Recipes we all can make!

[Old Hippie]

Meh just something that I could whip up any night for dinner. I'm not a noob so I don't need 101 level but I also dont want it to have a ton of weird exotic ingredience that I cant get at my local grocery store.

Living on an organic farm has its advantages when you need fresh ingredients. Heck with the "Hundred Mile Diet" -- we have the "Hundred Metre Diet."

Having cooked for large groups who expected meals on time, we've got some shortcuts that save a lot of time when it's "half past what do I make and 15 minutes late for dinner."

Buy a dozen nice-sized baking potatoes (or go out to the root cellar and grab them...). Scrub and pierce them, put them in the oven at 400F for an hour. Let them cool and put them in the fridge.

Buy hot peppers in bulk. Roast them with a blowtorch, scrub off the skin, open them and take out the seeds and membrane. Chop and freeze in amounts appropriate to your recipe needs.

Peel and chop several/many onions and roast them in a covered pot at 350F with some oil and vegetable broth. Put the pot in the fridge and you have onions pre-cooked to add to any recipe.

Use your weekend time or evenings to pre-make sauces and other things you want to use during the week. My goal is to get home at 7:30 pm and be done dinner by 8:15 so I can get the chores done in time to get some sleep.

Speedy Potato Salad:

Peel and coarsely chop or very roughly mash two potatoes. Add some chopped hard-boiled egg*, chive or green onion top, diced raw onion, celery, and any other thing you put in potato salad. Stir in a generous amount of mayo and there you go.

* We don't eat eggs, but adding some turmeric to the mayo and using a little "kala namak" or "black salt" will totally fool you. Kala namak is in any Indian grocery and releases some sulfur when wetted. And yes, I get it that you don't want too many exotic ingredients.

Speedy Hash Browns:

Put a bit of oil in your skillet. Add some cooked onion. Peel and coarsely mash two baked potatoes. Add poblano peppers, garlic, salt and pepper.

The hashbrowns are regular in the morning, rotated with various hot cereals, Bubble and Squeak, toast, fruit, and biscuits.

The potato salad is good alongside any entree you wish, or you can add chicken chunks to it (I'm vegetarian so I use sauteed tempeh or seitan).

Having pots of ingredients ready to use, along with frozen/canned/dried food in season, can really speed things up. It allows me to shift the cooking to times when I can spend time, and saves me from Kraft Dinner and frozen pizza during the week when I'm going "lahk a house afaahr."

:ootd: