One of the hardest things I have had to adjust to with working again is trying to still cook from scratch. I simply don't have much time and I have certainly not had the motivation to prep in the mornings. I have a hard time waking up before the sun does. On a good day I get home by 7pm. Today is one of the good days. I also managed to actually find a quick recipe and it utilizes ingredients that I need to use and have on hand already. It's the merging of all three elements. Fresh Tomato Lentil Soup with homemade whole wheat toast:
After so many nights of getting home in a frenzy and rushing to get dinner on the table by 9pm or getting stuck in traffic and not even getting home until after 8 with no chance of a homemade dinner it's a welcome relief to be able to put fresh garden produce (tomatoes, onions and herbs) on the table in a half an hour and still have time to play with the dog in the backyard.
You know, I always complain that Aaron never gets home from work until 8 or 9, but I guess it is nice in that I always have time to make something (I'm just usually too hungry to eat it...)
ReplyDeleteSome things I make when I don't have a lot of time or I just feel fried: pasta or frozen ravioli with pesto (frozen in the summer), tomato soup and grilled cheese (from tomatoes canned in the summer, and bread made over the weekend), rice and beans (I cook huge batches of beans and freeze them in pint jars), or pizza (whenever I make it, I make 4x the crusts, bake them all, and freeze them so I have frozen pizza crusts that just need toppings and 10 minutes in the oven).
I also make lasagna once in a while, and I always make 2 and just stick one in the freezer. If I move it to the fridge in the morning I don't have to bake it much longer than usual.
On very rare occasions, I can get Aaron to make me dinner. He loves to cook but as I get hungry hours before he gets home, I don't usually let him.
Oh, one more thing: we make these baked black bean and sweet potato burritos, the recipe makes a ton of them and you can freeze them to microwave or bake later.
I guess what I'm saying is I make everything in ridiculous batches (even bread) and freeze half of it. Right now our freezer is full of cooked beans, a kale lasagna, a pre-sliced loaf of bread, two types of homemade indian food, frozen pizza crusts, frozen naan, and basil pesto, arugula pesto, and cilantro pesto in ice cube form.