Tragic Sandwich

Category: Mom-Friendly Meals

  • Mom-Friendly Meals: Ingredients

    I’ve shared a few entries in my Mom-Friendly Meals series (you can also follow #MomFriendlyMeals on Twitter, and please feel free to join in the hashtag fun). One of the things that makes these meals easy is having ingredients available.

    That sounds obvious, but it’s not necessarily. I like a lot of different kinds of food, but that doesn’t mean I can stock all of the ingredients required for a particular recipe, much less cuisine.

    It’s not that we don’t have storage. We have a regular refrigerator and freezer in the kitchen, along with dedicated pantry space nearby. In the garage, we have a chest freezer.

    All of this space is full. The problem is that it’s full of things I bought a while ago and forgot about, or random bits of leftovers. So one of my goals is to eat what we have in the freezer, and in doing so, determine what we want to make more of going forward.

    I’m sure I’ll share those meals as they emerge from the icy depths. But what I want to talk about right now is staples.

    As you may have guessed, one of my staples is steel-cut oats. After all, I eat them at least five times a week. Eggs, clearly another staple. But what else?

    Macaroni, for Baguette’s Macmomee Cheese (technically not mom-friendly, but come on, of course it is). Egg noodles. Flour tortillas. Capellini.

    Dried beans, for when I have time to soak them the night before. Low-sodium canned beans, for when I don’t.

    Coconut milk. Walnuts. Reduced-fat milk. Plain, unsweetened, whole milk yogurt.

    Every other week, we get a box of fresh fruit grown on local farms; I also visit our nearby farmers’ market on Sunday mornings, where I get lemons, tomatoes, eggs, and berries.

    I buy just about all of my spices from Penzeys. I recently cleaned out my spice rack, because it was overflowing, and there were too many impulse buys that I just wasn’t using. I like it so much better now; I can find what I need, and I’m using what I have.

    Penzeys spices
    This was the “before” shot.

    And I make my own chicken and vegetable broth. Stock. What have you. This is so much easier than it sounds.

    For vegetable broth, I buy a bunch of vegetables, scrub them, cut them up, cover them with water, and simmer for an hour. Do not peel! It takes too much time, and you lose the nutrients that are in the peel. After an hour, just strain it.

    Chicken broth is just as easy; it takes more time, but it’s all slow-cooker time. I use a carcass, chop up an onion, throw in a few garlic cloves and celery and carrots, cover everything with water, and add some peppercorns. Then I cook on low for at least 12 hours and strain.

    Having stock in the freezer means I can make soups at a moment’s notice (well, maybe a little more than a moment). And I can pick the ingredients, which means it has more flavor than packaged broth, and a lot less sodium.

    I may have just used the last of my stock. This is why I need to clean out the freezer.

    So it can look no worse than this again.
    So it can look no worse than this again.

  • Mom-Friendly Meals: Shrimp and Potatoes in Garlic Butter

    I love shrimp. Love, love, love it. Yet for some reason, I almost never cook with it. I’m trying to change that, though, because I have come to the conclusion–quite vocally, if you check with Mr. Sandwich–that I don’t like chicken.*

    So a couple of weeks ago, we bought a bag of frozen shrimp at Costco. Surprisingly, it was not enough shrimp to feed all of Los Angeles–but we will get several meals out of it. We started last night (well, the night before, because the shrimp had to thaw) with this dish.

    First, I cut up some Yukon Gold potatoes into chunks and boiled them until they were cooked, at which point I drained them.

    Then I deveined the shrimp (it didn’t take as long as I always imagine it will; this stage was done before the potatoes finished cooking). In a skillet, I melted about half a stick of butter and sauteed some minced garlic. You know how people say not to use the pre-minced garlic that you can buy in jars? Well, we use it anyhow. It’s easier.

    Once the garlic started to brown, I added the shrimp and flipped them once after about 2 minutes. You want to be careful not to overcook them, because they can get tough. Meanwhile, I returned the potatoes to the pan and dry steamed them to remove any additional moisture. After I turned over the shrimp, I added the potatoes to the skillet and tossed everything to coat with the butter and garlic.

    Shrimp and Potatoes

    Then we ate it.

    You might want to have some vegetables, too. That’s always a good idea.

    *Except fried chicken. I still like that. Because it is fried.

  • Mom-Friendly Meals: Hard Cooked Eggs

    I don’t just eat oatmeal for breakfast. Even with some nuts thrown in, I need some protein to kickstart my day. And my protein of choice is eggs.

    Brown Eggs

    For a long time, I made hard-cooked eggs the way my mother taught me, which involved bringing them to a boil and then attempting to maintain a simmer for what I now realize was much too long a time.

    No wonder my yolks kept turning that funny gray-green color.

    Somewhere along the line, I acquired a copy of The New Basics Cookbook, which told me I should bring them to a boil, turn off the heat, cover the pan, and come back 15-20 minutes later.

    With this method, you still get gray-green yolks–but at least you don’t have to maintain a simmer.

    At some point, I started looking for how to cook a soft-cooked egg. And do you know what I found out? That’s right, I was leaving the eggs in the hard water for way, way too long.

    So here’s what I do:

    • Put eggs on counter for 20-30 minutes.
    • Put eggs in saucepan and cover with water.
    • Add a dash of salt.
    • Turn on the burner and bring the water to a boil.
    • Turn the water off and cover the pan.
    • Leave for six minutes.

    That’s right. SIX minutes. Not three times that long. Six minutes.

    At that point, take the eggs out of the hot water (use a slotted spoon, not your bare hands) and put them into a bowl of ice water. Put that in the refrigerator.

    I usually make two or three at a time, because after more than two or three days, they get hard to peel. I put one into a small container and take it to work; once there I peel it and have it with my reheated oatmeal. Presto! Cheap, easy, delicious breakfast.

    Oh, and I like brown eggs because I find it easier to see the shells if some gets into a dish I’m making. And these are local eggs from our farmers’ market. How local? About a mile and a half away, I’m told. That’s pretty local. They’re crazy expensive, but they’re delicious. And they’re not from a factory farm. I like that, too.

  • Mom-Friendly Meals: Steel-Cut Oats

    I leave before 7 a.m. for daycare dropoff and work, which means that I eat breakfast after I’m at my desk. There’s a deli on the ground floor of my building, so I’m able to buy breakfast and lunch there, but that adds up quickly.

    In an effort to keep the complex mornings as simple as possible–and to keep costs down–I’ve started making a big batch of steel-cut oats and reheating a serving once I’m at work. I also take a small container of walnuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon to mix in.

    Steel Cut Oats To Go

    For a while, I was making the oats in the slow cooker, but I found that they wound up mushy. If you like mushy oats, then that technique will work well for you; I’m having better luck with the following method:

    • Stovetop
    • Saucepan
    • 3 parts unsweetened almond milk
    • 1 part steel cut oats

    Put all of those together and bring to a boil; reduce heat to a low simmer and cook for 25 minutes, stirring several times. Cool and refrigerate.

    If I start this process early enough, I set aside a portion for the next day. If I don’t, I do that in the morning. Once at the office, I transfer it to a microwave-friendly dish, heat it up, and stir in the toppings.

    Someone will tell me I shouldn’t be boiling the almond milk. You can also use water.

  • Mom-Friendly Meals

    Recently, some of my friends have said, “You really seem to have this meal-planning thing down. What’s your secret?”

    I do not have the meal-planning thing down. My secret is that I have a child who is slightly older than their child.

    I think there are a lot of us in this boat. We think, “That person over there is doing this much better than I am.” And the truth is, they’re just working with different circumstances.

    One of my college friends has a daughter about two months older than Baguette. She also has an older child and a stepchild. And when her daughter was a baby, every night this friend would post on Facebook about some amazing meal she was making her family for dinner.

    Now, I know her. She wasn’t doing this to brag about how much better she was at parenting. She was doing it to show that it could be done–that often when you feel overwhelmed, it’s in your head. She wasn’t boasting, she was demonstrating.

    But what I couldn’t figure out was this: how was she managing it? Like me, she had a full-time job outside of the home. Like me, she had an infant. Unlike me, she had two other children. So how was she pulling off this amazing feat?

    As it turns out, she has a shorter commute. Like, a lot shorter. Mine is an hour each way. Hers is more like 15 minutes.

    See what I mean? Different circumstances.

    And my own circumstances have changed. Looking back, I’m not really sure what I ate when Baguette was a baby. I cooked for her, but I don’t remember what I made for myself. After a while, I found that I could use the crock pot on the weekends to make a big batch of something. That counted as cooking.

    slow cooker
    I no longer use the slow cooker for oatmeal, though.

    More recently, I’ve been able to use the stove a little. Last night I made shrimp with bell peppers and zucchini in Red Thai Curry Sauce, served over quinoa. I’m having leftovers for lunch.

    I have no idea what’s for dinner tonight.

    Again, I think there are a lot of us in this boat. So I’m starting an occasional series called “Mom-Friendly Meals.” I’m going to write about what I cook, how I choose recipes, what tools I use, how I find ingredients, and anything else that comes to mind. You can follow me on Twitter at @tragicsandwich; I’ll be using the hashtag #momfriendlymeals for these posts.

    One thing to keep in mind: These are mom-friendly recipes. At our house, we all eat different things. Baguette is going through a picky stage, and while we’re trying to move her through that, I’m not going to pretend that she ate the Thai curry with me. And Mr. Sandwich has his own palate, and tends to do his own cooking. So our kitchen is very busy, but we’ve finally started eating together as a family.

    Now we just have to clean off the rest of the kitchen table.