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Observation
Nov. 19th, 2011 03:22 amThere is nothing much wrong - and quite a lot right - with the occasional meal of Cup-of-Soup, or other insta-noodle concoctions, especially late at night when one is Poorly.
If you add 1/4 C frozen peas or similar to the mix and give the results 1 minute in the microwave the nutritional situation improves further, with nearly no extra effort. Some people also swear by the Egg Drop approach, and while I've never been able to get that to work for me in a cup, I will not deny its basic soundness.
Following this up with a large quartered apple covered with a half cup of blueberries and cooked on high for 3 minutes puts you well into the highly nutritious with a side of luxury class of insta-meal, as far as I'm concerned.
Somewhere buried in all the stuff under this tag - originally made for some friends with their first apartments and no real experience feeding themselves on a daily basis - is something resembling a philosophy of food, though I remain uncertain as to what it might be.
It strikes me as mildly significant that a lot of the meals I get very excited about and spend a whole day making are tasty and fancy but not the sort of thing you'd want to try to live on, wheras with the 5 minutes or less ones, I'm much more focussed on getting a lot of fruits and veggies in unfussed condition in there while making the results comforting and appealing. But then, that tends to be when I'm noticing the need of them the most, and is probably for the best.
It also strikes me that once you know how to make some basic dishes, in this case chicken soup, if you keep a fairly well-stocked[1] kitchen you can pretty much design your soup based with a fair degree of exactness on how many minutes you want to spend on it.
[1] Mind you, I was raised by people who lived through two World Wars, the Depression, several bouts of Locally Poor Economic Conditions, and a number of natural disasters of the No Electricity For A Week kind. My definition of "well-stocked kitchen" is many people's definition of Worryingly Close To Hoarding, i.e. I think that at any given time I could keep us in nutritionally balanced meals for about three months without warning and without buying anything, if I had to.
If you add 1/4 C frozen peas or similar to the mix and give the results 1 minute in the microwave the nutritional situation improves further, with nearly no extra effort. Some people also swear by the Egg Drop approach, and while I've never been able to get that to work for me in a cup, I will not deny its basic soundness.
Following this up with a large quartered apple covered with a half cup of blueberries and cooked on high for 3 minutes puts you well into the highly nutritious with a side of luxury class of insta-meal, as far as I'm concerned.
Somewhere buried in all the stuff under this tag - originally made for some friends with their first apartments and no real experience feeding themselves on a daily basis - is something resembling a philosophy of food, though I remain uncertain as to what it might be.
It strikes me as mildly significant that a lot of the meals I get very excited about and spend a whole day making are tasty and fancy but not the sort of thing you'd want to try to live on, wheras with the 5 minutes or less ones, I'm much more focussed on getting a lot of fruits and veggies in unfussed condition in there while making the results comforting and appealing. But then, that tends to be when I'm noticing the need of them the most, and is probably for the best.
It also strikes me that once you know how to make some basic dishes, in this case chicken soup, if you keep a fairly well-stocked[1] kitchen you can pretty much design your soup based with a fair degree of exactness on how many minutes you want to spend on it.
[1] Mind you, I was raised by people who lived through two World Wars, the Depression, several bouts of Locally Poor Economic Conditions, and a number of natural disasters of the No Electricity For A Week kind. My definition of "well-stocked kitchen" is many people's definition of Worryingly Close To Hoarding, i.e. I think that at any given time I could keep us in nutritionally balanced meals for about three months without warning and without buying anything, if I had to.