Help--- I HATE TO COOK

[kilee]

I really HATE, HATE, HATE to cook. I hate the whole process. I'd rather live off cereal than cook. However, my family doesn't feel the same way. After looking over our finances for 2005 I found we spent nearly 25% of our income on eating out. That is a lot.

So my husband and I have challenged ourselves to not eat out for the next 30 days (well- we are allowing 1 time only and it's for DS's birthday dinner we already booked). So that is 29 dinners I'm going to have to make not to mention lunch type foods on the weekend.

So, I need ideas of how to make cooking easy. PLEASE!! I mean like 2-3 steps at the most. I cannot cook to begin with- much less get complicated. I have a freezer full of food, a frig stocked, and cupboards stocked (you see I grocery shop every week-then throw out the items because nobody ever touches them).

I'm open to any and all ideas!!! THANK YOU!!!

*** I just wanted to add- 2-3 days a week it's just me and ds. My dh travels for work and it gone 2-3 days (his work pays for those meals- so those don't count). So 1/2 a week I'm only cooking for 2.

 

[staci]

jar of cheese soup, can of salsa, some cooked chicken; mix; eat in tortillas.

spaghetti sauce, whatever veggies you have; heat. cook spaghetti, heat some bread; serve.

frozen pizza

pancakes, buy the mix, add the water, heat; heat some bacon.

buy a george forman; grill anything you want (chicken, brats, burgers) buy some of those ricearoni boxes and serve with that.

can of refried beans, cooked ground beef, taco seasoning, mix. Eat on tortillas with whatever toppings you want.

cooked chicken, a couple cans of chicken broth, some noodles, and any veggies in your fridge, heat and simmer awhile; chicken noodle soup.

 

[HayGan]

I hate to cook as well and I have to say that the crock pot is my best friend. Very easy to prepare and clean-up and most meals will last for a day or two!

We are eliminating eating-out as well so I have to dust off my crock-pot cookbook as well!

 

[barkley]

put a beef or pork roast into crockpot and cover with bbq sauce-let cook all day. when you remove the roast it will shred for bbq sandwiches (just put on buns).

same technique with a roast and canned or jarred enchilada sauce-take roast out, shred, put into tortillas and cover with more enchilada sauce and grated cheese. heat in oven until cheese melts-enchiladas.

for chicken-use shake and bake but dip in ranch dressing first (keeps it moist and kids tend to realy like the taste).

easy meatloaf-add lipton or grass's dry onion dip mix, some bread or cracker crumbs and a couple of eggs to ground beef. while it bakes make instant mashed potatos and use canned gravy.

soup starter-follow directions on package but throw in (drained) several cans of whatever veggies, beans in the pantry. can also add a can of tomato sauce. takes less than an hour start to finish.

fish or chicken-rinse, put in foil with frozen veggies and a pat of butter. bake. entire meal in one package.

i've known lots of moms that brown huge packages of ground beef at one time and then break them into 1 or 2 pound packages. they pull them out to defrost during the day and then add them to jarred spagetti sauces, reheat with taco seasoning, throw into mac n cheese...

 

[staci]

put a beef or pork roast into crockpot and cover with bbq sauce-let cook all day. when you remove the roast it will shred for bbq sandwiches (just put on buns).

same technique with a roast and canned or jarred enchilada sauce-take roast out, shred, put into tortillas and cover with more enchilada sauce and grated cheese. heat in oven until cheese melts-enchiladas.

for chicken-use shake and bake but dip in ranch dressing first (keeps it moist and kids tend to realy like the taste).

easy meatloaf-add lipton or grass's dry onion dip mix, some bread or cracker crumbs and a couple of eggs to ground beef. while it bakes make instant mashed potatos and use canned gravy.

soup starter-follow directions on package but throw in (drained) several cans of whatever veggies, beans in the pantry. can also add a can of tomato sauce. takes less than an hour start to finish.

fish or chicken-rinse, put in foil with frozen veggies and a pat of butter. bake. entire meal in one package.

i've known lots of moms that brown huge packages of ground beef at one time and then break them into 1 or 2 pound packages. they pull them out to defrost during the day and then add them to jarred spagetti sauces, reheat with taco seasoning, throw into mac n cheese...

The shake and bake with ranch dressing sounds really good! Im gonna have to try that!

 

[PixieDust32]

Oh boy! I love cooking. I just hate the dirty dishes and pots.

Well, I cook easy and quick meals most of the times, but you can check the food channel, they make quick and easy meals there.

The best thing to save money and time, is to make and schedule for whatever meals you are to make, then you know what to get when you go to the grocery store.

Check this websites.

www.FoodNetwork.com

www.RecipeRewards.com

http://quickandeasy.allrecipes.com/default.asp

http://www.razzledazzlerecipes.com/quickneasy/

http://www.minutemeals.com/


Good Luck.

 

[icebrat001]

I do okay with cooking, but I HATE cooking at our place because it's so small and there isn't really a place to prep or move around, for that reason, I don't cook often. Like you, we eat out a lot, but since we are trying to buy a house now, I'm hoping to cut back on the food.

Breakfast is easy so I cook that easily.

Safeway had a sale the other day, so I went in and purchased 30 boxes of hot pockets, another 30 various frozen dinners, some family size dinners, pasta roni, hamburger helper, rice-a-roni, crockpot secrets... So now I don't really have to cook, just toss it in the crockpot, oven or microwave. Its a lot cheaper than eating out. Can you believe I only spent $80 on all that stuff, I also got a few packages of ground turkey, ground chicken, chicken legs and it will probably last us 3 weeks, I think that is very good, because we can easily spend over $400 a month eating out.

Maybe you can invest in some of Rachael Rays cookbooks, or the good housekeeping one, I love it, but again, I can't cook because my kitchen is too small

 

[icebrat001]

put a beef or pork roast into crockpot and cover with bbq sauce-let cook all day. when you remove the roast it will shred for bbq sandwiches (just put on buns).

...

Wow, that's it? SO would love that, I'm going to try it.

 

[jenwolgey]

I've had a lot of success with a subscription to this website-it's great:

http://www.savingdinner.com/

 

[kilee]

I am writing all this down. Ironically our local grocery store (a giant chain store) has Pork Roasts as their b1g1 meat this week (they seem to always have 1 meat item for this). So, I'm going to do the crock pot w/ the bbq sauce. I can definetly get into cooking in the crock pot-- that is about the only thing I like to use. I figure I've used my stove/oven maybe- 10 times in 2005.

 

[icebrat001]

I've had a lot of success with a subscription to this website-it's great:

http://www.savingdinner.com/

$30 a year, is it really THAT good?

 

[OceanAnnie]

I don't mind cooking too much. Dinner can sometimes be a problem.

I love the crockpot. I used it today!

Sone of my favorite recipe sites:
www.recipezaar.com
www.kraftfoods.com
www.pillsbury.com/Solve/meal_planning.aspx

The pillsbury site has an easy meal section and cooking for two.

All of the sites have a section where you can type in the ingredients you have on hand and it will come up with a dish for you. I love that!

 

[barkley]

has anyone tried the new crockpot wrappers that are at the stores? apparantly you line the crockpot with it and then put everything in to cook. then when you are done eating you just pull the thing out and toss it (they say "no more crockpot cleanup". i'm wondering if these things are any good.

you can also put a whole bodied chicken in with a can of chicken broth in the crockpot. when you pull it out it falls off the bones. cook up some egg noodles and while they are cooking thicken up the liquid in the crockpot to make gravy. then you end up with chicken and noodles (i usualy nuke a can of cubed carrots and peas to add to it).

 

[PixieDust32]

I like my crockpot too, but i rather cook on the stove.

I cook traditional Mexican food once a week also, DH just loves it, and the kids too, but it takes to longgggg!!

 

[Steffi]

I hate to cook, too. And I'm bad at it for the most part. I can bake a cake, but forget about real food. I just can't seem to orchestrate a meal so that everything is finished at the same time and tastes like it's supposed to. So we tend to spend way too much on eating out, also, but when I do cook at home, it's easy stuff or nothing! A few of the things I cook that turn out well and that the family likes are:

The crock pot bbq shredded pork that others have mentioned. I serve this on those frozen garlic Texas toasts with a salad on the side.

Tacos

Beef stroganoff (kind of): 1-1& a half pounds round steak, wide egg noodles, sour cream, cream of mushroom soup, beef boullion

Boil noodles, Cut steak into bite sized pieces (I find this much easier to do before the steak is completely thawed), brown steak with a tiny bit of veg. oil & a couple of cubes of boullion. Put the soup & sour cream into a casserole dish, add the cooked meat and all the pan juices, then add drained noodles and mix up.

Soup, salad, and grilled cheese sandwiches or other sandwiches

Fettucini alfredo using jarred Alfredo sauce, served with salad and frozen breadsticks

cooked boneless pork chops mixed into boxed au gratin potatoes

for chicken-use shake and bake but dip in ranch dressing first (keeps it moist and kids tend to realy like the taste).

This sounds great! I can't wait to try it!

Good luck to the OP with your no-eating-out challenge! Let us know how it goes!

 

[debbiedoo]

I like this website:

http://cooks.com


I find all kinds of things here

 

[WatchinCaptKangaroo]

quesidellas ~ shredded cheddar, tortilla. add cheese to tortilla, fold in half, microwave for 15-30 seconds (until cheese is melted). Add salsa, sour cream to dip if you want.

baked potatos ~ Bake potato, add topping(s). Some easy ones are canned chili, shredded cheese, sour cream, butter.

tuna salad sandwich ~ tuna, mayo, mustard, relish. Mix tuna with condiments. Put on bread. Eat.

Making chili with the powdered mix is easy.

 

[MzDiz]

Anything you can stick in the oven and forget about for a few hours is good. Get a good beef roast, about twice what your family will eat and stick it in a large baking dish. Add baby carrots right out of the bag, frozen pearl onions and roughly cubed potatoes - again, twice what you need. Pour about a third of a bottle of decent, dry red wine over everything, add some canadian steak seasoning, a little garlic and a can of diced tomatoes or tomato sauce, even V-8, whatever you have. Cover with foil and bake the whole mess at 350 until you can pull away some of the meat with a fork. We're going for that tender pot roast thing here. When it's done, pour all that liquid into a sauce pan and add whatever you think it needs to make a good gravy. Maybe some more water, beef stock, wine, pepper, whatever, and get it to a boil. Add about two teaspoons of conrstarch to a couple ounces of water and stir it up. Add that to the liquid and turn off the stove. You have easy as pie gravy.
While it seems like a lot, you've made most of another night's dinner here as well. Dice the leftover meat, carrots and potatoes, throw in the leftover gravy, add some more stock, fresh pepper and a bag of frozen mixed veggies, thicken with a little more cornstarch if needed and you have stew.
If there's a ton of that leftover, pour it into a frozen pie crust, top it with another and you have pot pie. See?
Try to think about what you can make out of the leftovers. If you're baking chicken, bake extra and have chicken salad the next day. You get the point.
Cooking's not so bad.

 

[zippeedee]

Lots of great ideas here
http://www.quickcooking.com/

 

[barkley]

QUICK baked potatos- wash and poke a few holes in the potato and microwave about 7 minutes (depending on the size) transfer to aluminum foil and bake (cuts baking time by about 75%). top with whatever you like.

we made "brown bag" chili tonite-it only takes about 20 minutes once you brown the meat (and we add canned kidney or black beans).

quick chicken parmesan-brown the chicken breasts on both sides on stove top, put in caserole with a jar of spagetti sauce. cover with foil for about 20 minutes. remove foil and cover with cheese. return to oven until cheese melts. cook up pasta while chicken is cooking.

2 things my mom taught me-basil, oregano and garlic make a dish taste italian, cilantro and chili powder make a dish taste mexican (so you can cook pretty much the same recipie but put different spice combinations in it, hang a new name on it and generaly get it past the kids ).