This is my biggest go-to low spoons recipe. I thought I had posted it before, but I guess not. Get two cans of cream of whatever condensed soup - I normally mix one cream of chicken and one cream of mushroom, because those are the cheapest. Spray a baking dish with whatever for easier cleanup, but I've forgotten or gone without a lot and it's been fine. Mix the two cans in the dish. Fill one can with uncooked rice, and mix it in with your soup glop. Add canned or frozen veggies if your heart desires - carrots, peas, and broccoli are all good. Nestle some cuts of raw chicken - breasts, thighs, tenders, drumsticks, whatever - on top of your rice mixture. Cover with foil and cook for an hour at 350. If it's five minutes more or less, it's fine. Five minutes of active cooking time, one dish, no actual measuring.
My go-to lately has been microwave cups of minute rice and those "soup on the go" things. Nuke 'em, dump 'em both in a bowl together, add cheese/veggies/meat of your choice if you have the spoons and want to get fancy. The rice and soup only take about a minute each, so depending on what else you decide to throw in you can have a pretty filling meal in just a few minutes.
The go-tos for me Frito chilli pie: bag of fritos, can of Wolf Brand Chilli (heated), combine. Add cheese if you have it. Maybe some green onion. Eat with fork. Tuna sammich: The HEB by my house has these 25 cent 'bolillo' breads. One of those, a packet of 'tuna steak' or 'salmon steak' or what have you. Toss it in a hot pan for like a minute to sear each side. Stick on bread with lettuce and tartar. Eat olives on the side if that's your thing (it's my thing, love olives). SUPER ramen: make chicken ramen, drain water add seasoning. Thrown in 'junk'. Usually green onions/whatever vegetables I have laying around. Leftover meat or grilled chicken lunchmeat (the strips not the slices). Just adding crap to ramen makes ramen a real food. Rice dessert: Old nostalgia food from my mawmaw. Make rice, add milk, butter, and sugar. Stir. Good for a sweet tooth when you don't have sweets/don't want to get out. Optional - coconut milk if you happen to have it. Better yet - Condensed milk. (as an aside, a little debbie bearclaw + condensed milk + microwave = heaven's comfort food). Cassarole is the food upon which no fucks are given: Pasta item or rice (if it's rice cook it, pasta you don't have to) + Some kind of canned soup + chicken + canned veg. Toss it all in a glassware dish and mix with whatever spice. Get the pasta covered with the soup. Maybe add cheese and crackers. Oven for like 30 minutes. Shove in mouth. Really hard to mess up flavorwise. Cheeseburger pie (slightly more work because browning meat): browned ground meat in the bottom of a glass dish, make Bisquick pancake mix and pour over top. Top with cheese and onion. Bake for about 30 minutes. Incredibly low energy/I'm literally too depressed to get up: Since the fridge is in my room (minifridge only ahoy) usually I stumble upright and grab some nuts, cheese, a lunchmeat and a tortilla or a bread. Roll nuts cheese and meat in tortilla/bread and eat. For maximum taste use a sweet meat like ham + pecans + a light cheese like brie. Alternately chicken + peanuts + cheddar or gouda is also good. If you've got a few spoons put cranberry sauce on the ham/pecan/brie one but sub the ham out for turkey. tastes like thanksgiving.
My preferred way of actually consuming a vegetable when I'm low on spoons and left to my own devices is to do the same sorts of things that one would do with rice or pasta but using frozen peas instead. Throw 'em in a bowl with water, microwave for a few minutes until done (stirring halfway through is probably a good idea), drain, put some butter in if you're gonna be adding cheese (makes the cheese not clump when you try to stir it in), put in whatever protein/flavor/whatever things that you would usually add to pasta or rice, microwave again to melt cheese if needed, put in face. Congratulations, you've eaten something green!
i tend to not want to eat anything but grains and dairy, so this is an easy and delicious way for me to get meat and a vegetable into my stomach: -get lettuce leaf -put lunch meat on lettuce -put about a tablespoon of cream cheese on lunch meat -wrap it up and stuff the whole thing in your mouth -??? -protein! also, spreading a cracker (i use wasa crackers, either the hearty grain or the light rye, which are the only ones we have in the house since my mother has a wheat allergy) with cream cheese and then topping that with a bit of jam/jelly/whatever kind of fruit preserves makes a snack that satisfies my craving for sweets without being 1000% sugar.
hey so do you like cake? i bet you do did you know you can mix one (1) packaged cake mix with 355-445 mL of soda and then bake it and you have a cake? it's true! and they taste damn good. so far i have tried: chocolate cake mix w/355 mL Coke (very dense and moist, slight taste of caramel) 9x13 pan, 350 F, ~40 mins devil's food cake mix w/445 mL orange soda (quite moist, fluffier, tastes like you just added orange extract) 8x8 pan, 350 F, ~45 mins
(this is less low spoons food and more ADHD Fun but couldnt think here else it would go...) have just eaten a pancake-wrapped sausage onna stick unearthed from the depths of my freezer. Sausage has almost certainly lived in this apartment longer than I have. At no point in the proceedings did it occur to me to wonder whether this might maybe possibly perhaps be a gastrointestinally bad idea but I guess I'll find out! It's probably fine, i microwaved it for twice as long as the package said to.
So, i've been seeing a lot of ads for the campbells sauces, and the slow cooker ones look like they might be good for low spoons cooking, though from what i've seen you'll need to cut some of the meat into smaller chunks, which their site doesn't say. I'll try on or two out this weekend and report back on effort required. [Edit:] A review
Experiment complete! Might use a pork loin instead, less trimming fat off, and shredding might not work for everyone, but it was very low effort. I just put it in the rice cooker set to slow cook, and then let it go for 7 hours. I shredded it, but that might not be low spoons for everyone. wound up not liking the sauce though, I used the southern bbq sauce, a famous daves sauce, or whatever sauce you like best would work better than that imo.
On the "high fanciness-to-spoons ratio" side of things: made fresh pesto last night, since I happen to have a ginormous bag of dried basil from my mom's garden and a few fresher leaves from mine. Just chucked the stuff into my cheapo garage-sale food processor, pulsed it a few times, and scraped it out onto my noodles.
Boiled bacon is not as good as making it in a pan or microwaving it, but the clean up is a ton easier.
crackers, peanut butter and sharp chedder tastes like... i don't even know but its delicious and it's got peanut butter in which is almost good for you
So, a discovery. I have a really bad sweet tooth but don't always have the money for sweets, but if you add some vanilla extract and like a teaspoon of sugar to a glass of milk it tastes like ice cream. Nice comfort food to kick the sweet craving.
My easy, go-to recipe (good for upset tummies too): miso soup. I know someone mentioned it before, but here's a slightly more detailed version: For roughly two cups of soup, I use 1/2 tsp of instant dashi and a tablespoon of miso. I like white miso because it's lighter in flavor but you can use white or red or whatever (and miso lasts forever so you can buy some and use it for a long time). I boil water in my electric kettle (electric kettles are the best things ever) then pour it in a mug with the dashi, mix, let cool slightly, then put the miso in. You gotta stir it a bit to get it to dissolve. Some additions I like: spinach, frozen peas, tofu, a little bit of sesame oil, green onion, whatever I have on-hand that seems good. Putting cold things in helps cool it down, too, which is good if you have temperature issues. Easy fried rice: Make dry rice (reduce amount of water; I use about 1 1/4 c for 1 c of rice in the rice cooker) or use leftover rice. Scramble an egg. Dump rice into egg with frozen peas or whatever and cook together. Add some soy sauce or other flavorings to taste. (I use soy sauce + sesame oil + pepper.) Quick, low-effort, very comforting. Another recipe I love: thin pizza crust. It takes a bit more work, but it's still pretty simple and quick, and you can have a pizza without too much trouble! My ultimate in easy eats: pepperoni on saltines, or peanut butter on saltines, or cream cheese on saltines, or summer sausage on saltines, or hummus on saltines. Basically protein + saltines.
popping in to say.. as far as frozen foods go, i'm a big fan of barber chicken things, especially the kiev and brie+apple. cordon bleu and parmesan also get a thumbs up. can just have them as is or just do an easy side. less bland then most frozen foods. it was basically impossible to find them for a while because there was a recall last january but that issue has been sorted and they're back on shelves. they're in new looking boxes. apparently the recipe was changed since i last ate them though. so i'm hoping they're still good cuz i'm gonna get some.
Here is low spoons super fancy grilled sandwiches: You will need: Olive oil Two (2) slices of bread Various sandwich fillings. Go nuts. Note: the only reason I used olive oil is because I didn't have any butter X) I used fancy shredded because it's the only cheese I had, I'm sure sliced is fine if that's your thing. What to do: Put your burner on a little over medium heat, add a bit of olive oil to coat the pan with. Assemble sandwich, squish it together if it's looking tall. Brown on both sides until fillings are melty. NOM. For example, you can make PBJs 10000% more interesting by grilling them this way. (Sometimes I like adding banana coins in, especially for breakfast.) Treat yourself with a grilled peanutbutter and honey sandwich. Or a peanutbutter and nutella sandwich. (Or just nutella if you like. Nutella with jelly is also very nice.) Or my fancy grilled cheese with other stuff in it sandwich involves: One (1) can of chicken One (1) bag of spinach (frozen works fine too) Fancy shredded cheddar cheese (I used fancy shredded because it's the only cheese I had, I'm sure sliced is fine if that's your thing.) sriracha (optional) no measuring involved, just build it however you like. I would rate spoons level a 4 out of 10: the making of it is easy enough (I was queasy amounts of hungry, enough to be clumsy) but the cleanup is a bit tiresome. If you don't wanna use the stove, it's possible to toast the bread in the toaster and then add the ingredients and heat it up a bit in the microwave, but it's not quite the same.
i tend to toast my bread and then microwave the sandwich until the fillings are hot, which means it doesn't stay crunchy and i have to eat it with a fork because sometimes it goes squish...but i get warm food and one less pan to clean! also i am not fond of making grilled sammiches because mine fall apart when i flip them and i need to perform surgery in a hot pan and basically when i move out I'm getting a panini press of my own and never worrying about it ever
