Cooking for myself

[wildeabandon]

kht asked "What do you like to cook for yourself when you're low on time and energy?".

I'm afraid the answers to this are fairly boring. I don't get nearly as much pleasure out of cooking if it's just for me, so a lot of the time when I'm on my own in the Northampton flat I practically live on fresh filled pasta with a bit of grated parmasan and olive oil, and then fill up on fruit to make sure I'm getting enough vitamins. My other staple is scrambled eggs, which I sometimes add rice wine and soy sauce to, and eat with a croissant, and sometimes do with just salt on pepper, served with marmite covered toast.

When I feel like making a tiny bit more effort I'll make egg-fried rice, which I can throw vegetables into, or I'll make a stew (onions, garlic, various root vegetables, lentils, pearl barley (or buckwheat if I want it to be gluten free), cabbage or other green leafy veg, stock, red wine, dried herbs, spoonful of marmite), which takes about 15 minutes of work, and then just sits and cooks, and makes great leftovers.

Comments

[simont]

or buckwheat if I want it to be gluten free

Out of interest, where do you get buckwheat that's gluten-free? I tried to buy some recently and found that Tesco's packet of it has an allergy warning on the back saying basically 'For your comfort and convenience we have taken this naturally gluten-free grain and helpfully contaminated it with gluten during the packaging process' :-(

[wildeabandon]

Ocado/Waitrose.

[jack]

I'm actually quite interested in how much most people's meal varies, when they're living "normally", because I have the idea most people like to plan a different, cooked, meal every evening, but don't usually live up to that. (Whereas I've often been happy with the same thing several evenings on the trot, and think of that as "normal", not "settling" as it were.)

[wildeabandon]

For me it's entirely dependent on whether I'm with other people or not. At home we eat a different meal nearly every night, although we will occasionally have leftovers, and more frequently takeaway. That's made much easier by there being three adults though, as we only have to cook 2-3 times a week each.

[simont]

Thanks. Another thing to add to my 'reasons to detour to Trumpington' list :-)

[jack]

Ah, yeah, that makes sense. I'm still by myself during the week when Liv's away.