I am a "hot and lots of" kind of cook. I came from a family where mama worked and I helped cook dinner for us. I was never a gourmet cook but passable.
Now that I am cooking for just 2 and locked into it much more than in decades, it comes out I am not a good or clever cook. I am lazy and uninformed. Now I have to watch videos (which have taken the place of cook books in many ways) to get ideas so that I am not making the same 5 dishes every week. I have to cut every recipe in half or even thirds, the sauces don't translate as well as I would hope, I have no idea what some of this should taste like, but mostly its the fact that it takes for bleeding ever to do it and it takes every utensil in the house.
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Monday Crimson Quillfeather
Tuesday ejoanna
Wednesday Pam from Calif
Thursday art ah zen
Friday FloridaSNMOM
Saturday FloridaSNDAD
Sunday loggersbrat
To make many Asian kinds of dishes, I need so many ingredients that I have to start early in the morning when I have energy. I cut all the garlic, ginger, green onion, carrots, bok choy, etc and put in little tiny dishes, lined up in order of use. Then I have the sauces- usually soy, oyster sauce, fish sauce, worcestershire, sesame seed oil, rice vinegar, etc to be blended. Then I cut up the meat. All of this takes quite a while but I have found that if I try to do it as I am cooking, everything explodes! I need to have it all ready so it just gets put in the pan when it is needed. The actual cooking takes just minutes if I am ready. I do the rice ahead.
Mexican food seems to take all the pans in the place. I need one for oil, one for enchilada sauce, one for the enchiladas, one for cooked taco filling, wire racks to hold the cooked chips, tacos, and bowls for the stuff to put on all of this, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, guacamole, sour cream. I make the beans and rice ahead.
When the prep is over, the food is eaten, and the dishes are on the counter, it looks like I fed a platoon instead of two people, a dog and a cat. Sometimes, a flame thrower is an appealing thought for clean up. I have a dish washer, but seldom use it these days.
The pasta sauce I make is easier than a lot of this because I just open cans and pour it all into the pan. Very little measuring goes on.
Having to do all this makes me grateful I usually can order this kind of food and it will be delicious without making me do all this work. I miss the restaurants that we frequented so regularly and use some for take out still. But my mexican good place is too far to get it home fresh enough to eat and they have no patio, so I am waiting, impatiently, for this to pass and hope they are still there.
Tonight, we had left over fried chicken, macaroni salad, ambrosia, all bought at the deli counter at the grocery store. I added some orange jello with mandarin slices to the leftovers. No cooking at all. Very little clean up. End of whining.
Be safe and be well.