if you have an aldi in town, they sell little tubs of chicken, tuna, ham and egg salad. i've begun keeping them in the fridge so i can make a ten second sandwich. i can't deal with draining tins of tuna and adding mayo and chopping up the onion and celery etc but i can spoon glop onto bread like a mofo. put 2 cans of corned beef hash on low-medium heat for like 40 minutes til the bottom is totally crispy. flip and allow to cook another 20 minutes. meanwhile, make a pot of rice (basmati is by far the best white rice for insulin shite). scoop out servings at a balance of like 70% rice to 30% hash. the rice cuts the saltiness of the hash, the hash flavors the rice, and it reheats well and takes very little time to deal with. no fuss eating it with a spoon, and it lasts for days. downside: it gives me heartburn cause i have no gallbladder DX lentil soup. just. lentil soup. get progresso when it goes on sale for a dollar and stock the fuck up. eat it like you're taking medicine. it tastes all right, but you're fueling the machine here. more as i think of it, please add your own!
Note, I am european and fresh produce is ridiculus levels of cheaper here. (Unless you go hipster and buy only local-organic-farmed-by-happy-elves. If you´re ok with something being only local, or only organic, or maybe just plain old flipping produce you´re good.) Apples. I live on them when I´m low on money and spoons, as they need to only be washed and maybe cut if you´re feeling fancy. Tomatoes. Also easy to prepare. One level up: Tomato and hardboiled egg salad: Boil eggs, cut up tomatoes, cut up eggs, mix, spice to taste. Tomatoes and noodles and cheese: Boil noodles, cut up tomatoes and cheese, mix. (more to come if I think of it)
i wish apples were a low spoons food for me but i have texture issues with the peels. same with oranges and the goddamn spongy albedo bit (tip: hold under tap, scrape with nails, problem solved :D :D :D) i can vouch for tomatoes and mac/cheese, it's nice and sharp.
another low spoon food is pb&j sammiches (if you're not allergic to peanut butter) or bean and cheese burritos (which is what i have been living off for the weeks now) Bean and cheese burritos: Can of refried beans, mexican cheese and tortilla. Sour cream and salsa to taste. Nuke in microwave for 1-2 minutes, but no more than that, otherwise you get an explosion that has nothing to do with bean farts. Depending on how many cans of beans and tortillas you buy, you can live on this stuff forever. also, if people can stand the 20/30 minute wait when cooking, rice-a-roni lasts about 3-4 days (maybe, at least it does for me...) Bananas are also good for low spoon days. They have a lot of nutrients and studies have shown that eating bananas make people happy and give them energy.
If you're making rice - Take those square seaweed deals, glop a little pad of rice on, say, a third of it. slice & cook spam, slap a slice on top. put some teriyaki sauce on that. Wrap the whole thing up like a really badly made burrito. Eat that. I don't know how low-spoon that is, because cooking actually revives me a bit. It's like, the creative process makes my brain better. But it's apparently kind of popular in California, since I got the recipe from a friend who went there. And it's her default when life is stressful and she doesn't have a lot of time to get work done but is sick of all things. (It has an actual name but I started calling it spamushi and it caught on enough that we've forgotten what the original name was, for which I kind of feel bad) sometimes I literally eat peanut butter out of the jar, which is an old habit from back when I had issues with protein. Also weird thing about apples - I like the sweet taste they get when they get fresh-bruised, so when I'm working, I'll also play with the apple, like rolling it on the table and stuff. It's nice. (If you slice them you can toss apples in the microwave and they kind of taste like pears but with a different texture) And a friend of mine from freshman year did the thing where you make rice, toss in salsa and nacho cheese, and eat that with chips.
i've started throwing rice in beside my microwave burritoes. some salsa and sour cream, nicely filling. another one that i've lived on: krab flakes (not sticks, bluh) and doritoes. weird but satisfying! there's also glucerna shakes. they're tasty though expensive, and good for dumping nutrients down your face without a sugar spike to crash you later the local cub has started carrying powdered ensure. am thinking about investing in a tub.
@boyacrossthestreet I'd probably just take queso (like cheese+salsa anyway) and rice and add chicken. You can buy pre-made chicken strips or cubes at the grocery store, or you can pre-bake your own and freeze it for situations like this. I also like Minute spanish style rice and sour cream. Also good is mac and cheese plus ham cubes or cut-up hot dogs. I love hot dogs. I will make them all day. Usually I boil them. You can also broil them and do a fun thing: cut lengthwise and fold open along the split, cover with American cheese (fold the slice in half so the two slices cover the length of the dog), squiggle on ketchup, broil until golden. Quinoa is a good go-to food for me. Boil in chicken broth, add a few diced peppers, and you're still getting protein with your grains. Tuna Helper is also great but sometimes feels too time-consuming for me. Also: pre-making proteins and freezing them really helps. Make two or three pounds of ground beef at a time and freeze them in quarter-pound increments. Bake a whole thing of chicken breasts (half-water-filled dish, salt+pepper, bake for 1hrish) and then slice the breasts in half and freeze those. Good for when you're not immediately hungry and have the spoons to do low-spoon-value prep that you'll get the benefit of for a few weeks.
Another thing you can do ( if you have one or can afford one) is use a slow cooker. Drop meat and stuff for stew or curry or soup, leave on for 4 hours or the entire day! Fridge or freeze as needed.
My mum buys these cans of tuna, beans, corn, and capsicum. It's not as filling as a full meal, but when I'm all brain foggy/really really hungry and I can't comprehend anything more complex than, "Open thing. Pick up cutlery. Put thing in mouth with cutlery," it's pretty good! I'm going to be living away from home next year, so I am going to steal all these ideas >:3 (I mean I will be living in Japan so uh depends on the availability and cost of food over there but uh yes).
I also do the peanut butter by the spoon thing. Is good on apples and saltines too. Re Japan, @a tiny mushroom, I tend to just keep a bag of seaweed in my freezer and also instant dashi stuff, so boil water, dump both those in a bowl with some chopped tofu is another one i like. You can make a dipping sauce with equal parts soy sauce, mirin, and dashi broth, and that lasts quite a while in the fridge, an also is good on somen noodles. (Fun trick--dump a bit o that sauce in your scrambled eggs. It is AMAZING, esp over rice.) If you have a bit more spoons, you can make casserole. Chop up cooked chicken. I use this for leftovers a lot, but you can just dump chicken in boiling water for a while first if you dont have any. Dump it in a baking pan with a can of cream of mushroom, corn, and green beans. Microwave one of those littlw things of stuffing; spread that on top and cover with cheese. Shove the whole thing in the oven at 400 for ~15 minutes, to warm up. Eat for the next forever. Dump can of black beans and corn in a pot, dump in a fuckton of garlic and some red pepper flakes. Eat with tortillas or chips. (Extra delicious if you want to add chopped squash--zuccini or yellow squash mostly, pumpkin types you'll have to steam first--but thats effort.
@Lissiel Ooh, thank you =D Those are some good tips! I can't eat eggs, unfortunately (at least not egg yolks =.= thanks food intolerances) but everything else sounds excellent!
Get a bag that of Green Giant pasta-and-broccoli-in-cheese-sauce where you just throw the whole bag in the microwave to cook it. Get a rotisserie chicken, or canned chicken, or tuna fish. Nuke the pasta. Dump it in a bowl. Add the protein. Maybe mix in some salsa. One more: my grocery store has single-serving tubs of BBQ pulled pork, sometimes 10-for-$1. Get that. Nuke it. Put it on bread--for best results, put it on King's Hawaiian sweet rolls. Put it in your face. Pulled pork is good on other stuff too, like rice or quinoa or pasta.
Also just want to say that this thread is great. I'm suspecting I have executive function Issues around cooking, so I might actually write these down and keep them in a little notebook in the kitchen. "I don't feel like doing the food thing. What can I do in under 5 minutes that's just as tasty as a frozen meal? Ah. This." Thanks, everyone, for your contributions.
i'm so glad people are digging it. i will try to load up as many tricks as i can think of! another thing: can of cream-of-something soup + boiled pasta of some kind + frozen veggies (save a step and throw them into the pasta just before mostly!draining the water = faux fancy pasta dish. oven roaster bag + tater tots from the freezer + whatever vegetables you want to add (onion is good)+ raw ground beef. salt, garlic and pepper to taste. put them all in the bag, close the bag and bake it at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. you can eat out of the bag if you want to avoid dishes. very filling. i wait until plain cheese tombstone garlic bread pizzas go on sale 6/$12 and buy a bunch. just break them in half and bake the halves right on the oven rack. i buy pepperoni and tomatoes and just put them on before i bake it and it tastes like actual food. 1 box spice cake, 1 15 oz can of pumpkin (not pie mix!). OR you can do it the other way around with 1 15 oz can pumpkin pie mix, 1 plain white or yellow cake box. there are no other ingredients, just make sure you mix it well. bake at box temperature until you can stab it with a knife and the blade comes out clean. bam, you made pumpkin spice bread (or muffins or a cake or w/e)
@Lissiel Seconding the dashi/mirin/soy dipping sauce suggestion. That with some soba noodles is pretty much my go-to 'I have no food and am sick of toasted cheese' meal. Also important: soba noodles taste just as good cold, so I cook extra, stuff 'em in the fridge and have them for lunch the next day. I don't really have anything else to add, unfortunately, but this thread is great :3 I'm more likely to let myself go hungry than try to prepare a meal if I'm out of spoons, so these suggestions are really helpful. Also I enjoy the idea of putting things on garlic bread. That sounds like a really good idea. Now I want garlic bread.
This is good for rice/pasta leftovers: put your leftovers in the pan with butter and oil, then throw cheese on it. You just need slices of cheese, no need to cut it up. It will melt. Then add egg and soy sauce to taste. You will get a rich nommy mess that always helps out as a comfort food.
Honestly, my preferred Easy Pasta thing is "make pasta. apply canned spaghetti sauce. noms." The cold of the sauce (if it's been in the fridge, which put your jars of sauce in the fridge if they aren't empty) evens out with the hot of the boiled noodles to make a Perfect Noms Temperature. That said, Cheap Asshole Microwave Quesadillas are also a useful thing. Apply cheese to half of tortilla. fold tortilla over cheese. Microwave until melty cheese. Also, pretty much any Cheap Tomato Soup becomes 10x better if you sprinkle oregano in it. Dips are also a pretty amazing thing to have on hand - apply to bread or crackers, scoop it with chips, just eat it with a spoon because you don't have any more fucks, whatever. Dips Are Good. Stir-fry is probably not low-spoons-food for most people here but I honestly do it a lot. Shrug. Otherwise most of my stuff is the "spend spoons now, don't need spoons later" school of cooking.
Ooh, here's the easiest cake-in-a-mug ever: One box angel food cake mix. One box any other flavor cake mix. Mix together, store in a big Ziploc freezer bag or other airtight container. When cake is needed: 3 tablespoons mix in the mug. 2 tablespoons water in the mug. Mix it up, make sure to scrape around the bottom of the mug. Put the mug in the microwave for 1 minute. Maybe put some cool whip or chocolate syrup or a spoonful of canned frosting on top. CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE CAKE.
those little meatballs you can buy frozen in a bag are good for keeping desperation pasta interesting, too. i used to make ramen without the packet and use the noodles for quickie spaghetti but it sort of tastes weird to me now. also gets gloppy fast. once i had so few spoons i didn't want to make a salad so i just stood in the kitchen and ate half a head of cauliflower dipped in a little bit of caesar dressing and occasionally crunched a crouton in between. very tasty!
if you are of the quinoa persuasion and wanna try other carbohydrate thing your new friend is couscous or bulgur. Get it at middle eastern supermarket if you have such a thing (um. I actually dunno if that is somethign people have in other parts of the world? I live in Berlin we have tons of people from middle eastern cultures living here so) it's like a part of the wheat grain or something idk, point is you can get cheap packs of the stuff and it lasts you a long time. Take measurement of dry grain stuff (like.... half a cup if you are eating alone? that is probably almost too much tbh) add in boiling water, ideally pre-season boiling water by making it vegetable broth with the instant powdered stuff. boiling water should cover grains a bit, i honestly never measure any of this. Put some kind of lid on bowl you are making this in and leave alone while you cut up stuff you wanna toss in there (i usually haphazardly rip apart cheese slices and maybe slices of cooked ham? idk sandwhich stuff. Tomatoes go well with this) put in tiny amount of butter/olive oil to loosen the grains up a bit, then throw in your other stuff. Stuff mouth using whichever tool you prefer. Careful its easy to overeat on this and then you will feel weird as hell because sometimes the couscous isn't done with the water absorption process and starts doing that in your tummy and that's not fun
