cookability

One of the biggest things I'm struggling with foodwise at the moment (aside from simply, er, forgetting to eat) is getting a satisfying breakfast into my face in the morning. The things I do currently are either making an omelette or sausages and toast, having granola, making oatmeal, or er, not eating until the afternoon. Oatmeal or granola are easy, but they generally leave me feeling unsatisfied and exhausted (something about the fibrous grains/milk combo, I think, and I don't feel like I get enough protein despite that I make it with milk.) The omelette and toast option is more satisfying, but the prep is slightly harder, and for me the textures and flavors can be kind of hard to process sometimes, which leads to me eating very slowly. Despite that the balance of nutrients is good for me, three eggs and a slice of toast isn't quite enough food for me, and I can't just size it up because I'll tend to get bored with eating before finishing. I once tried making a batch of eggs + potatoes + veggies to eat throughout the week, which was good, but I don't think I can do that reliably, and I don't have enough storage containers to batch my breakfasts *and* lunches/dinners.

I'm hoping you might have some breakfast suggestions that involve plenty of protein, are not a type of porridge or use of granola, and for which the prep is quick and uncomplicated. I have some limitations on cost and of course sensory processing issues, but don't shy away from suggesting things on those grounds.

killing_rose

We have an electric pressure cooker; for a variety of reasons, it replaced my beloved rice cooker, and earned the nickname The Circus. The Circus gets used when I can't remember that we need a meal or when no one can stand upright to deal with the stove; I'm eventually going to use it to make cheesecake, and it will be fantastic.

The Circus is great for my household's particular brand of disabilities; it weighs a decent amount, but the pot itself doesn't, and if we had the counter space, it could happily live on the counter and not have to be moved around at all. It requires no standing and poking at it, and it cooks a variety of meals with very little thought.

Last night, I came home having forgotten it was my night, spiking toward braindead from pain, and stared in horror. Ran up to the store half a block away, bought pre-cut vegetables and beef, and ran back home to make the following:

I threw the following into the Circus:

Two pounds stew meat
One large container of pre-cut stew-vegetables
A quarter of a small container of pre-cut red onion
Some carrot chips
Two cups of rice
Two cups of water
Enough coconut milk to cover everything in the Circus
Some rosemary
Some hyssop

I then let it go for 20 minutes on the meat setting.

Approximately 35 minutes after I started the process, we had dinner.

Next time, it needs salt in the cooking process. Also, it likes cheese.

But, seriously, I cannot extol the virtues of electric pressure cookers nearly enough. The Circus is worth its pricetag and then some.

kaz

I come from a culture that puts a lot of weight on bread, grew up in a household where my dad baked some every week and had always been sad about the fact that disability put baking my own totally and utterly out of reach - too complicated! too much washing up! way too many spoons considering cooking pasta was too much effort most days! Imagine my surprise when I discovered no-knead bread, which is so simple I've been able to make it once to three times a week for months. Part of me is still boggling at this.

I know a recipe's been already posted in this community, but this is one I've streamlined for accessibility purposes. Of particular note: you do not need a cast-iron pot or Dutch oven or the like for this, a normal rectangular bread tin is enough - I use a silicone one, which is very light and also easier because it means I don't have to grease it. Less heavy lifting, preparation, and complicated dumping things into very hot vessels ftw.

( Recipe )

( Notes )

steorra

This spinach soup recipe is adapted from the "simple soba noodle soup" recipe in the Stone Soup e-cookbook to adjust for my tastes, easy availability to me of ingredients, and not having to chop.

Ingredients:
About 50 g / 2 oz of quick-cooking noodles (they should cook in about 3-5 minutes or so) such as soba noodles.[*]
3 large fistfuls of washed baby spinach
1.5 cups of water
1 teaspoon Better-than-Boullion vegetable base
1 teaspoon soy sauce

Instructions:
Put water and vegetable base in a pot on high heat. Bring to boil. Add noodles; reduce heat and simmer for two minutes. Add spinach and soy sauce. Stir spinach in and cook for one minute more, or until the noodles and spinach are both as cooked as you like them. Serve hot. Serves 1.

I find this rather messy to eat, but quick and simple to make as long as I have fresh spinach. There are probably other broth/stock combinations that would work; this is just the one I've used.

[*] The two kinds of noodles I've recently been using to make this are labelled "Yamaimo soba" (which say they cook in about 4-5 minutes) and "Tomoshiraga somen" (which say they cook in 3 minutes).

colorwheel

( this isn't cooking, it's prep, and it's about meat )

melannen

This is sort of like making a pie, and has a very yummy, and also pretty and home-made looking, result, except it doesn't take nearly as much skill, attention, dexterity, arm strength, etc...

(This is basically adapted from what my mother does with the leftovers whenever she makes a real pie, but let's be honest: this was always the best part anyway.)

Needed:
1. Pie crust (pre-made, at least enough for one covered pie)
2. Fruit pie filling (1 can or less), or chocolate pudding, or anything else that can go in a pie really.
3. Butter (small amount)
4. Granulated sugar (colored, if desired) + cinnamon, nutmeg, etc. if desired
5. Cookie cutters (can just use knife or pizza cutter instead)
6. Cookie sheet
7. Aluminum foil
8. Flat working surface
9. Oven

Pre-heat oven to, oh, 450°F or so. Cover cookie sheet with aluminum foil.

Take the pre-made pie crust (thawed or whatever else is necessary to make it ready for baking). Cut shapes out of it with cookie cutters. Put the shapes on the cookie sheet. Spread a little bit of butter over each cut-out shape, then sprinkle with sugar + spices. (This sugar is the only sweetness in the final pastry, so go heavy if you want it sweet, and spice to taste; I like it not very sweet at all with lots of cinnamon, myself.) Bake in oven for ~10 minutes - until somewhere between translucent and burnt. (There's a fair amount of wiggle room here, but ten minutes usually gets you to pale + crispy, which I like.)

Open can of pie filling, pour into a serving bowl to use as dipping sauce for the cut-out pie crust shapes. It's probably a good idea to let the pie crust shapes cool a little bit before eating, but they are really good just out of the oven.

zdashamber

I found this in "The Blender Cookbook" from 1961, but I think it's better unblended. Since it all gets simmered, I don't see any reason why it couldn't start from frozen prechopped stuff. I like potato skins when baked or mashed, so why not when boiled?

It's one of the simplest recipes I love, and I think it only involves peeling/chopping, assembling, and then eating once the simmering is done. There is a lot of flavor for so few ingredients.

__Ingredients__

-2 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced
-1 medium onion, sliced
-1/2 pound (~1/4 kg) fresh spinach
-3/4 cup (180 ml) water
-2 chicken boullion cubes
-1/8 tsp pepper

__Instructions__

Simmer for 15 minutes

They also suggest adding 1 tsp salt and 1/8 tsp nutmeg, but I think the chicken stock/boullion is salty enough, and I'm not a fan of nutmeg. They suggest blending when it has simmered and then adding 1 cup cream, but when I tried, that seemed to unnecessarily mash the flavors. Their other suggestion is to chill the blended potage and serve it with a sour cream topping. It's supposed to serve 6, but my recollection is that it serves 2. Maybe I usually make it smaller. I've tried it with veggie stock, and that is also tasty, though I like it less well. I upped the number of boullion cubes from 1 to 2 since more is better there, IMO.

automaticdoor

This is from the Cooking For People Who Don't carnival. It's a rice noodle and egg soup that is gluten-free and can be modified to be veggie/entirely vegan. (So, basically like a slightly more sophisticated version of ramen noodles with an egg cracked in...) It's really low-spoons. Recipe is written for total beginners.

time: 2 minutes pouring broth and assorted other things into a pot and giving it a good stir/turning the burner on
about 15-20 minutes while it gets good and heated and boiling [you can go do other things during this time]
about 8 minutes of noodles cooking (and if you're adding eggs, stirring eggs during this time)
about 3-4 minutes of adding eggs and letting them cook through
total time: 28-34 minutes if recipe isn't modified, of which 15-20 minutes can be spent elsewhere, so a total of 13-14 minutes spent at stove (spaced out)

spoons: (without recipe modification) lifting a soup pot onto the stove, putting things into it, stirring to combine ingredients for broth, stirring occasionally when noodles are added, stirring eggs together, having the coordination to pour eggs into the pot with one hand while stirring the pot with the other

ingredients: broth (chicken or veggie), rice noodles, flavorings for the broth (I use ginger paste, black pepper, sriracha sauce, powdered mustard and gluten-free soy sauce but these are just suggestions!), eggs (could be optional or replaced with chopped tofu)

cooking implements: (without recipe modification) soup pot, large spoon to stir/serve soup with, small bowl for egg whipping, something to whip the eggs with, a small spoon if you're trying to get ginger paste out of a jar or alternately a knife and cutting board/maybe a microplane grater if you're being fancy and using fresh ginger root?

( nom nom nom, recipe mods added as we go )

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Current Mood: hungry

jumpuphigh

I love my slow cooker as I can dump stuff in, walk away, and come back to a meal.

This is my super-easy Split Pea Soup recipe

Water 6-8 c.
Dried split peas (yellow, green or a mix)1 c.
Sugar 1.5 tsp
Cornstarch 1 tsp
Celery Seeds 1/2 tsp
Dried onion 1 tsp
Pepper 1/4 tsp
Salt 1-1.5 tsp to taste

Add to slow cooker. Cook on low all day or high for ~4 hours until peas are soft.

Accessibility thoughts:
You need to be able to manage a slow cooker and those suckers are heavy.
Those peas are slippery so if one or two manage to get away from you (and they always do with me), and you don't have fine-motor control, you may not be able to pick them up.

Variations:
Depending on energy and ability to chop, you can substitute a chopped onion for the dried onion. I have some soup on right now and didn't have any cornstarch so I cut up about 2 cups of potatoes to help thicken it up. ETA: The potatoes were fantastic! They did make the soup more potato-y than split pea-y so if you add potatoes, you may want to add another 1/2 c. of dried split peas to balance it back out./ETA
You can blend it with an immersion blender if you want; although I never do.

Current Mood: hungry

geeksdoitbetter

one of the things i often forget is that after a successful shopping run, i'm usually too tired to actually cook anything i'd bought

in my head, it seems so possible and normal to sweep by the grocery after work and then come home to make a delicious meal

but, in my reality, it hardly ever works out

i'm trying to be more gentle with myself and letting the shopping day be separate from the cooking day

steorra

I've been remembering recently what a simple and useful recipe scones are. They're a very versatile recipe, and I've made a post in

boilingwater giving my mom's basic recipe and outlining some of the various substitutions and variations that are possible. I thought for this community I'd try posting a version of the recipe that's stripped down to the bare minimum, to be as simple as possible. This is a cross between a variant of my mother's scone recipe and a biscuit recipe from the More with Less cookbook. I'm calling this version biscuits rather than scones because they use baking powder rather than baking soda and cream of tartar as leavening. They're drop biscuits because you drop them like cookies onto a baking sheet rather than rolling out the dough and cutting out the scones.

Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter or margarine (or less; down to 2 tablespoons should be okay)
1 cup water

Instructions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit (approximately 215-220 degrees Celsius).

Mix together in a bowl the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Cut or rub in the butter or margarine.

Add the water, and mix quickly to form a soft dough.

Grease a baking sheet. Use spoons to drop the dough like cookies onto the baking sheet.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes. Best served hot.

(Note: this is an unsweetened variant, because omitting sugar is simplest. For slightly sweet biscuits, add 2-3 tablespoons sugar before adding water. For more information about variations and substitutions, see my post on scones in

boilingwater.)

greenbirds

I don't know if anyone has a solution to this problem, but I figured here would be the place to ask.

I'm a pretty avid cook (there was a time in my life when I was debating between chef school and an academic career), and I am absolutely in love with enameled cast-iron cookware like those awesome Le Crueset dutch ovens (which I've used in other people's kitchens when I've had some help to handle the doggone things), but for one thing: I have arthritis in my hands and wrists which makes it really difficult for me to hold anything that heavy -- something that's required if I'm to say, put a full dutch oven in my oven to bake and then take it out again.

Enameled cast iron's pretty spendy, so I'm reluctant to plunk down a ton of money on something I may end up not being able to use. I'm wondering if anyone here has found useful workarounds for moving heavy cookware around the kitchen? I would be forever grateful!

TIA! :)

daughtercell

Okay, so this is less a post about cooking food than it is one about consuming it. :D

My boyfriend is rather obsessed with sushi, to the point of wanting to try a sushi-only restaurant sometime very soon. The problem is that due to my disability, my jaw opening is extremely small--to the tune of less than half an inch of space between my top and bottom teeth at its widest. This makes eating sushi very messy, embarrassing, and miserable for me. However, I do like the taste of it pretty well and would eat more if I could just get it in my damn mouth.

I'm still pretty novice in the kitchen and can barely throw together common (American) meals very well, much less trying to experiment with more exotic things, so I've never tried to make my own sushi (I guess you can do that?). I'm wondering if any of you who might be more familiar with it would know if it's possible to make even more bite-sized sushi (either the rolls or the other kind... my boyfriend would laugh at my ignorance :) ) so that I could actually fit it all in my mouth in one piece?

Thanks in advance!

axelrod

Short version of my question: what's an easy way to make a curry, especially a Thai-style/Thai-inspired coconut curry, especially using a slow cooker?

Slightly longer version:

I put three chicken breasts, a can of coconut milk, a couple teaspoons of curry powder, and some veggies into my slow cooker and cooked until the meat and veg were done. The result is way too soupy; I want a curry sauce, not a curry broth. I could strain out the liquid and cook it down on the stove, I guess ...

Maybe I should just cook the chicken and veg in a bit of water in the slow cooker, and make the sauce separately on the stove? Any easy recipes for curry sauce that way?

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions!

kaz

This is an adaptation of a pasta sauce recipe for the hob which was one of the first things I learned how to cook. The recipe is sort of comfort food for me, but the hob version requires watching and stirring the sauce as it boils, plus needing to wash up the saucepan afterwards, which is generally too spoon-consumptive for me. So I developed this version which you can essentially just stick in the microwave and forget about! It's still not a recipe for low-spoon days for me, but then again there aren't really any recipes I can manage on low-spoon days. It *is* a recipe I can manage on lowish-medium-spoon days when cooking most things is still out of the question. It's also quite customisable.

The main accessibility issues for this, at least for me, are that you still need to chop veggies/meat unless you can get something prechopped, and that it's not a one-pot dish - this is just the sauce, you need to make pasta separately. Or alternatively, what I keep meaning to try is making it with rice noodles and just soaking the noodles in the sauce, but I haven't actually got around to testing this out yet to make sure it works and you'd have to adjust sauce thickness accordingly I think. The main accessibility bonus is that it's quick with little fuss (I can generally get this done in... twenty minutes? maybe less? including chopping time), you don't have to stand around stirring something on the hob, and it doesn't require a lot in the way of utensils you'll need to wash up later.

So. This makes enough for about a pint of sauce, i.e. two portions for me, maybe less if I'm hungry:

( a few large images under cut, including some with meat )

derryderrydown

About six months ago, I bought a slow cooker and it's been an absolute saviour. It's big enough that one batch of cooking can be frozen into five or six individual portions, giving me reasonably healthy, quick meals on days when I'm not feeling good.

One of my favourite, easiest recipes is lemon chicken.

1kg chicken (I tend to use thigh fillets because they're cheaper than breast and come in conveniently sized portions)
1 lemon, quartered
1 pint chicken stock

Chuck it all in the slow cooker on high for at least 4 hours. (I know from experience that it doesn't hurt it if you accidentally fall asleep and leave it for 10 hours instead.)

I'll sometimes do a batch with added potatoes, carrots, swedes and whatever other root vegetables come to hand, for days when I can't even handle cooking some rice and veg.

When it comes to serving, it tastes best with a bit of creme fraiche stirred in but it's still pretty tasty without it.

lauredhel

Now that the weather is starting to cool down, my thoughts turn to soup! And bread!

This is a really hearty crockpot soup, with ham, ham stock, split peas, barley, and vegetables. It is yummy the next day, and freezes beautifully.

Accessibility notes: The vegie prep takes energy if you can't access pre-sliced vegies, but could be done in advance (e.g. the night before), or using a food processor. The frying-off of the vegies isn't essential; it does improve the flavour, but if you need to the raw vegies can just be thrown into the crockpot. Homemade stock or bought stock are both fine.

With full modifications (pre-sliced veg & bought stock), the only washing-up is your crockpot and spoon, and standing/stirring time is very minimal. If you do the whole lot yourself, you've also got your knife and cutting board, a frying-pan and stirring implement, your stock bowl, and the crock you cooked the stock in.

Substitutions: You can substitute pretty much anything. Leave out the vegies, use different ones, use a different meat or vegetarian stock. Soup is very forgiving.

( lots of pics behind the cut, includes meat pics )

axelrod

I'm a little hesitant about posting this here, because this isn't the sort of thing I could cook on a day bad enough that cooking were hard but good enough that I could actually do cook something. Still, it's a one-pot meal (two pot if you make pasta to go with it), and once you do the chopping you just throw some stuff in and cook it, and then throw more stuff in and cover it with enough liquid that it won't burn and leave it alone for a bit. And then it's done. And it has protein and veggies, and can include carbs too (I'm experimenting with avoiding grain right now, but no reason this wouldn't be awesome over pasta). And you can eat it out of the pot, if you like, and it refrigerates well - I can't speak to freezing, since I have little experience in freezing foods, but I suspect this would freeze well, too. So I suppose it could work well for some kinds of spoon shortages.

This recipe requires a fair amount of chopping (or you can use pre-cut frozen veggies) and at least a few minutes of standing over a stove and either grating cheese or buying pre-grated cheese (or not bothering with the cheese). You can probably walk away from it during step #3 (so long as there's enough liquid and the heat is low), though checking on it occasionally is recommended.

The ingredient amounts are approximate, and I don't have a good sense of time and wasn't keeping track so not sure how long everything took. Maybe 45 minutes, including prep?

Ingredients:
~about a pound of boneless chicken, sliced thin*
~one red or yellow or green pepper, chopped
~a handful of mushrooms, chopped

~half a small onion, chopped

~four or five cloves of garlic, diced

~half a jar of tomato sauce, or some canned tomatoes, or some fresh tomatoes**

~grated cheese (parmesan and/or mozarella recommended)

(You can use other vegetables, like summer squash or eggplant - anything that'll have approximately the same cook time as the other stuff. Frozen veggies should work fine, and if you need/want to avoid chopping you can just toss in a bag of your favorite frozen pre-cut veggie mix.)

Instructions:
1) Saute chicken in olive oil. Remove from pan and set aside. Leave the pan juices in the pan. (Or, bake a couple chicken breasts, if that works better for you.)
2) Throw in all the veggies and maybe a little more oil if you need it. Stir them a bit - just to coat them with the oil and the pan juices.

3) Throw in the tomato sauce - it should be enough that the veggies are not just covered but swimming in it. Cook over low heat until veggies are done. Add any salt or pepper you might want at some point during this step. If you're making pasta, now's a good time to put the water on to boil.
4) Add chicken back to pan to heat up and to stir into the sauce. If you flavor it with fresh herbs (basil or cilantro, for instance), add them with the chicken.

5) Pour chicken and sauce and veggie mixture over pasta, if that's how you're eating it. Sprinkle with grated cheese, unless you're not eating it with cheese, and serve.

*You can also make the veggie sauce and pour it over baked chicken breasts, if you can't/don't want to slice and saute chicken.

**I used tomato sauce. I would have preferred fresh tomatoes. I'm not sure if fresh tomatoes would be liquidy enough that you'd be able to walk away from it, though. Still, you wouldn't have to constantly stir it.

ETA: Tried to put part of the post under a cut, RTE did that thing where it moves my /cut way up, I don't have time to sort it out because I really need to get some food in me. Sorry for cluttering up your blogroll!

steorra

Are there guidelines about posting recipes that came from cookbooks? I have some that I'd like to post but I'm worried about copyright issues. One of the ones I have in mind I could probably rewrite so that it wasn't just copied straight from the cookbook, but the other one is so simple that it would be hard to rewrite it.

My understanding is that at least in the US, the content of recipes generally can't be copyrighted, but I don't know if the wording might be copyrightable.

steorra

This is pretty much the only tofu recipe I use; there was another one I used before I found this one, but it used many of the same flavours while taking much longer to make. This is nice and simple.

Ingredients:
Oil (probably about 2-3 Tbsp, but I don't measure)
Onion, chopped (about 1/4 to 1/2 an onion, depending how big the onion is and how much onion you like)
Garlic, sliced thin (1-4 cloves depending on taste and clove size)
1/2 c. sliced mushrooms (optional, but I think it's much better with)

1 tsp ground ginger [1]
1/4 c. tamari soy sauce
1/2 c. water[2]
1 block tofu, cubed [3]

Instructions
Heat oil in pan. Sautee onion, garlic, and mushroom in hot oil until the mushrooms and onions are more or less cooked. Add tamari, water, ginger, and tofu. Simmer until tofu has had a chance to absorb some flavour, probably about 15 minutes or so.

I usually serve it on rice with vegetables on the side to make a complete meal. The sauce from the tofu can be used as a sauce on rice.

Notes
[1] Or, if you're more ambitious than I usually am, fresh ginger finely chopped; it might be best to add fresh ginger in the sauteeing stage.
[2] The original recipe I'm basing this off of calls for 1/4 c. water and optionally 1/4 c. sherry or wine. I've never tried it with sherry or wine, but it seems to need to be replaced with water rather than just omitted.
[3] The original recipe calls for 1 pound (454 g), but the blocks I typically get are only 14 oz (397 g); I suspect anywhere in a similar range would be fine.

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Accessible Cooking

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