Food and bachelordom seem to make odd counterparts. Think "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach" and just how many people seem to buy the argument that the real reason people marry is that they get sick of TV dinners.
I went through a phase of bachelorhood in which I couldn't even get anyone to taste any food I whipped up. From there, things seemed to move straight to the phase wherein people assumed that I was creating elaborate, gourmet 10-course meals all the time. Let's face it: I'm not that crazy and if cooking for one (as is normally the case for me) it's seldom worth the time investment. It's still worth occasionally doing something more elaborate, but definitely not all the time.
At breakfast, for example, although I have 3 types of oats (steel-cut, old-fashioned, and instant) in the cupboard at the moment, the ones that I'm reaching for are probably the instant. For the steel-cut do get used, they're destined to spend overnight in the smallest of my slow-cookers (which incidentally is still too large for this purpose), as I really don't want to spend any extra time in the mornings. The only exception to the time-minizimation rule is weekends, but even there it doesn't get much more elaborate than pancakes or McMuffin-clones. If looking for a more-sugary fix for breakfast, I'm probably reaching for some Triple Berry Oatmeal Crisp or, like this morning, a homemade whole-wheat banana chocolate muffin.
Fast forward to lunch: this semester I seem to be spending more evenings on campus than mornings, so I'm trying to put a little more effort into lunch and save the simplest stuff for dinner. Below is a photo of was today's lunch - simple food as normal. (My rice cooker leaves you with a crust on the bottom if you only cook a single portion - hence the slightly strange looking rice in the photo. I'm a fan of reality, so I prefer to avoid trying to photoshop out such things).
Some plain brown rice (call me crazy, but I happen to like it), a couple pieces of "Shake n' Bake" chicken, and a few brussel sprouts, that I was handed a few days ago while walking through the backyard (thanks Dan!), fried up in a little butter. Overall nothing too complex or worth getting excited over.
Dinner was similarly unexciting: some homemade pizza. I've been experimenting with an high-moisture, no-knead, olive-oil dough recipe, and it's now about 50% whole wheat. This way you get fresh dough with essentially no extra prep time, as you can get a batch of dough together in less than 5 minutes when waiting for something else to finish, and then just stow in the fridge for a couple of weeks after an initial rise. (Incidentally, Rubbermaid's produce saver containers work well for other things like yeast that needs to breeze - I've never used mine for veggies). All told, the pizza takes less than half an hour to move from a pile of dough and a few ingredients to chowing down on some pizza.
Superstore was out of fresh basil yesterday, which changed my meal plans somewhat. Tonight's pizza began with an alfredo sauce base layer. Though I'm a sucker for alfredo sauce and have typically been making my own - even though each meal of fettucini alfredo probably takes a year or two off your life - this stuff came from a jar. A few cloves of fresh garlic went on top (no need to worry about vampires tonight!), and they were followed by a whole pile of (drained, previously frozen) spinach and followed up with a final layer of mozzarella. Unfortunately I was out of mushrooms and forgot to grab some olives. Two slices for dinner, and the remaining two slices for lunch tomorrow. (Why cut a pizza into more slices than necessary?)
Do I get bonus marks for eating brussel sprouts and spinach in the same day?
