something to experiment with when you do have a few spoons in case it all ends in tears!
I don't think there'd be much problem with a frozen slize of cheese under a broiler; however, unlike sliced bread, frozen slices of cheeze do not separate easily. I don't recommend freezing sliced cheese unless the slices are separated by paper or similar.
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PSA for Aussies: Latina pasta for tortellini and ravioli etc is the only brand worth trying. DH and I occasionally get sucked into a cheaper brand and inevitably we are disappointed. Learn from our trial and error ;)
A friend served the Aldi ravioli the other day, spinach and fetta maybe? It tasted like ... nothing.
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PSA for Aussies: Latina pasta for tortellini and ravioli etc is the only brand worth trying. DH and I occasionally get sucked into a cheaper brand and inevitably we are disappointed. Learn from our trial and error ;)
A friend served the Aldi ravioli the other day, spinach and fetta maybe? It tasted like ... nothing.
I can believe that. I find that non-Latina brand raviolis and tortellinis taste a bit bland and the pasta is too thick or something. The one we had this week (enough for 3 dinners which is a GREAT time to find you regret your choice of ravioli) was a random brand from a Supabarn that was randomly on special. It was edible but not great.
Edit: that said the Aldi pre-made cannelloni spinach and ricotta meals for one are pretty tasty. I had one for my lunch today.
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I like the Coles brand filled ravioli/girasoli - it keeps for a month (and can be frozen) and I just boil and add pasta sauce. Don't even bother with veg at times.
I am a tuna mayo on toast aficionado and sing the praises of cereal for dinner regularly.
I also keep microwaveable rice on hand and eat that with tuna and canned corn or frozen peas (and maybe a splash of soy).
My favourite would be corn flakes with ice cold milk and a sprinkle of sugar. Yum.
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PSA for Aussies: Latina pasta for tortellini and ravioli etc is the only brand worth trying. DH and I occasionally get sucked into a cheaper brand and inevitably we are disappointed. Learn from our trial and error ;)
Since Monday, I have eaten about 5 quest bars, plus occasional real food.
Thank you bar food
I had to google Quest bars. Turns out they are protein bars. That can be the 'new thing I learnt today'.
For whatever reason, brands of tortellini wildly vary in taste & flavor, even at the same price point. Agree that some trial & error will ensure you're not eating pasta sauce coated cardboard. In the US, Costco sells a brand we like. I also find that a high quality sauce, a sprinkle of parmesan & fresh pepper really helps things along.
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By severely slicing work hours, I'm up to beans and chips and egg, and leftover beans and chips.
My dinner plan is to call family members or a kindly delivery person
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By severely slicing work hours, I'm up to beans and chips and egg, and leftover beans and chips.
My dinner plan is to call family members or a kindly delivery person
Good luck! If I had a teleport machine I'd send you some muesli bars too.
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I'm about to have a serious low spoons week at work.
Going to stock up tonight on lots of bags of baby carrots, small tins of flavoured tuna, fruit, boil some eggs. Grab, eat, shower, bed.
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Good luck! And sounds like a plan stocking up in advance.
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I survived!
I had a brainwave today that I'm going to test tonight; cooking small amounts of rice in a jar. Akin to vacuum flask or haybox cooking, but using cheap empty jars, then just covered in clothing. The idea being that I can leave a bunch of jars (eg empty jam jars) pre-prepared with rice at home and in my drawer at work. Just add boiling water when I get to work or before I leave for work, and done. Rice once cooked doesn't keep that great and I hate waiting for stuff to unfreeze, plus my freezer isn't huge anyway. I also dislike instant rice/its expensive.
So hopefully this is a Moustachian solution/idea that works ok to help speed up food delivery to my gullet.
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Another of my "I just can't even" foodstuffs is tinned fruit (in juice, not syrup). Open tin, dump into bowl (this step is optional), grab spoon, eat. Doesn't feel too heavy, contains fibre and water, contains an amount of vitamins, I find it delicious. Excellent when I am feeling overwhelmed by the thought of eating a whole meal of food, let alone cooking one, and tinned peaches in winter taste like sunshine and holidays :)
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I survived!
I had a brainwave today that I'm going to test tonight; cooking small amounts of rice in a jar. Akin to vacuum flask or haybox cooking, but using cheap empty jars, then just covered in clothing. The idea being that I can leave a bunch of jars (eg empty jam jars) pre-prepared with rice at home and in my drawer at work. Just add boiling water when I get to work or before I leave for work, and done. Rice once cooked doesn't keep that great and I hate waiting for stuff to unfreeze, plus my freezer isn't huge anyway. I also dislike instant rice/its expensive.
So hopefully this is a Moustachian solution/idea that works ok to help speed up food delivery to my gullet.
Let me know if that works, I have some jam jars that would be just the right size for that. I was going to portion out some lentils & spices into them, but I hadn't thought about actually cooking inside the jar.
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We're in a heatwave and both of us are still lowish on spoons. Randomly we were outside a Coles on the weekend and needed bananas for brekkie, and decided to buy low spoon food for the week (not cheap but cheaper than eating out - very tempting when it's 30C in the house when we get home from work ETA dinner probably works out at $3 or $4 pp per meal ish). AND... I wrote up a meal plan for the week. Go me!!
Mon: Coles version of a kale-slaw, plus a couple of slices of Australian-style feta cheese
Tues - Red capsicum veggie sticks (maybe carrot too, depending on how tired DH is), plus labneh* and olive oil, a couple of slices of feta cheese, a spoonful of rinsed drained sauerkraut (bought a big jar of this a month ago, need to use it up)
Wed - cheap smoked salmon pieces, veggie sticks, labneh with olive oil
Thu - Red capsicum veggie sticks (maybe carrot too, depending on how tired DH is), plus labneh* and olive oil, finish off the feta cheese
Fri - avocado (if it's ripe) mashed with 95g tin tuna in oil, with finely diced red onion, parsley and chives from the garden, lemon juice, cherry tomatoes from the garden. Carrot sticks to dip into the avocado tuna mix.
Back up plan is leftover Mexican-ish-style bean stew from the freezer with instant rice and plain yoghurt.
Also bought a few instant meals from Aldi and Coles for us to take to work. Cheaper than buying lunch from local cafes. (variations on the theme of canelloni, lasagne or lamb roast)
*Labneh (https://www.manoosh.com.au/what-is-labneh/) - impulse buy at an independent shop last week, we serve with olive oil and use it as a dip for veggie sticks. Or you can spread it on bread. (it's savoury, not sweet)
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@Astatine that labneh looks interesting, might have to try it when I am
allowedable to eat dairy again. Though za'atar ans pita bread also mentioned there looked good...
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I survived!
I had a brainwave today that I'm going to test tonight; cooking small amounts of rice in a jar. Akin to vacuum flask or haybox cooking, but using cheap empty jars, then just covered in clothing. The idea being that I can leave a bunch of jars (eg empty jam jars) pre-prepared with rice at home and in my drawer at work. Just add boiling water when I get to work or before I leave for work, and done. Rice once cooked doesn't keep that great and I hate waiting for stuff to unfreeze, plus my freezer isn't huge anyway. I also dislike instant rice/its expensive.
So hopefully this is a Moustachian solution/idea that works ok to help speed up food delivery to my gullet.
Let me know if that works, I have some jam jars that would be just the right size for that. I was going to portion out some lentils & spices into them, but I hadn't thought about actually cooking inside the jar.
Ok, so I left the jar with 60grams of brown rice, freshly boiled water, inside an insulated shopping bag wrapped in a fleece jumper. Was pretty much room temp this and the rice was only maybe 20% cooked. So that's a no go, with that level of insulation. I might try building a dedicated high R value container from scrap polystyrene foam to maximise heat retention. One issue will be the jar will absorb a lot of the heat, there's a fair bit of room-temp thermal mass in it. I filled the jar to the top; more water than required which offsets that issue a bit. (This issue doesn't exist with my ecopot as I heat the pot up to boiling temp on the induction stove as a prep it all. Can't do that with a glass jar). Might also need to briefly run the jar under the hot water tap on its outside, to pre-warm it a little. White rice, pasta (particularly spaghetti noodles as high surface area to volume) would probably work better. Couscous of course is done with just boiling water in an open bowl in a few minutes.
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They sell par-boiled rice at the supermarket. That would probably work. Also, thin rice noodles tend to cook this way.
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I survived!
I had a brainwave today that I'm going to test tonight; cooking small amounts of rice in a jar. Akin to vacuum flask or haybox cooking, but using cheap empty jars, then just covered in clothing. The idea being that I can leave a bunch of jars (eg empty jam jars) pre-prepared with rice at home and in my drawer at work. Just add boiling water when I get to work or before I leave for work, and done. Rice once cooked doesn't keep that great and I hate waiting for stuff to unfreeze, plus my freezer isn't huge anyway. I also dislike instant rice/its expensive.
So hopefully this is a Moustachian solution/idea that works ok to help speed up food delivery to my gullet.
Let me know if that works, I have some jam jars that would be just the right size for that. I was going to portion out some lentils & spices into them, but I hadn't thought about actually cooking inside the jar.
Ok, so I left the jar with 60grams of brown rice, freshly boiled water, inside an insulated shopping bag wrapped in a fleece jumper. Was pretty much room temp this and the rice was only maybe 20% cooked. So that's a no go, with that level of insulation. I might try building a dedicated high R value container from scrap polystyrene foam to maximise heat retention. One issue will be the jar will absorb a lot of the heat, there's a fair bit of room-temp thermal mass in it. I filled the jar to the top; more water than required which offsets that issue a bit. (This issue doesn't exist with my ecopot as I heat the pot up to boiling temp on the induction stove as a prep it all. Can't do that with a glass jar). Might also need to briefly run the jar under the hot water tap on its outside, to pre-warm it a little. White rice, pasta (particularly spaghetti noodles as high surface area to volume) would probably work better. Couscous of course is done with just boiling water in an open bowl in a few minutes.
Would something like a thermos flask work? They are designed to keep food hot for hours.
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I have cooked rice in a thermos before. It does need to be pre-heated and wrapped in a towel for best results.
Last night we had salads for dinner. I used a pre-cut Asian salad mix, which included packets of ginger dressing, sesame crackers and cashews. Tofu on top for me, grilled chicken for DH. Delicious and healthy.
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We're in a heatwave and both of us are still lowish on spoons. Randomly we were outside a Coles on the weekend and needed bananas for brekkie, and decided to buy low spoon food for the week (not cheap but cheaper than eating out - very tempting when it's 30C in the house when we get home from work ETA dinner probably works out at $3 or $4 pp per meal ish). AND... I wrote up a meal plan for the week. Go me!!
Mon: Coles version of a kale-slaw, plus a couple of slices of Australian-style feta cheese
Tues - Red capsicum veggie sticks (maybe carrot too, depending on how tired DH is), plus labneh* and olive oil, a couple of slices of feta cheese, a spoonful of rinsed drained sauerkraut (bought a big jar of this a month ago, need to use it up)
Wed - cheap smoked salmon pieces, veggie sticks, labneh with olive oil
Thu - Red capsicum veggie sticks (maybe carrot too, depending on how tired DH is), plus labneh* and olive oil, finish off the feta cheese
Fri - avocado (if it's ripe) mashed with 95g tin tuna in oil, with finely diced red onion, parsley and chives from the garden, lemon juice, cherry tomatoes from the garden. Carrot sticks to dip into the avocado tuna mix.
Back up plan is leftover Mexican-ish-style bean stew from the freezer with instant rice and plain yoghurt.
Also bought a few instant meals from Aldi and Coles for us to take to work. Cheaper than buying lunch from local cafes. (variations on the theme of canelloni, lasagne or lamb roast)
*Labneh (https://www.manoosh.com.au/what-is-labneh/) - impulse buy at an independent shop last week, we serve with olive oil and use it as a dip for veggie sticks. Or you can spread it on bread. (it's savoury, not sweet)
So we're up to Wednesday now and this has been working really well! DH has some physical spoons after work so he can do a little bit of food prep like chop veggies and cheese, but neither of us has had much spare mental energy. It's been so great when DH asks what we should do for dinner and we both read from my handwritten list (it's in a notebook on the coffee table). :D
I think I'll try doing this each weekend if I can. Particularly while we are in summer when even if we had the energy to cook it's too hot to want to turn the stove or oven on.
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We're in a heatwave and both of us are still lowish on spoons. Randomly we were outside a Coles on the weekend and needed bananas for brekkie, and decided to buy low spoon food for the week (not cheap but cheaper than eating out - very tempting when it's 30C in the house when we get home from work ETA dinner probably works out at $3 or $4 pp per meal ish). AND... I wrote up a meal plan for the week. Go me!!
Mon: Coles version of a kale-slaw, plus a couple of slices of Australian-style feta cheese
Tues - Red capsicum veggie sticks (maybe carrot too, depending on how tired DH is), plus labneh* and olive oil, a couple of slices of feta cheese, a spoonful of rinsed drained sauerkraut (bought a big jar of this a month ago, need to use it up)
Wed - cheap smoked salmon pieces, veggie sticks, labneh with olive oil
Thu - Red capsicum veggie sticks (maybe carrot too, depending on how tired DH is), plus labneh* and olive oil, finish off the feta cheese
Fri - avocado (if it's ripe) mashed with 95g tin tuna in oil, with finely diced red onion, parsley and chives from the garden, lemon juice, cherry tomatoes from the garden. Carrot sticks to dip into the avocado tuna mix.
Back up plan is leftover Mexican-ish-style bean stew from the freezer with instant rice and plain yoghurt.
Also bought a few instant meals from Aldi and Coles for us to take to work. Cheaper than buying lunch from local cafes. (variations on the theme of canelloni, lasagne or lamb roast)
*Labneh (https://www.manoosh.com.au/what-is-labneh/) - impulse buy at an independent shop last week, we serve with olive oil and use it as a dip for veggie sticks. Or you can spread it on bread. (it's savoury, not sweet)
So we're up to Wednesday now and this has been working really well! DH has some physical spoons after work so he can do a little bit of food prep like chop veggies and cheese, but neither of us has had much spare mental energy. It's been so great when DH asks what we should do for dinner and we both read from my handwritten list (it's in a notebook on the coffee table). :D
I think I'll try doing this each weekend if I can. Particularly while we are in summer when even if we had the energy to cook it's too hot to want to turn the stove or oven on.
Great to hear, @Astatine!
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Belated thanks!
We just did most of our grocery shopping for the week and it was hard keeping meals for dinner straight in my head while shopping but I think I got there. DH has a few more spoons now*, so there is a little more wriggle room beyond veggie sticks and cheese on weeknights after work. Posting this partly for accountability and partly in case any of my meals or meal planning is useful for others.
Meal plan for the upcoming week:
Sat (tonight): cook potatoes and make potato salad. If the avocado (from last week) actually is ripe today, have that too mixed with tinned tuna and homegrown tomatoes.
Sun: Dinner at a friend's house
Mon: Leftover potato salad plus homegrown tomatoes plus a couple of slices of Red Leicester cheese (from Aldi)
Tues: Need to buy 6 sausages (from butcher if possible, supermarket if not). Fry all sausages, eat half of them between us with a vinegrette slaw (bought 1/4 red cabbage today)
Wed: Cold sausages, slaw (if there is any leftover from Tues), red capsicum sticks
Thu: Scrambled eggs, sauerkraut (from a jar, rinse with water before serving) plus homegrown tomatoes
Fri: Roast veg (capsicum, zucchini, garlic cloves) and haloumi, with a slice of lemon on the side
If any of that is too hard on a particular day, the back up plan is Mexican-ish bean stew from the freezer, nuked in the microwave and served on instant rice with some yoghurt.
*He had a gazillion blood tests last year, only thing that showed up was a slight vitamin D deficiency. Dr told him to start taking supplement 3x day, and not sure if it's correlation or causation, but he's a bit less trashed now. And I have a few more spoons too as I recover from my illness and improve my iron intake, but I'm spending them on more hours at work (I want to be back at f/t hours).
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@Astatine your meal planning incredibly helpful for me right now. I'm going to copy it with a few tweaks. Potato salad, sausages, stuff from freezer if stuffed. I think ours will be:
Potato salad
Brown rice salad
Sausages
Baked chicken
Garden salad
Hommus
I'll pick specific days to cook/eat those things once I've spoken to my DH about his schedule this week. Thank you so much!
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You’re very welcome! I’m glad it was useful. Can I suggest having your list handwritten somewhere obvious and easy to find? Cuts down on thinking/remembering.
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I have a couple super easy standbys for when I have almost no spoons:
If it is summer, and I'm hot, I want cold food. So cottage cheese with some berries or canned peaches or pears. If the fruit is canned, you can store it and it is ready when needed.
If it is winter, I want hot food. A grocery store roasted chicken and a salad. A Joe's scramble of burger, onion, spinach, mushrooms, an egg and a bit of sour cream. Or my own "too exhausted to cook" one pot meal: cook oatmeal in water or chicken stock; throw in some frozen spinach, some canned drained black beans if you have them, some canned drained tuna if you have it; stir over heat til warm; grate a bit of cheddar cheese over the top, add salt and pepper and serve. Basically, it's like an oatmeal risotto, but takes about 5 minutes.
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Sounds good Embok! Need a couple of translations though: what's a Joe's scramble? Is that just chucking everything in a saucepan and stirring til it's cooked?
And is burger like mince meat or ground meat? (I assume not an actual burger with bread and salad)
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I haven't cooked lentils before, but I heard they were easy and delicious. Turns out, they also scale well and don't require much supervision. I could easily add some extra veg to this... But for a no-spoons meal it was just right. I might see what it's like frozen & defrosted.
1 cup dried red lentils
2 cups/500ml low salt stock
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried coriander leaves
1/2 tsp ground tumeric
Olive oil
Cook olive oil & spices in saucepan for 1-2 minutes (until fragrant). Add liquid and bring to boil. Add lentils. Cook until deliciously mushy, stirring occasionally. Consume.
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Thermos/haybox/ecopot cooking is becoming quite popular, and there are various brands of ecopot in particular on the market. I have an Australian one, literally called "Ecopot" that my parents bought a couple of years ago at the show and only used once. It works really well, but it is a very expensive item (hundreds of dollars!) Personally while it works just fine, its only useful for a single person if you plan to make a whole batch of meals for a whole week. If you use rice as a staple, rice generally isn't meant to be kept cooked in your fridge for a whole week (apparently, I keep being told/read, but it hasn't killed me yet. Though it sure isn't as fresh after a couple of days).
I'm not super impressed by the amount of insulation in this pot;its pretty thin. So thin that almost straight away I can feel heat coming out of it. If you read their website it does meet the requirements for food safety for a few hours. Also, the pots are specific to the kit. I really don't need to duplicate the pots and take up extra space in my relatively small, minimalist, modest house and kitchen. So I'm planning to sell it for $$$ and make my own from foam with much thicker insulation to suit my current pot set. This will mean faster cooking times as higher amounts of heat will be retained. It won't be as durable for the road or quite as compact, but much less kitchen space overall (the insulation will be at least 3cm thick as opposed to ~1cm).
Also, I'm keen to make one for a single serve of lunch rice for work. Or dinner rice for home. I might make two. I'm thinking after my jar experiment that a glass jar is a bad idea. But a reasonable quality tupperware style round container of about 1L should work well. A round one will be best as that will reduce the surface area: volume ratio, vs a square or rectangular container, which will optimise cooking. The total cost will only be a few $ each as scrap EPS foam from packaging is very easy to get. I'll probably cover the outside with a layer of carboard and then plastic contact to protect it and make it more durable. I should easily be able to keep it in my drawer at work.
I'll report back to MMM with how I go :-)
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I haven't cooked lentils before, but I heard they were easy and delicious. Turns out, they also scale well and don't require much supervision. I could easily add some extra veg to this... But for a no-spoons meal it was just right. I might see what it's like frozen & defrosted.
1 cup dried red lentils
2 cups/500ml low salt stock
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried coriander leaves
1/2 tsp ground tumeric
Olive oil
Cook olive oil & spices in saucepan for 1-2 minutes (until fragrant). Add liquid and bring to boil. Add lentils. Cook until deliciously mushy, stirring occasionally. Consume.
Add a slice of lemon to this and it will be even more yummy. I make this mushy soup style in the slow cooker.
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Planning out some zero spoons food for Mr Happier's office stash, because he has a tough month at work coming up. Definitely going to include muesli bars and baked beans.
At home, I have consistently had enough spoons for bulk prepping food as needed, for which I am extremely grateful. But we're keeping some of our "easy food" on hand too (frozen crumbed fish, sliced bread, cheese to melt on bread for tasty toasties).
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Planning out some zero spoons food for Mr Happier's office stash, because he has a tough month at work coming up. Definitely going to include muesli bars and baked beans.
At home, I have consistently had enough spoons for bulk prepping food as needed, for which I am extremely grateful. But we're keeping some of our "easy food" on hand too (frozen crumbed fish, sliced bread, cheese to melt on bread for tasty toasties).
Frozen crumbed fish is so great. The other day dinner was jap pumpkin wedges, whole finger eggplant, whole garlic cloves unwrapped and fish. All baked on a tray and all I had to do was cut a bit of pumpkin (which was so soft, unexpected, will buy whole pumpkin again) and season the veg. Hubby sliced the rest of the pumpkin when he got home for the rest of the week.
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@Astatine: Joe's scramble is the name of a recipe that originated as a hearty breakfast at a San Francisco restaurant named "Joe's". You fry in a skillet burger meat (minced beef), onions, chopped, mushrooms, sliced, season with salt and pepper, the throw in some fresh or frozen spinach. Once everything is cooked, add a couple of eggs and scramble it all together. It is super easy, and tastes great. Reheats pretty well, too.
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@Astatine: Joe's scramble is the name of a recipe that originated as a hearty breakfast at a San Francisco restaurant named "Joe's". You fry in a skillet burger meat (minced beef), onions, chopped, mushrooms, sliced, season with salt and pepper, the throw in some fresh or frozen spinach. Once everything is cooked, add a couple of eggs and scramble it all together. It is super easy, and tastes great. Reheats pretty well, too.
Aaah. Glad I asked. Probably wouldn't have guessed that. (we share a language in common, sort of, but more cultural things like food can be quite different - I've learnt a lot from TV shows like Chopped and Cutthroat Kitchen but a lot of American food is a bit of an enigma to me)
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I've noticed that my local Woolies has a range of pre-cooked meats aside from good old BBQ chook. No bones in most of them too.
Some bags of salad or pre-cut roast veg and one of those might work. Found a lot of pre-made salads in the fridge at Woolies, which are nice but not always cheap.
I've had a couple of low-energy days the last week or so, but trying to eat healthier (so I'd rather avoid pies and frozen pizzas and the like).
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There is also already-marinated chicken that you can just chuck into a pan and put into the oven. We got a pack of marinated assorted chicken-on-the-bone pieces in Aldi the other day which was $6/kg.
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I've noticed that my local Woolies has a range of pre-cooked meats aside from good old BBQ chook. No bones in most of them too.
Some bags of salad or pre-cut roast veg and one of those might work. Found a lot of pre-made salads in the fridge at Woolies, which are nice but not always cheap.
I've had a couple of low-energy days the last week or so, but trying to eat healthier (so I'd rather avoid pies and frozen pizzas and the like).
At Woolies there are two types of hot chicken - normal and free range. I found out at Christmas that the free range is also dairy free, whereas the normal one isn't.
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I've noticed that my local Woolies has a range of pre-cooked meats aside from good old BBQ chook. No bones in most of them too.
Some bags of salad or pre-cut roast veg and one of those might work. Found a lot of pre-made salads in the fridge at Woolies, which are nice but not always cheap.
I've had a couple of low-energy days the last week or so, but trying to eat healthier (so I'd rather avoid pies and frozen pizzas and the like).
At Woolies there are two types of hot chicken - normal and free range. I found out at Christmas that the free range is also dairy free, whereas the normal one isn't.
You are brilliant. I know what we're having for dinner tomorrow night.
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Yesterday I had the energy to buy an actual lettuce, chop, wash, spin, and put into an enormous ziploc with a papertowel. vegetables are handled for a few days
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Way to go EF!!
We didn’t get around to shopping for veg this weekend. Took friend up on offer to raid their garden for mint leaves when we were over for dinner tonight. If DH is up to it, I’ll get him to make a chickpea salad for Mon & Tues night using tinned chickpeas, tomatoes from the garden, any parsley that’s survived summer, mint leaves, lemon juice & olive oil.
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That sounds delish. Mint is definitely one of my favourite herbs. And I also like lemon in just about everything!
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I bought a 4 pack of tiny tins of chickpeas. Now I can have super quick salads on "baby-no-nap" days, and I'll be able to take them for work lunch next week!
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I haven't cooked lentils before, but I heard they were easy and delicious. Turns out, they also scale well and don't require much supervision. I could easily add some extra veg to this... But for a no-spoons meal it was just right. I might see what it's like frozen & defrosted.
1 cup dried red lentils
2 cups/500ml low salt stock
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried coriander leaves
1/2 tsp ground tumeric
Olive oil
Cook olive oil & spices in saucepan for 1-2 minutes (until fragrant). Add liquid and bring to boil. Add lentils. Cook until deliciously mushy, stirring occasionally. Consume.
I cook a similar recipe, instead of the spices I sometimes just add a favourite curry powder and when nearly ready some coconut milk. I also throw in any vege lingering at the bottom of the fridge and greens out of the garden. I usually serve with rice. What's included depends on spoons available. This can be a very tasty low effort (and low cost) meal.
We use the sandwich press a lot so cooking salmon or steaks can be quick. We wrap in baking paper first so all the juices are contained for easy clean up. The Good Guys regularly have these on special for $25.
So glad to hear that you are both enjoying a little more energy. I've had life long iron issues which has sometimes impacted on my capacity to work and manage family and household tasks. This was one of my motivating factors for getting FIRE'd.
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Loving grape season: just wash and eat.
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I guess this belongs here. Sort of. It's not very mustashian.
My parents have decided that mum is too exhausted to cook. Mum doesn't like dad cooking unsupervised (he gets easily distracted, and has burnt the porridge several times when I've visited recently, so I actually agree). They don't like meals-on-wheels because the food isn't nice (they used to run a B&B and mum is a good cook).
So they decided to try LiteNEasy, because it was recommended to them. The food is too stodgy, so they won't have it again. It also came in an enormous number of plastic bags.
They like the Pub Grub (not the real name, but I've forgotten it) frozen meals available from IGA, but there are only 3 varieties.
So the question: Are there any other frozen meals or similar available from supermarkets that people like? That you don't have to cut up vegetables for (mum has arthritis), and are instant but have a reasonable amount of veggies in them.
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So the question: Are there any other frozen meals or similar available from supermarkets that people like? That you don't have to cut up vegetables for (mum has arthritis), and are instant but have a reasonable amount of veggies in them.
I don't know many frozen meals with a substantial amount of veggies... perhaps you can supplement the frozen meals with those steamfresh veggie packs?
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@deborah my friend recommends youfoodz, which she buys from her local IGA, and SuperNature Wellness Bowls, from Coles and/or Woolies.
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If you go with limeandpepper's suggestion of frozen steamed veggies, then the 'On the menu' frozen meals are pretty good - as long as you choose the veggie lasagne, the beef lasagne, the beef papperdelle or the meatballs and spaghetti meals (the others are edible but a bit bleah).
You can also get preprepared salads from most of the supermarkets, like kale slaw, coleslaw etc. Some of them come already mixed and others need you to mix the dressing with the salad. It's not as convenient as frozen meals, but maybe they could have them as a change now and then.
Do your parents have Aldi where they live? There are some non-frozen instant meals (next to the meat section, in the refrigerated bit) that might suit them. Their cannelloni and lasagne is nice (but only the fresh meal - Aldi frozen lasagne is pretty meh). We also sometimes see the 'meat and three veg' type of instant meals there, like roast meat with roast veggies that you just have to microwave. They're tasty enough, but the gravy is quite salty. We've also once or twice got Aldi's precooked lamb shanks that you just microwave (can't remember if it came with veggies or not).
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I guess this belongs here. Sort of. It's not very mustashian.
My parents have decided that mum is too exhausted to cook. Mum doesn't like dad cooking unsupervised (he gets easily distracted, and has burnt the porridge several times when I've visited recently, so I actually agree). They don't like meals-on-wheels because the food isn't nice (they used to run a B&B and mum is a good cook).
So they decided to try LiteNEasy, because it was recommended to them. The food is too stodgy, so they won't have it again. It also came in an enormous number of plastic bags.
They like the Pub Grub (not the real name, but I've forgotten it) frozen meals available from IGA, but there are only 3 varieties.
So the question: Are there any other frozen meals or similar available from supermarkets that people like? That you don't have to cut up vegetables for (mum has arthritis), and are instant but have a reasonable amount of veggies in them.
I like the Superfoods range of frozen meals. I might be talking about the one called SuperNature one already mentioned. They are not cheap so I've only got them when they are half price. Like all frozen meals they are too small and your parents are not their target market (quinoa, etc etc) but they are quite good with the veg. There is also a very expensive brand of frozen lasagne at Coles that is way, way ahead taste wise than the others. Juliano or something like that.
How about frozen pies, chicken Kiev or breaded fish with microwave steam veg and frozen mash (you microwave it but you do need to stir it so maybe no good)?
ETA: The best frozen pies are Balfours.
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OP: Thanks for starting this.
I came as a curious American wondering why you couldn't wash a spoon. Thanks for that link. I can relate. My sister and I are now emailing back and forth talking about spoons.
I saw the microwave popcorn idea, and I do this sometimes. There are also days where getting up twice to do this seems like too much. My standard is crackers with peanut butter (already combined).
I abandon standard meal definitions. Some old cheddar and a prepped veg like raw baby carrots straight from the bag. Also a protein powder you like, add a scoop of it, some milk/cream/equivalent nondairy in a blender, pulse and drink. My basic requirements are no cooking required, no more than 2 minutes standing up, fairly non-spillable.
Using protein powder is a good idea. I used to use it when I lifted, so I'm used to the taste, and it's pretty quick to do milk, protein powder, banana or frozen fruit and blend.
I eat out way too much, but driving through on the way home is usually easier than anything else. Maybe some of these ideas will help.
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Deborah: I don't know how old your parents are, but as they age they'll mainly need to be concerned about two things in their meals: fibre and calorie density. Obviously vitamins and the like are important, but constipation can be a serious old-person problem, often exacerbated by medications they are on. And they will tend to eat less and less as they age, so they need the high-calorie cheese sauces and the like to make sure they are getting enough energy. I speak as someone with a 90-year-old grandmother who lives alone and hates cooking but was a nurse and has seen enough old people in her time who didn't eat properly.
For the constipation: tinned fruit (shelf-stable! But they may need a special tin opener), dried fruit, actual fruit, tins of soup, plenty of fluids (cups of tea and the like), smoothies/proper fruit juice, prepared bagged salads, fibre-rich cereal
For the calories: Horlicks made with full-fat milk, cheese sauces, nuts, plenty of butter on vegetables... (Haven't got many ideas for this one, tbh!)
My grandmother subsists on cereal, bananas, hard boiled eggs or sliced ham with a bag of salad or a tin of soup, and half-portions of frozen ready meals (like macaroni cheese or chicken korma)... and about 5000 cups of tea a day which are so milky she basically waves a teabag at a mug of milk and calls it good. She's not going to win any prizes but it's a decent enough old-person diet and only requires boiling eggs and microwaving. And it's mostly shelf-stable so she doesn't have to go to the shops often or worry too much about things going off because she can't get through them alone.
I think with a few modifications it is a fairly adequate low-ish spoon diet for most people. Not brilliant, but not terrible either.
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Resurrecting my old thread. We discovered Woolworths-brand fresh soups. Yum! This (https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/744869/woolworths-fresh-lamb-barley-soup-low-fat) is an example. And only $3!
And given we're going through a loooooong heatwave, I thought I should also mention Aldi and Woolworths kale-based salads. Or combinations of deli meats (ham, roast beef), veggie sticks and hommous.
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Thanks for reviving the thread!
I'm really loving the Goulburn valley tubs of fruit, some of them have fruit grown in Australia. It's a big hit in our house at the moment to add some of those on a plate of salad or yoghurt.
Jarred rustroasted capsicum is also popular for our meals right now. Eat to make a meal of beans or tuna & rice really tasty with them.
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Thanks for reviving the thread!
I'm really loving the Goulburn valley tubs of fruit, some of them have fruit grown in Australia. It's a big hit in our house at the moment to add some of those on a plate of salad or yoghurt.
Jarred rust capsicum is also popular for our meals right now. Eat to make a meal of beans or tuna & rice really tasty with them.
:) I figured that even if the Aussies are all well atm, summer heatwaves sap everyone's energy.
What is jarred rust capsicum? Google was no help.
Also, smoked salmon (particularly cheap at Aldi) is a yum easy protein addition to a summer salad or veggie sticks.
And I can't remember if I've previously mentioned this, but mashing an avocado with a small tin of tuna, some finely diced red onion or green onion/shallot plus a finely diced tomato and some lemon juice makes a yummy nutritious dip to have with veggie sticks and/or crackers. (skip the tuna if you're vegetarian/vegan or don't like it)
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Roast chook and salad has been our go to meal this week. Heat, renovations and other issues have reduced our desire to cook.
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Roast chook and salad has been our go to meal this week. Heat, renovations and other issues have reduced our desire to cook.
Understandable. At this rate, I don't want to use our stove or oven until March. (microwave is tolerable because it doesn't pump out much heat into the house)
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Roast chook and salad has been our go to meal this week. Heat, renovations and other issues have reduced our desire to cook.
Understandable. At this rate, I don't want to use our stove or oven until March. (microwave is tolerable because it doesn't pump out much heat into the house)
Yep. I understand. In Geraldton we would have bbq'd outside, but I don't have one in Melbourne (yet), so outsourcing the heat seems like a good choice at the moment.
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Roast chook and salad has been our go to meal this week. Heat, renovations and other issues have reduced our desire to cook.
Understandable. At this rate, I don't want to use our stove or oven until March. (microwave is tolerable because it doesn't pump out much heat into the house)
Yep. I understand. In Geraldton we would have bbq'd outside, but I don't have one in Melbourne (yet), so outsourcing the heat seems like a good choice at the moment.
We don't have a BBQ either, but even if we did, it's not dropping below 30 until close to bedtime (or after, on the bad days).
We're definitely outsourcing food prep atm. I'm hoping the temps cool down soon. It is homegrown zucchini time, which means yummy zucchini fritters, but it needs to be cool enough to cook inside.
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For any non-Aussies reading this thread, I've attached an image about why cooking is too much for most of us at the moment.
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For any non-Aussies reading this thread, I've attached an image about why cooking is too much for most of us at the moment.
Its weird to me that the north of WA is so red, its cooler here than normal for this time of year, was only 36 today, when last week was 46 (we did an outdoor BBQ in this heat and I felt bad for the guys cooking).
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For any non-Aussies reading this thread, I've attached an image about why cooking is too much for most of us at the moment.
Its weird to me that the north of WA is so red, its cooler here than normal for this time of year, was only 36 today, when last week was 46 (we did an outdoor BBQ in this heat and I felt bad for the guys cooking).
'only 36' It's bad enough where I am that saying 'only 36 in the shade' is a sensible thing to say, not just where you are! (and omfg I could not handle 46C(115F) in the shade. I would literally melt)
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According to that map I think we are actually cooler in Perth right now than in Tasmania. That alone is insane, let alone the intensity of heat across the rest of Australia.
I meant ROAST capsicum, but I was typing while tired (er, which is all typing at any time of day right now) and forgot to check my spelling. Also called "roasted pepper strips" and "char grilled capsicum" on the jars in the shops. The oil makes a good addition to homemade hommus as well.
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For any non-Aussies reading this thread, I've attached an image about why cooking is too much for most of us at the moment.
Its weird to me that the north of WA is so red, its cooler here than normal for this time of year, was only 36 today, when last week was 46 (we did an outdoor BBQ in this heat and I felt bad for the guys cooking).
'only 36' It's bad enough where I am that saying 'only 36 in the shade' is a sensible thing to say, not just where you are! (and omfg I could not handle 46C(115F) in the shade. I would literally melt)
a few summers ago we had a week over 50 it wasn't nice. But its relatively cool this week
And yeah I think its been cooler in Perth than Tassie since the beginning of the week, its very weird.
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I meant ROAST capsicum, but I was typing while tired (er, which is all typing at any time of day right now) and forgot to check my spelling. Also called "roasted pepper strips" and "char grilled capsicum" on the jars in the shops. The oil makes a good addition to homemade hommus as well.
ooooh. ok that makes way more sense. :)
and weird that it's cooler for you and nlss than Tassie! (but then again, my Twitter feed is full of bushifire alerts for Tassie)
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http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/heatwave/#heatwave-forecasts
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I meant ROAST capsicum, but I was typing while tired (er, which is all typing at any time of day right now) and forgot to check my spelling. Also called "roasted pepper strips" and "char grilled capsicum" on the jars in the shops. The oil makes a good addition to homemade hommus as well.
I like the Lake Prespa fire roasted red peppers (can be found in Woolies). The capsicum is lovely, and the liquid in the jar is a nice vinegary solution, which I combine with olive oil to make salad dressing.
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I haven't felt like cooking due to the heat, either. Fortunately also haven't been feeling particularly hungry due to the heat. I've been having quite a few smoothies, and we had a couple of nachos dinners recently, just zapped those for a few minutes on the convection setting in our microwave to melt the cheese. Not sure what I'll do tonight... was thinking about a kimchi noodle salad - just boil, rinse and drain noodles, then stir through kimchi, maybe tofu as well for protein.
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We just ordered pizza... However yesterday we tried a new range of Korean frozen beef dumplings that were half price at Coles and they were v v yummy. The instructions don't say microwave but if you added water to a bowl and covered them it would be like steaming. I can't remember the brand but it said 'masterchef winner'. With a bit of veg it could stretch to a meal for 2. There was a divorce inciting 9 dumplings in the pack.
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We just ordered pizza... However yesterday we tried a new range of Korean frozen beef dumplings that were half price at Coles and they were v v yummy. The instructions don't say microwave but if you added water to a bowl and covered them it would be like steaming. I can't remember the brand but it said 'masterchef winner'. With a bit of veg it could stretch to a meal for 2. There was a divorce inciting 9 dumplings in the pack.
Oh the Diana Chan ones. I also buy them when they're half-price, though we get ours from Woolies usually. I prefer the Szechuan pork and Thai chicken ones though, from memory the Korean beef is a bit sweeter than I prefer, but still not bad.
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We just ordered pizza... However yesterday we tried a new range of Korean frozen beef dumplings that were half price at Coles and they were v v yummy. The instructions don't say microwave but if you added water to a bowl and covered them it would be like steaming. I can't remember the brand but it said 'masterchef winner'. With a bit of veg it could stretch to a meal for 2. There was a divorce inciting 9 dumplings in the pack.
Oh the Diana Chan ones. I also buy them when they're half-price, though we get ours from Woolies usually. I prefer the Szechuan pork and Thai chicken ones though, from memory the Korean beef is a bit sweeter than I prefer, but still not bad.
Yep I think they might have been in Woolies for a while, right? But new at Coles so special price. Good news about the chicken because I got them too. I pretty much only get convenience food at half price, it makes for some variety at least!
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All this talk of food is making me decide to brave the heat. It’s after 8:30pm and still an oven outside.
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I recently tried the spinach and feta gozleme from Aldi. Pretty decent! $4 for ~700 calories; not a bad price per calorie for convenience food.
(Edited to clarify what I meant re calories, to avoid misinterpretation. I am not anti-calories. Without calories, we die.)
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I recently tried the spinach and feta gozleme from Aldi. Pretty decent! $4 for ~700 calories; not a bad price per calorie for convenience food.
(Edited to clarify what I meant re calories, to avoid misinterpretation. I am not anti-calories. Without calories, we die.)
That sounds like a good buy, I'll try anything once.
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All this talk of food is making me decide to brave the heat. It’s after 8:30pm and still an oven outside.
8am this morning at my local Parkrun and it was 33. Managed to set a PB time at that course so I guess all good :)
Happy Australia Day lol, not going outside now when its pushing 40.
That global weather map up above is crazy ridiculous.... they basically need to add colours to the scale to account for us!
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All this talk of food is making me decide to brave the heat. It’s after 8:30pm and still an oven outside.
8am this morning at my local Parkrun and it was 33. Managed to set a PB time at that course so I guess all good :)
Happy Australia Day lol, not going outside now when its pushing 40.
That global weather map up above is crazy ridiculous.... they basically need to add colours to the scale to account for us!
I can see why it's weird to have the whole country be 35C and above, but is it that unusual in Oz for various regions of the country to regularly be that hot?
I ask b/c where I currently live in the southern part of the U.S., it's common to have daily highs between 30 and 40C for 3 full months of the year.
And where I went to college was considerably hotter than where I live now. Daily highs from early May to late Sep in the southwestern U.S. were regularly between 35 and 42C, and I worked outdoors doing biological field research from dawn to dusk every summer. Hell, I just looked at my college town's weather yesterday (mid-winter) and it was 23C.
I mean, I didn't do roasts in the oven from about 1 May to 1 Oct when I was in college, but it never affected whether I cooked or not in terms of sautes or other stove top cooking.
Do most of your houses not have air conditioning?
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It's not common for the major cities to be consistently so hot, we are breaking our national records at the moment. Plus it's all relative to what you are used to - when the UK hits 30 the country practically shuts down. I would usually just skip what I'm supposed to be doing on a 35+ degree day and hide indoors.
I'm sure there's regional places that hit 35 for weeks but in Sydney it's usually 35 for only one or two days a year. Also the eastern states are very humid so it can feel hotter than the desert in the centre. Plus we are in drought which creates a bit of anxiety around bush fire - I don't think we have the resources to fight huge fires in every state at once.
We have air con in workplaces and newer build houses have air con but there's little ducted air con. My neighbours have it in their brand new house and it's been running fairly constantly whereas we didn't need it yesterday due to a cold breeze and a well insulated house. However, I put the oven on for some veg to make a roast veg & haloumi salad (delish but spoons required) and then it got hot! Building standards need to improve dramatically.
Massive diversion from thread topic!
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I can’t imagine how heat above 25C is. Hope you all survive!
This is my “the kids need to eat healthy, but I just can’t” recipe:
Take frozen skinless filets of fish. Don’t care which; salmon, trout, cod, etc. If they are wrapped in plastic; poke a few holes. If no, put in a bowl and cover with plate. Microwave until cooked.
Take cucumber and chop off some pieces.
Put fish and cucumber in a tortilla and eat. Add seasoning or sauces if you want, but it is still edible without. The cucumber can also be eaten unchopped, next to the fish and tortilla.
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...
Do most of your houses not have air conditioning?
That depends. The short answer is that most would have some airconditioning by now, usually retrofitted into the main living area. The current house I live in was built in the 1950's, weatherboard, has no insulation at all and has an aircon unit, box type, in the main living area. Every other room roasts.
And running airconditioning is not very mustachian.
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All this talk of food is making me decide to brave the heat. It’s after 8:30pm and still an oven outside.
8am this morning at my local Parkrun and it was 33. Managed to set a PB time at that course so I guess all good :)
Happy Australia Day lol, not going outside now when its pushing 40.
That global weather map up above is crazy ridiculous.... they basically need to add colours to the scale to account for us!
I can see why it's weird to have the whole country be 35C and above, but is it that unusual in Oz for various regions of the country to regularly be that hot?
I ask b/c where I currently live in the southern part of the U.S., it's common to have daily highs between 30 and 40C for 3 full months of the year.
Where I work (in the north west of Western Australia) it will be above 35C for most of summer, it is usually above 40C unless there is a cyclone near by then it will cool down to low 30s, this starts in November/ December and will start to cool down around March/April. It is also quite humid as summer is wet season. Where as Perth is also usually hotter than a lot of Australia's capital cities but its a dry heat
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Australia is the same size and a similar shape to the contiguous US, so we have lots of climates. In the past month, an enormous number of recorded maximums have been broken all over the place. Where I live it rarely gets above 35C (maybe a couple of times a year), yet we’ve beaten our record of 3 continuous days over 40, and may do it again. Most of the figures you’re hearing about are in the cooler south rather than the tropical north.
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Yep. It’s an unusually hot summer with extended heatwaves. Ducted a/c in older houses is v rare. There are some retrofitted split systems in living areas.
I have an old crappy split system a/c in the lounge room that we ran continuously for the past 48 hours (it never cycled off) with all blinds and awnings closed (and opening up the house if it got cooler outside), only a couple of small LED lights on, no appliances running except the fridge... and my 70sq m (750 sq foot) place still hit 27C, way hotter in the bedrooms. I have health issues that make me heat intolerant.
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Ah yes, it would be tiresome to have no central AC in an actual house, in locations where temps are hot enough to kill people on a regular basis such as the Southwestern U.S. In the college town I was describing, we did have only a window unit for heating and cooling, but we also lived in a one room cinderblock studio so it was pretty easy to control temps. As I said, I worked outside in that heat, but at the end of the day I did have a temperature-controlled, air-conditioned space to eat and sleep in.
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Getting back on topic...
Last year I gave up frozen vegetables in an effort to cut down my plastic consumption.
For a while this was great - less plastic, more using the "unwanted" parts of vegetables (e.g. I keep broccoli stalks to puree into soup), and fresh veggies in season were cheaper than frozen.
Then life happened, and I had to throw out the odd vegetable.
Then I felt so guilty for wasting food, I restricted what I was buying.
End result: my vegetable consumption dropped.
I went from being someone who ate chicken and broccoli (frozen broccoli florets) for lunch at least three days a week, to scratching for things to take to work for lunch because I wouldn't let myself buy frozen broccoli.
ಠ_ಠ
This thread popped into my head today, and I've been re-reading it with relief.
And now I think that if I continue to reduce my plastic consumption, minimise food waste, wear second-hand clothes, catch public transport where possible, carry a reusable water bottle, and recycle (including soft plastics), it might be ok if I buy frozen vegetables.
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They are great little rubbish bags for low waste household. Or poo bags for the dog owners in your life.
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@mustachepungoeshere I can absolutely relate to optimising something and realising it had side effects that were worse! I'm just the same with broccoli in particular, fresh is all good intentions and frozen actually results in eating green food.
I have been eating fresh spinach smothered in hommus all week, and today's was wilted a little in the frypan before I cooked some eggs.
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^^^ I can relate. Not to frozen broccoli in particular but optimizing to the point it wasn’t healthy for me. So I’ve eased back on that sort of thing.
Last night’s dinner was scrambled eggs, red capsicum sticks, a few cherry tomatoes and ALDI hommus. DH cooked the scrambled eggs in the microwave with one of those Tupperware jugs.
The night before was a packaged coleslaw/salad thing and a few slices of cheese.
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And now I think that if I continue to reduce my plastic consumption, minimise food waste, wear second-hand clothes, catch public transport where possible, carry a reusable water bottle, and recycle (including soft plastics), it might be ok if I buy frozen vegetables.
I struggle with this too. I want to reduce my environmental burden, but also have limited time and energy.
My mindset about plastic really shifted after I read an article about how important plastic is in reducing food waste. Freezing vegetables and wrapping them in plastic allows us to preserve a bounty of in-season vegetables at their peak so they don't go bad before they can be eaten. Plastic even helps with fresh refrigerated vegetables. For example, plastic-wrapped cucumbers last longer on the shelves. They did a study, and wrapping produce in plastic resulted in grocery stores throwing out less food at the end of the day.
Do I prefer to get fresh veggies from the farmer's market when I can? Yeah. But I don't feel guilty about getting plastic-wrapped grocery store veggies anymore either. I just try to make sure I eat all of the food I buy and recycle the plastic. These issues are really complex and there's no hard-and-fast rule about what is and isn't good. I just do the best I can overall.
Microwaving frozen brown rice, frozen mixed veggies (+ olive oil, salt, and pepper if I'm feeling fancy), and frozen falafel is now one of my favorite quick and easy dinners.
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Thanks guys, I really appreciate your perspectives.
I know this site isn't afraid to call someone out when needed, so your support means a lot.
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Oh, yeay for no-spoons/low spoons recipes! I love some of these!
Honestly, for my low spoons days, I just focus on eating something, and worry less about nutrition. I can be nutritious later, when I can think straight. :D
My go to for no-spoons days is 'stuff on toast.' It's just whatever I can find in the fridge that my brain thinks might go on toast. This has lead to some odd meals, but, it works for me to have food. Most recently was spinach, leftover broccoli, and cream cheese on toast.
Other things I do for low spoon days include:
- shred a bunch of vegetables, (lettuce, peppers, easy-to-cut stuff) and throw them in a rice-paper roll with soya sauce (this requires coordination to roll the rice paper, though)
- eggs. Throw eggs in a pot with water. Boil. Once they're hard-boiled, put the eggs into a bowl of cold water or ice (makes them easier to peel, or just smash the ends with a spoon).
- potatoes and other root veggies. Throw in pot with water/stock. Boil until soft. This makes simple soup. (just don't fall asleep with the soup on the stove, though!) If you can plan a little, this works really well in a crock-pot.
- oatmeal/flaked grains. put oatmeal and water in a microwave safe bowl, add dried fruit if desired, microwave. Just make sure you leave enough headspace so the oatmeal won't explode out of the mug!
Also, on the note of plastic -- I don't object to plastic. I do, however, object to non-reusable, non-recyclable plastic. So, while yes, I do love our farmer's market and our local Good Food Box, sometimes it's just not practical. (That said, sometimes those plastic packages are damn hard to open, so I appreciate that the farmer's market doesn't make me untie a Gordian Knot to get at the lettuce! :D )
We re-use our plastic containers and bags, and recycle the rest as much as we can. That's my compromise, anyway. :)
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Rebooting my ye olde thread because I’m still low on spoons. I’m trying to be less down on myself because of this, with varying degrees of success.
Anyway. Tonight’s dinner was fried mushies (precut from Aldi) on toasted WonderWhite with a slice of lemon for acidity and a few cherry toms.
I can no longer bring myself to eat capsicum or carrot sticks for dinner. Oh well. I seem to develop food aversions fairly frequently these days. Trying (and often failing) to just accept that’s how I am these days post chemo.
We often eat Youfoodz and other similar pre prepared food for weeknight dinners. Some are better than others.
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@Astatine your dinner sounds delicious.
I will say, give capsicum/carrots a few months off from the rotation and you may be able bring them back later. I end up with some serious aversions if I have been eating something too often and the longer I keep eating something the longer a break I need from it to stomach it again.
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I've been thinking a lot about this since you bumped the thread back up... it made me realize very vividly how much my health has improved since I've been on a long self-care sabbatical from work. I've gone from feeling like I was too low on spoons to cut vegetables to making homemade pizza and bread from scratch and making mayonnaise for fun. I'm in so much less pain when I'm not stuck at a desk all day and spending an hour commuting, and I don't have to throw 80% of my spoons away at work. It was so gradual that I don't think I realized the extent of it until seeing this thread again.
Now I just need to win the lottery so I don't have to go back to work and ruin my body all over again :-/
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I love smoked salmon and cream cheese on bagels or toast with cracked pepper and a squeeze of lemon.
Not sure if Aldi prawn or pork dumplings.were mentioned bit they are delicious.
Recently read about using cucumbers instead of bread - scooping out the seeds and filling with cream cheese or tuna or salmon.https://www.wholesomeyum.com/recipes/salmon-stuffed-cucumbers-appetizers/
Rice paper rolls are quick - just need to boil up some vermicelli noodles.- 2 min - and cut/grate up raw veg (carrot optional!) and mint/basil and some dipping sauce (soy/sweet chilli/hoisin). Sometimes we add chicken or salmon if we have it.
I have been known to eat the Aldi ricotta (which comes in the 1kg plastic mesh tub) with a spoon and call it dinner😉
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My current foods are cliff builder's bars and rice cakes with hummus or peanut butter. I have protein powder and a shaker is coming in the mail.
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When a local fresh pasta manufacturer announced last month that they now do deliveries to residential addresses with the lockdown (they usually supply restaurants and other fancy food places), I bought 4kg and chucked them in the freezer. They make very convenient meals. I just boil them, then make an easy sauce to go with them, or you can use jar sauce to make it even easier.
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I'm not an Aussie, and I haven't read the entire thread, but I was not sure what form the low on spoons takes. For me, I can throw together a decent meal when mentally exhausted if I don't have to look at a recipe. If I have time to soak and cook lentils and rice, that's a pretty healthy meal. If I'm low on time but not exhausted, I can take out a rotisserie chicken or bake some frozen fish and frozen veg. My favorite "don't need to shop" meal used to be white rice with soy sauce and sesame seeds, though I did spend a week (poor) eating a 5 lb bag of rice with kim chi. I'm not sure why I stopped but I used to keep a bottle of thai peanut sauce for dipping veg, pouring over rice, bagel, chicken or noodles or eating with a spoon out of the bottle. Smoked salmon is great and freezes well but then it takes a day to defrost it.
I assuming people have listed the obvious but not too healthy: oatmeal made in the microwave, chips, salsa and tortilla chips, canned tomato (or other) soup with toast, toast and cream cheese, toast and peanut butter, avocado toast, pizza toast, saltines and jam, pasta and spaghetti sauce, frozen pasta, frozen pizza, french fries, eggs scrambled or omelet, baked samosa, ramen noodles, corn muffin from mix, pancakes from mix, popcorn, spaghetti agli olio.
Mostly I was surprised that I don't have a go-to list of low-on-spoons foods. Partly I'm not suffering from an illness that takes spoons, partly I live with someone who cooks as well, partly I have low standards for dinner. Mostly though my frig has perennial leftovers. This week I made a big pot of chili 2 days ago and that will get me through tomorrow when I'll make new beans. As long as one meal is cooked and vegetable or bean heavy, the other meal can be simpler either protein or carb based. It also depends on how many you're feeding. If I had to make fresh meals for a picky family every night, I'd be out of spoons too. Also, how stocked is the frig and do you have any chopped/frozen veg? I try to chop my veg ahead of time so the cooking can be done quickly. Pre chopped onions are a lifesaver as other things can be gathered or defrosted or opened as the onions cook.
Can I just add that I'm surprised at rice paper being listed as a low-effort food. Just getting the water temp right for soaking is a hassle, before adding that I have to make peanut sauce with it. I'll have to give it another chance.
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Can I just add that I'm surprised at rice paper being listed as a low-effort food. Just getting the water temp right for soaking is a hassle, before adding that I have to make peanut sauce with it. I'll have to give it another chance.
Hahaha, that was my suggestion I think! I don't use peanut sauce, just bottled sweet chilli sauce, and I guess I didn't think the water temp for the rice paper was a big deal; I just run the tap till I get warm enough water:-)