Much as I enjoy being married to a wife who is a great cook, we have had our moments. One of those moments was the day I realized that she expected me to continue being my own guy soon after we got married. I guess there is a bit of chauvinist in every young husband. You finally get married and think to yourself, "I wonder what she'll make for dinner." That thought is only reinforced when your loving wife starts to cook. But cooking isn't supposed to be a wife's job. It's something we all have to do and one day when she wasn't feeling well the lady told me to fix my own dinner. It was a perfectly reasonable request.
But I hadn't cooked anything in a while and I drew a blank. So I went out and bought us fast food. Zip ahead to several years later. We resolved my dilemma by agreeing that I should help in the kitchen every now and then. We tried a set schedule but that became a chore for both of us. So for the past few years I just help out when the moment feels right. And sometimes I cook dinner. But when I was relearning my self-survival skills for the kitchen, I fell back on a few old favorite "recipes" out of pure desperation. We laugh about those quick meal plans now.
1. Sandwiches and Side Items
Who doesn't know how to make a sandwich? You take two pieces of bread, spread something creamy on them, and slap something solid in-between the bread. Or if you're really desperate you spread peanut butter on one slice and jelly on the other.
In the early days of our marriage if I was hungry and the lady was not in the mood to make something she would tell me to make a sandwich. After about 6 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she came up behind me and said, "Is that really the only sandwich you know how to make?"
And she was right. I knew how to make a lot of sandwiches. She inspired me to dig a little deeper in the fridge next time. Now when I want a sandwich for a snack I make something other than PB&J. I save that for the kids.
A good sandwich needs the right bread. Sometimes I use artisan bread. Sometimes I use multigrain or rye bread. The flavor of the bread should complement the ingredients it holds.
We buy three kinds of mustard. At first I was skeptical. Maybe we're spending too much money, I thought. But if you're buying three jars of mustard they'll last you a long time or you'll enjoy eating a lot of mustard.
We buy dark green lettuce, think tomatoes, pickles, Vidalia onions (I only like sweet onions), and a mix of other interesting ingredients for sandwiches. Did you know you can spread black olives on a lot of sandwiches?
To simplify my creativity every week we prepare four or five plastic containers of sandwich ingredients and put them in the fridge. We change out the ingredients so my sandwiches don't become stale and boring. The lady calls that PB&J syndrome.
We also prepare some sides like egg salad, potato salad, various slaws, potato wedges, hummus and chopped veggies, and other nice edibles. We only have 1 rule: no chips. We're teaching our kids about life without junk food. We're not the best teachers in the world but we limit the numbers of chip bags we buy every month.
Eating a good sandwich starts with making a good sandwich. There is more to the art than meets the eye, but it's still a quick, easy way to make a nice snack when you don't feel like cooking and cleaning up pots and pans afterward.
2. Eggs and their Friends
Eggs have been on the receiving end of bad dietary advice and criticism for many years. Science has begun challenging the old assumptions about how eggs are supposed to be bad for you. Common sense should have told people that mother chickens won't make bad sauce for their chicks any more than a human mother's milk will be bad for her babies.
Eggs are not only safe to eat, they are a healthy food. They contain an ingredient that fights bad cholesterol. Sadly, most of society is still locked in the dark ages of evil egg propaganda.
You can make a lot of different meals with eggs. Scrambled eggs are just the first recipe many of us learn to make. I'm not a big fan of fried eggs but they are obviously easier to prepare than scrambled eggs.
I like scrambled eggs, though, because you can do so much with them. You can flavor them by adding garlic and green onions while you cook them. You can add other ingredients, too.
And it's not too big a leap of the imagination to soak some bread in the scrambled egg yolk so you make French Toast. I don't think that's really a French recipe but maybe it is.
If you're trying to go easy on the bread then pull out the cheese and make an omelet. How do you go wrong with that?
If you know how to boil an egg you can add them to salads or use them as a base for salads. But boiling eggs for egg and potato salad implies more prep and cooking work than I enjoy when I just want a snack.
Once in a while my wife and I will boil a few eggs and put them in the refrigerator. They'll last a few days and you can do many things with them. For example, you can make deviled eggs in just a couple of minutes if you already have hard boiled eggs sitting in the fridge. You can also drop a couple of egg halves into an instant salad to strengthen your proteins.
If all I have to do is pull a few previously cooked eggs out of the refrigerator, I can quickly add some mayonnaise and whip up a mean egg salad. Just add a few seasonings and, voila! You're done.
I don't know how many time in my first year of marriage I set eggs aside in the fridge as I was rummaging around for a snack. I just didn't realize they really don't need that much time and effort to make a quick meal.
3. Heat a Can of Soup
Nothing disappoints people faster than saying, "There is nothing to eat!" when you have a cupboard full of soup cans. Just pour the soup into a mug and put it into the microwave for 1-2 minutes. How hard is that?
Soup by itself is a boring food so I may make a light sandwich or whip up a quick egg salad to go with it. Cheese and crackers are also a great side item for some soups.
When you're ill and need a quick lift up, nothing beats chicken soup. Chicken soup is the miracle food of the canned food industry.
To be completely honest, canned soup is not as good as homemade soup. So why not make up a batch of homemade soup that you can eat all week? We sometimes do that.
If you can heat canned soup you can heat homemade soup stored in the refrigerator. It's that simple and no excuses are acceptable.
Forethought and Planning are the Keys
My grandfather used to say, "Somebody has to kill the cow." He meant there is really no such thing as "fast food". It's not that the food is quickly made. It's that most of the prep work is done in advance before you buy the meal. The restaurant workers just have to heat the hamburger and put two pieces of bread around it.
Although it may seem like cooking is a lot of work it's a necessary part of our lives. If you take pride in learning how to make even the simplest of meals they will taste better. And to be proud of yourself do something clever: set up everything you need before you start feeling hungry.
That way you'll be able to make your own fast food and it will taste better. It will also be healthier for you than restaurant food.
