MrsBrown's philosophy of life and stuff

Cookbooks make dinner is more complicated than it needs to be.  A successful family meal at dinnertime includes food that everyone is happy to eat, some protein and some vegetable.  But the most basic requirement is to feed people without resorting to takeaway delivery and without spending more than 20min on it.

This is a collection of recipes and philosophies, together with essential pantry items, regular fridge contents and supplements that are intended to support you to answer the question, OMG! what's for dinner? 

OMG dinner ideas start with answering the question, "pasta, rice, potatoes or pancakes?".  They also rely on you making them often enough that you know exactly what to do and don't have to think or worry about them.  Anything that fits the 20min or less and really easy for you to make, will qualify as an OMG dinner. 

A bonus of adopting OMG dinners and eating them regularly is that kids like eating familiar foods so they eat more.

I suggest that you start with one of these meals and make it once or twice a week for a while,, before adding in another option.  The recipes here are a collection of OMG dinners from the past 30 years.

Recipes:

Pasta
I keep egg pasta in the pantry and, when I remember, I buy fresh ravioli to have with these sauces.   G might like the pumpkin flavour.  I often serve with broccoli.

Pasta with red sauce
Put pasta water on to boil.  Grate carrot and other veg, then fry in lots of olive oil (cover the base of your deep frypan at least 2mm deep).  Add passata, mixed herbs, salt, pepper and frozen peas.  When the water boils add pasta and set timer for 1min less than cooking time.  Add broccoli(if you have some) when timer goes off and cook for 1 min.  Scoop pasta and broccoli into frypan with red sauce and mix.  Serve with too much grated parmesan and more black pepper.   You can also add white beans.

Pasta with egg and cheese
Put water on to boil. Put grated cheese, pepper and eggs (1-2 per pasta serve) in a bowl.  Cook the pasta, then mix the hot pasta with the egg mixture until it looks good.  Lift the pasta directly out of the boiling water so some of the water goes into the egg mixture - it works better that way. 
You can add crumbed broccoli to this - cook the head of broccoli in the water for 1-2min before you put in the pasta, then chop the broccoli finely and mix it in at the same time as the pasta.
It's also pretty good with chopped smoked almonds on top - for the bacon like flavour.

Rice
I find it pretty easy to make rice, but my Dad has been doing well with precooked rice sachets from Aldi.  Keeping some cooked rice in the freezer is also an option.

The Moosewood cookbook includes a number of sauces that you pour over steamed vegies and rice.  At it's simplest, precooked rice, with mixed veg from the freezer and satay sauce would be a quick way to avoid takeaway.

Satay sauce
heat grated ginger in oil and add curry powder.  After a min add some water, then soy sauce, brown sugar and peanut butter.  Cook until it's all mixed and looks right, add more water to make it runnier.

Potato
Mashed or roasted? 

Roasted
If you have time, a collection of roast veg, including potato is pretty good and you can add haloumi for protein.  There are lots of sheet pan recipes out there that would work well as OMG dinners.


Mashed
Mashed potato is a meat and three veg sort of meal.  I like to boil carrot and potato together, then mash with too much butter, pepper and salt.  You can also add cheese.  Serve with a mix of veg cooked individually and some protein - fake sausages, bought veg burgers, haloumi etc.

Pancakes, fritters, okonomyaki.

The essence of okonomyaki is finely cut cabbage or kale, with a bunch of grated vegetables, including carrot and the green bits of spring onion.  Put the veg into a bowl, add salt, a bit of flour, some sesame oil and eggs.  Fry them in patties and serve with mayonnaise and tomato sauce.

Okonomyaki are just fritters, with other flavours.

Spinach and corn pancakes use pancake mix to hold the spinach and corn together.  Served with cheese, they're reasonably quick and filling.

Rose was hungry this afternoon and Sneetch had eaten the last two slices of pineapple pizza.  She was very disappointed so I suggested we make some and could go to the supermarket to buy bread to make pizza with.  She refused and requested that I make flat bread.  Thinking about it later I realised that the pizza was one of my slow food recipes and I had to share.

To make flat bread pineapple pizza;

7 days early - buy pineapple and leave in fruit bowl.  Occasionally look at it and think, "I should cut that up so people will eat it".
4 days early - tip out the previous batch of ignored sourdough starter and refresh with new flour and water.  Look at it 24 hours later and think, "I should either make bread or refresh that starter.
On the day - chop the mouldy and brown bits off the pineapple and put in the fridge.
Scrape the black tinged bits off the top of the starter and put in the compost.  Use 1/2 cup of remaining starter and 1/2 cup flour to make dough.  Leave for 10min then divide into 4 and roll out flat.  Cook both sides in the cast iron pan.
Put bread onto griller, spread with tomato paste from the back of the fridge (scrape white mould from the top of the jar and put into compost, make sure none of the eaters notice.  Only take non-mouldy paste from jar.)  Chop pineapple bits smaller and add to pizza.  Sprinkle grated cheese on top (reject the mouldy cheese, but leave in fridge because it might be useful for something else).  Grill until brown and feed to man and small child.

Mix in a bowl:

1 cup SR Flour, 2 teaspoons (or so) cocoa, 50g melted butter, 1/2 Cup sugar, 1 egg, 1/2 Cup milk.

Put in dish.

Over uncooked batter put;

1/2 cup brown (if you have it) sugar, 1 tablespoon cocoa, and pour over that one large cup boiling water.

Nuke it for 6-8 minutes and serve with cream or ice-cream

Actually, the cake mix needs more cocoa