Calling the food doctor
Here's the deal. I am NOT a morning person. What that means is that mornings are my 'down-time'. Tasks that usually should take me 5 minutes to complete get accomplished in about 15. I stutter, I run into walls, I am grumpy and generally unproductive. In other words, it is not a good idea to make any plans for the time between my alarm goes off and my first sip of coffee at the office.
I AM an evening person (take a look at the time-stamps of the last couple of entries if you don't believe me). But given the fact that I leave the office at 7PM (on an easy day), my evenings are cut short too. So, even though, I am generally more productive after sunset, I have not a whole lot of time to produce.
My weird schedule has started to take its toll on me and the first thing to suffer has been my diet. I don't eat breakfast in general (see opening paragraph), I have a semi-decent lunch at work and have no time or energy to prepare elaborate dishes for dinner. That is bad, I know. But honest to god, I really don't see how I could drastically change my schedule to be able to spend enough time on meal-preparation. Dining out is clearly an option, which, unfortunately, I am slowly starting to get tired of as I am a firm believer that there is nothing better than a home-cooked meal.
So, to make the long story short, I would like to ask you to share stories, photos, recipes, ideas about healthy vegetarian dinner options that could take care of the problem I described above. Anything that would help me figure out a way to eat good dinner which does not take hours to prepare, will be more than welcome. I have already started seeking friends' insights on the subject but I think that talking about this here would not only involve more people (i.e. generate more ideas) but could also be of help to others who share my taste for good food and lack of patience for intense cooking sessions.
I AM an evening person (take a look at the time-stamps of the last couple of entries if you don't believe me). But given the fact that I leave the office at 7PM (on an easy day), my evenings are cut short too. So, even though, I am generally more productive after sunset, I have not a whole lot of time to produce.
My weird schedule has started to take its toll on me and the first thing to suffer has been my diet. I don't eat breakfast in general (see opening paragraph), I have a semi-decent lunch at work and have no time or energy to prepare elaborate dishes for dinner. That is bad, I know. But honest to god, I really don't see how I could drastically change my schedule to be able to spend enough time on meal-preparation. Dining out is clearly an option, which, unfortunately, I am slowly starting to get tired of as I am a firm believer that there is nothing better than a home-cooked meal.
So, to make the long story short, I would like to ask you to share stories, photos, recipes, ideas about healthy vegetarian dinner options that could take care of the problem I described above. Anything that would help me figure out a way to eat good dinner which does not take hours to prepare, will be more than welcome. I have already started seeking friends' insights on the subject but I think that talking about this here would not only involve more people (i.e. generate more ideas) but could also be of help to others who share my taste for good food and lack of patience for intense cooking sessions.
posted by petya at 9/14/2006 03:42:00 PM
14 Comments:
okay, bring out the comments, I promise to try out each one.
I am so bad at ideas for food that for the last month I`ve settled for tuna fish, salad and corn almost every night on workdays.so much that each time I enter the store round the corner ,the staff goes "Here comes tunafish girl!", which in their vocabulary must be a synonym of yetti.
heheh. completely understand. my menu of choice is a bulgarian classic: tomatoes, cucumbers and cheese (i.e. feta). i think my local grocery store guy thinks i have an incurable disease which would lead to my dead if i put anything else in my mouth.
I know what you mean. This semester, I'm teaching four classes and have noticed that I'm cooking less and eating out more (and by eating out, I mean take-out Chinese, pizza, deli, etc.)
That said, I used to be a vegetarian, so here's some ideas.
(1)Lentil pasta sauce. This actually takes a long time, but you can make a lot and freeze it. Essentially, it's the usual tomato sauce plus lentils and carrots. Cook the lentils separate first and strain them before adding to the sauce.
(2) Stir-fry with peanuts (or any kind of nut.) The trick to stir fry is speed -- the faster the better. White wine (or rice wine if available) and sesame oil also helps. Don't add the soy until the end when you turn off the heat. Chopping the vegetables and frying everything shouldn't take longer to prepare than it takes to cook the rice (20 minutes) or noodles (5 to 15 minutes).
(3) Burrito, this can take a while, but make a lot and you can keep it in the refrigerator.
Fry a chopped onion, garlic, chopped bell pepper, a chopped cayanne or jalepeno, and chopped tomato. Sometimes I also add frozen corn nibbles. For spice, add chopped cilantro, ground cumin, black pepper, and salt. Right when the stuff just starts to get soft, add a can of black beans (strained) and salt and cook until well infused with flavor.
While it's cooking, grate the Monteray Jack cheese to put on the tortillas which you have warm in the oven.
The first time takes a while, but then you have some for the future, and all you have to do is warm up the tortillas and put the leftover mixture in the microwave.
Spend some time on the weekends making things that freeze/heat up well. (Soups are really good for this, or some pasta sauces and casseroles.) Then, you can prepare enough meals to last you through the whole week that you'll just need to pop into the microwave or oven when you get home from work.
I tell myself every week that I'm going to do this, and then I get distracted.
wow! steve! THANK YOU! :) i will definitely keep in mind and let you know. mexican food is a bit trickier for a bulgarian as we don't have some of the key ingredients. fresh cilantro (кориандър, мисля), for example. sad, i know.
jenn, you are totally right about weekend cooking. but, as you have noticed yourself, weekends i'm too busy being lazy...why does it have to be so, so, so difficult to be good.
Monteray Jack cheese in Bulgaria? Would that be the white cheese or the yellow cheese? :-D
It's hard to be both a vegetarian and casual about eating. Getting adequate nutrition - protein, in particular - is much harder for vegetarians. That said, I'd add a couple of tips to what Steve posted.
First, grab a bite of cheese on your way out the door in the morning. A small shot of protein and fat will ease the hunger pangs and give you a bit of gradually-digested nutrition.
Second, remember the magic formula for vegetarians:
legumes+grains=complete protein
Think rice&beans, spiced with a little cayenne and tomato (maybe as close to Cajun as you can get there). steve's tip about lentils with pasta does the same thing.
Oh - and a good bottle of wine. And a shot of rakia ;-)
just for the record, vegetarians do not really need to make any special effort to eat plenty of protein. in fact, the typical american diet includes far more than the rda of protein, which can have its own adverse health effects. as for combining amino acids, though it is essential to good health, this is thankfully a concern that we can leave to the workings of the body and to nutrition experts; the body stores these amino acids quite efficiently until they can be matched with their appropriate partners, so it isn't even necessary to consciously match legumes with grains. isn't it cool, though, that beans and rice taste so good together?!
arnie:
MJ would be the yellow cheese (кашкавал). the little bite in the morning is an excellent idea, which i've already tried and know it works. kyle and i used to be obsessed with eating crackers, pear and gorgonzola cheese in the morning. just one little bite of that combo would give us so much energy in the morning. although, i need to agree with kyle's comment, that being vegetarian is not any harder or any less healthy than being non-vegetarian. :)
professor:
thanks for clearing things out. you know that my parents are extremely worried that i don't eat a lot of meat. they seem to have accepted that i don't like meat. now they've switched their strategy and insist that i stick to salad and vegetable, but try to have a tiny bit of meat every day. even if it is a tiny piece of salami. yeah. ;)
I have been having very similar food issues lately. I usually love cooking and eating, but for some reason I just don't care much right now. For the last few weeks, my roommate and I were basically surviving on what we're calling tacos. It's really just corn tortillas with pureed beans, cheese, and lettuce. I know they'd be tastier with avocado, cilantro, salsa, but I'm too lazy.
I decided to add some variety with chickpea stew (very easy): saute onion, add garbanzo beans and tomato sauce/diced tomatoes/crushed tomatoes and heat until it's warm. It's good with a little lemon added at the end.
I imagine that I'd be healthier if I started making your Bulgarian classic salad as a complement as well.
oooh! oooh! ask kyle to make you the salad and bulgarian french fries!!! you will love them together!
thanks for stopping by :)
The issue for women is not protein, but calcium and iron. So, that's why beans are absolutely necessary for a vegetarian diet. So I agree with you, Kyle, about the complete protein thing, but would also still argue that any vegetarian who neglects the bean is a stupid vegetarian.
In addition, beans are the musical fruit.
To respond to the problem of the limited availability of certain produce in Bulgaria, I use dried cilantro most of the time anyway because I'm too lazy to chop the fresh stuff. So, I don't know about Bulgaria, but in U.S. markets, you can get the dried stuff in the same place that you get oregano and all the other spices. Cilantro is also called Coriander by the way, and different countries use these two names differently. In America, Coriander means the seed, and Cilantro means the leaf, but that's not the case everywhere.
As for cheese, for TexMex, Jack clearly works best, but any cheese will work... except gorganzola.
And although nobody said anything about it, I worry that I wasn't clear in my description of lentil pasta sauce. I didn't mean to buy a jar of sauce and add lentils, but to make the whole thing from scratch.
later,
Steve
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Vegetarians absolutely do need to make an extra effort to eat more protein and in my opinion must get a complete protein. Women not only need calcium and iron but we need protein too. All our cells in our body are made of protein. Also, more muscle equals faster metabolism. Definitely eat more protein to balance out all the carbohydrates that are eaten.
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