Have you ever opened the fridge and realized that, even though it's full, there is nothing to eat?
I know I have.
It
used to happen all the time when I was a kid (and would, invariably,
end up in a parent answering back "There's lots of food! Open your eyes!
And shut the fridge, you're wasting electricity!") and now, even though I am what some would claim to be a full-fledged adult, it still happens.
I
think the problem is that much of the kind of food I make (or claim to
make) takes HOURS to cook - beans from scratch, brown rice, that sort of
thing. So, because nobody wants to make food when they're not actually
hungry, I don't think about it until it's too late, and then I end up
making pasta and white rice. Ok. Not really. Not together, that is. Rice
and vegetables. Or pasta and stuff. Unfortunately, this is really not
an ideal diet, and also tends to happen when it's gotten late and I'm
hangry, cranky, and about to eat our cat.
For years, I've been trying to combat this phenomenon, in a number of failed ways. I have tried:
 |
| sooo muuuccch tunaaaaa.... |
- an app with ideas of what's for dinner, so I can come up with menus on the fly
- notebooks with said dinner ideas
-
creating a fb group called "what's for dinner," which failed miserably because
most people (myself included) were too embarrassed to write down that
what they had had for dinner was an egg on toast.
There
is another 'what's for dinner' group on fb, and, with all due love and
respect to my friends in that group, it is seriously NOT what's actually
for dinner. What it is, is another form of Pinterest Lying - Facebook Bragging. 'I made a chilled tomato bisque with
tomatoes that I grew from scratch organically in my back yard, coq au
vin with a chicken I raised myself, melon-endives-asparagus salad, and
fresh sorbet made with the tears of the starving children in Africa. Oh,
and I made all that while homeschooling my 8 children.'
Show-offs.
Anyway,
I'm writing this post before I go try to get some beans cooked before I
starve and get cranky and eat the cat, but in the meanwhile, I will
share with you what is, actually, for dinner more often than not.
Pasta with Stuff
Ingredients:
Pasta
Salt
Stuff
- Heat water in your electric water kettle, in case it goes faster than on the stovetop, because you're starving and 2 minutes might be the difference between death and eating your cat.
- Pour almost boiling water into pot. Add tsp of salt. Boil.
- Cook pasta according to cooking instructions if you like it slightly raw (aka al dente), more if you want it well done.
- Top with olive oil, garlic, and dried parsley (if you're feeling fancy, cook garlic in butter first); OR mix in soy sauce, peanut butter, and ginger; OR cottage cheese; OR regular cheese; OR if you're feeling SUPER fancy and aren't starving, make a roux, add tuna, and make a lazy man's tuna casserole thing (do I need to give further explanations for that? Let me know and I will.)
- Eat. (The pasta. Not the cat.)
