What's For Dinner?

[Phoebe]

I think we have this thread somewhere but I can't find it. I am planning to hit ye olde grocery store later and I wonder, what is for dinner? I have no desires to eat, or shop, or do anything, so I have zero inspiration for the whole process of purchasing foods and shaping them into an edible meal. It occurs to me to purchase, like, two giant crab legs, boil them, and serve with bread and butter. Prob would solve it adequately. Better ideas, anyone?

[Kyle]

It's free for all friday- whatever everyone can scrounge up. I'm thinking of making egg sandwiches- grilled cheese with a fried egg in the middle. But who knows.

[Tahlvin]

Stuffed breadsticks. It's sort of like a calzone: roll out pizza dough, place your toppings in the middle, then wrap it up. It's been a favorite of mine and my wife's since we used to eat them at Alfono's in West Lafayette when I was attending Purdue, and we made up our own recipe.

[poorpete]

There's talk of getting some pizza because the daughter is feeling better, but now the son is sick, so we might pick something he won't throw up.

[mimekiller]

This my POOR WEEKEND so thus I will just try to go to grocery outlet after work and cobble together a dinner for 5 dollars or less.

[bralbovsky]

Favorite easy dinner these days: Stop at the local BJs or Wegmans grocery for one of their already grilled chickens, whole. 4.99. Three meals, or two for two folks if you add rice or pasta.

[Phoebe]

How funny you should say that because on this very day I have purchased a 499 rotisserie chicken. I purchased it and I ate it. But even now I have most of two breasts of the chicken and part of thigh left over sitting in the fridge. There is no day happier and created from the perspective of the dog than the rotisserie chicken day. Dog eats a lot of the excess as you clean the chicken down to its bonds. Also each child eats chicken leg. Large child that would eat more was not here at this time. The plan would be to take this leftover rotisserie chicken and cut it into small pieces. Then it will be mixed with a very spicy salsa and some other things like Chipotle and cumin and lime juice and such. It will be mixed with a good cheese and placed into some starchy container, or perhaps onto a salad. Perhaps black beans will be involved.

[mimekiller]

*UPDATE*

I made a pretty good cheapish dinner, chicken and spinach raviolis with pesto sauce and grilled nan. Good stuff.

[Phoebe]

Well? Lay it on me. What should I cook tomorrow? Tonight is some kind of eat-at-kid-school affair.

[Tahlvin]

[Phoebe]

The mushroom is reviled down here by all
Except for me - I like them fairly small
Like straw mushrooms or little enokis
Anyway, who cares, enough about me
The point is, what else should I cook to fend
Off boredom? What else do you recommend?

[Phoebe]

I have a good thing going everybody is willing to eat, and it clears out any of the produce in your fridge you need to clear out: gumbo / paella, depending what's in it. Same technique: saute minced onion, lots of garlic, and other chopped veggies in pan with lots of Cajun seasoning and hot sauce, take the last few min of cooking to add shrimp and turkey sausage or crab, 8 oz tomato sauce and 4 oz water, a cup of rice, bring to boil, and done. I bet it works just as well in the instant pot. For more of a paella thing I switch out the spices and add white wine.

I would like to add that for the last month-and-a-half I have been serving my husband spaghetti partly constituted of vegetable powder. Today the Absurd demands that I slightly rearrange the garbage cans, which were slightly out of their designated positions, because he is unable to do this 20 second thing even though it is in theory never my job to deal with garbage cans (ha ha ha ha ha it always falls to me lolllllzz), has caused me to drop the news on him that he's been eating mushrooms for weeks and LOVING IT. If he were actually allergic I would consider that some form of assault but he's not. Granted, people eat things that I shouldn't be around all the time. You don't ever want to piss your wife off enough that she starts serving you secret mushrooms, even on Father's Day weekend.

[Phoebe]

Since I am nice to my spouse, honestly, despite feeding him pasta constituted from vegetable matter (which arguably is a nice thing as well, in the larger scheme of life and its preservation), I tried to purchase a thing: frozen bacon-wrapped filets. I figured that since Omaha Steaks sells them this way and they thaw into a morsel of near-perfection (though not really, because Omaha Steaks is never better than just getting a non-frozen steak imo), it couldn't be that bad to get another brand's version and they were cheap compared to the fresh cut steaks. Well! I am here to tell you, no, save your credits on this one. Not worthy.

Meanwhile, here is my current dinner-salad recipe and it is SO GOOD, seriously (multiply the recipe x how many people need to be fed)
1 6-8 oz. salmon filet, cooked with lemon pepper and salt and flaked into chunks / for those who don't like fish, one 6-8 oz steak, browned and cut into thin slices
1 small head baby Romaine lettuce, cut into small chunks
1 hard boiled egg, salted, peppered, and quartered (not drawn and quartered, thankfully, just quartered, unless you have a more sophisticated method for drawing it than I do)
A few TB canned garbanzo beans, rinsed
A few tsp sunflower seeds
About 6 kalamata or purple olives, crumbled
Crumbled bacon (or fake bacos, depending on your plan)
1 oz grated sharp cheddar
1/2 cup frozen peas, rinsed for a few minutes in warm water so they are just starting to thaw

To put it together the optimal way, you would take the lettuce and garbanzos, ONLY, into a big bowl and shake them all around with a generous blob of your favorite italian vinaigrette dressing. Then you pile everything else on top. There is something about this mix that really Works. And I am not hungry afterward at all for a long time.

P.S. this is about a thousand calorie salad if you go with a full 8 oz salmon and use a normal viniagrette. However, I found today while eating grilled salmon that it's probably more like a 4 oz chunk, because 8 oz piece is huge! That's good news for salmon plans generally. I seldom buy salmon so other pink fish works fine too - mahi mahi is my go-to. When trying to eat 1500 Cal/day or less, it is great to have a very filling thing for your midday.

[Phoebe]

Made crock pot French onion soup, sure it would work in instant pot too. So easy:
Superthin slice several sweet yellow onions. Sauté in a little butter until they soften and start to carmelize. Put in the Crock-Pot/instant pot. Add a 24 oz container beef broth. Put 2 TB flour in a small bowl. Add 2 TB Worcestershire sauce, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper. Add a spoon of the beef broth. Mix into a smooth roux. Pour in to the pot. Put in some red wine - I don't know how much, like, maybe not quite as much as you'd pour in a wine glass to drink? I would bet white wine works too (no Chardonnay allowed tho). I added about a cup extra of water because I had several onions. Stir it all. Let it cook however long the Crock-Pot/instant pot normally does.
Toast/bake your bread, so it's like a homemade crouton. Personally I hate it when there's just one big piece of bread in the bowl, so I cut them into bite-sized chunks. Put that in the serving bowl and then melt your cheese on top. Maybe you have the gruyère, maybe a slice of Swiss, plain whatever cheese. I used some random Italian and parmesan. It was great. A few min. in hot oven to melt it on there, that's all; I did it in microwave once and was fine though less visually pretty. I also skipped the bread in mine and it was good just with the cheese.

[Walrus]

Today was left overs from yesterday. Chicken drumsticks marinaded and cooked in teriyaki marinade, with rice made with tinned Fava beans. Served alongside a pasta salad of my own inventing (yesterday just served with frozen veg)

Leftovers are great for exhausted days.