Okay, this is ‘only’ a ‘human recipe generator’ (me), so I’m afraid I cannot provide recipes instantly (sometimes I can 
).
Anyway, if you have a few potential ingredients at home, and you don’t know what to do with them, you can write them down in the comment section of this page along with your e-mail. I will then try to generate you a recipe as soon as I’ve got a moment.
41 responses so far ↓
rosa // July 12, 2008 at 7:56 pm |
Good idea
I love coming up with recipes for whatever’s there too. Actually usually even more than shopping for one specific recipe.
Anyway, here’s a first challenge:
I have too many eggs, potatoes and some wilted spring onions. Also sour cream and quark. What do you suggest?
Somethingfromanything // July 12, 2008 at 11:31 pm |
Well, you could for example do a potato bake, potato cakes, cream of potato soup or a Spanish Omelette type thing. If you have flour, you can make potato & spring onion quiche.
For the potato bake: peel & slice the potatoes & the spring onions, mix eggs with sour cream (and quark if you want) and add any kind of spices or cheese on top if you want. You could also acquire cabbage, beans and onions to throw in with the mix like my fellow cook at the Food Chain does.
For the potato cakes: Make mashed potato. Fry chopped spring onions and add with sour cream, quark and eggs to the potato mix. If you have breadcrumbs, coat the potato cakes with them before either baking or frying them.
For the omelette: chop potatoes finely, fry them a little, then pour egg-sour-cream-spring onion mix over them. Leave at low heat to set.
For the potato soup: Fry spring onions with small potato cubes. Pour over some salted/spiced water or stock. Leave to simmer until done. Put through the blender and stir in some sour cream/quark.
For the quiche: make quiche dough (flour, salt, sour cream). Pre-cook or bake potatoes, slice and put onto cooked quiche pastry with spring onions. Pour over egg – cream/quark – spices mixture. Bake for approx half an hour.
Those any good?
rosa // July 14, 2008 at 7:30 pm |
Right. Also had some leftover cooked cauliflower today so just fried a few potatoes and threw in the cauliflower when they were almost done.
Still more potatoes left though, and spring onions _really_ have to be used within the next 2 days, so I think omelette it will be, possibly with sour cream dip? Oooh, the possibilities!
Cyrillia // August 9, 2008 at 2:46 am |
I really need help here, I need to figure out a few main dishes here cause I’m broke until NEXT friday.
This is what I have:
1/2 bottle of japanese plum wine (prolly flat)
1/2 bottle of Lambrusco (also prolly flat)
HUGE jar of pickle spears
large jar of onion slices pickled in jalepeno juice
3 cooked leftover thin skillet steaks
12 pack of coke zero
1/2 of a soggy subway sandwich
1/2 bag of precooked breaded chicken patties
frozen broccoli
frozen crab
canned salmon
instant mashed potatos
pasta (alot)
tomato sauce
canned mandarin orange segments
boxed stuffing mix
misc cereals
instant oatmeal
canned tuna
canned green chile enchilada sauce
canned tomatos
ketchup
mustard
hot dogs
ranch dressing
old baby carrots
corn tortillias
jello
6 pack of v8
lasagna noodles
cranberry sauce
canned corn
As you can see, I have a ton of mismatched stuff. My husband is a picky eater and I need at least 8 different dinner recipes. Please help!
Angela // August 9, 2008 at 11:17 am |
Hi!
Well, that sounds a bit like the kind of stuff we used to have at one of my previous workplaces, apart from a few things I’m unfamiliar with such as ‘Ranch dressing’ (are you American by any chance?) which I had to look up. Assuming you like all these ingredients in any combination, here is what me and my colleagues assembled at work plus some other suggestions:
At work, a ‘hit’ was always tuna-tomato-pasta, although it looks pretty gross. I would suggest to turn it into something more appetising, such as a tomato-tuna lasagne or a tomato-tuna ‘fisherman’s pie’ with your instant mash potato. Just mix the canned tomatoes with tuna and, if you want, some of your veg, and… do you have any spices or stuff like onions or garlic? Basically, you make a tuna-tomato sauce and layer it with either pasta or top it with mashed potato and bake it in the oven.
If you cut of any still-dry bread from your subway sandwich, you can toast it dry, grate it and use it as batter for making potato-fishcakes with your tin salmon and instant mash potato. Just mix the tin salmon with mashed potato and, if you want, some mustard, salt and spices, make patties and put breadcrumbs round them. Then fry, deep-fry or bake them. Maybe make a salad to go with them from your pickles and ranch dressing – and maybe also have cranberry sauce as a dip.
Another thing I see here is sausage casserole: use tomatoes as base (preferably with onions, garlic, spices or use a bit of enchilada sauce – or all of it!), put in chopped hot dogs, carrots and other vegetables you like and serve it as a ‘hot pot’ with dumplings made from stuffing mix and/or mashed potato. Feel free to also put some wine in here.
The chicken patties you could also cut up and use with the corn tortillas, the enchilada sauce and ranch dressing – and maybe cranberry sauce. Alternatively, you could serve the chicken patties or the steaks ‘British/German roast style’ with vegetables, stuffing balls, cranberry sauce and mashed potato balls deep-fried in breadcrumbs.
The crab I would either put into a soup or see if you can combine it with the above ‘mexican’ suggestion. The soup it probably better. You can make so many different kinds of crab soup. I once saw a recipe for crab soup with had barley and tomatoes in it or you could use your oats. I personally have made anything with crab, but I have observed cooks in Chinese restaurants making so many different dishes with them. It is difficult to make a decent stock with anything frozen, so your soup would either have to rely on the crabmeat producing flavour or some ingredients that overpower the blandness.
Options would be:
1. Crème of crab soup, based on béchamel-sauce (flour, butter, milk, stock, alcohol)
2. Hearty crab-soup with stock made with hot-dogs, enchilada sauce and other hot stuff, then put in vegetables and crabmeat. You could even sacrifice one of your steaks.
3. Chinese-style crabmeat and corn soup by crossing a few Chinese recipes (e.g. sweet and sour with tomatoes)
More to follow in a few minutes…
Angela // August 9, 2008 at 11:35 am |
Something that I am personally very fond of is tomato soup with oats. Which friends derogatively call my ‘tomato porridge’. It’s tomato soup with fried oats used instead of expensive rice. It tastes just like my grandma’s tomato and rice soup. I also fry onions with the oats and sometimes garlic or ginger or other spices. Your problem might be to make a decent tomato soup from tin tomatoes. Usually it’s easier (quicker) to make it from tomato puree. But you can also blend tin tomatoes and maybe experiment with your other tomato sauces!
Hey, you can even make puddings such as jello with mandarin pieces or jello with some wine or other alcohol and, if you feel like buying some whipping cream, you can put the alcoholised and firm jello into a blender with whipped cream. Serve with mandarin pieces.
You could also make a mustard-sauce with the steaks and have them with mashed potatoes or the above mentioned battered mashed potato balls.
If you can buy bread (or feel like recycling some of the sub), you could make chicken burgers with ranch dressing or cranberry-ranch dressing and pickles (maybe some grated baby carrots and sweetcorn salad as a side dish?).
There is also a funny British dish called ‘Toad in a Hole’, which you could modify using a combination of stuffing mix and mashed potatoes with the hot dogs.
I’ve never had coke zero – does it freeze successfully when you let it go flat? That would also make a nice dessert! (I’m a great fan of home-made ice lollies).
It’s good that you have so much pasta. You can do near infinite variations on them – it just depends on how often you can bear eating pasta, and whether you want to ‘sacrifice’ any of the meat you could potentially use for other main dishes. If you have a mincer, you could even make lasagna or carbonara sauce by mincing the steaks!
Is this any help so far? Let me know if you want anything in a slightly more concrete form or if you have any ingredients you have not mentioned in this list (milk, butter, spices?) or have a small budget for extra ingredients (e.g. if there is a cheap outdoor market round the corner).
Cyrillia // August 9, 2008 at 2:10 pm |
This may sound silly, but I’ve been up all night and even though I hoped for a response, never thought I would get one so quickly. So THANK YOU!
Yes, I’m American, sorry.
Last night was day one of Dinner: Impossible. I ended up in a panic and sliced up the steaks and some onion and fried them with some seasoning and made fajitas. I topped them with sour cream and what little cheddar cheese I had left. Stupidly I used all the steak, (my husband has a big appetite and ate it all!) I had som canned black beans and mashed them up to put in the fajitas. I ended up eating only a small piece of cake for dinner since there was no fajitas left.
I don’t have any regular milk but do have butter and spices. I’m worried about making sure that I have enough protien in my meals to keep my Husband happy.
About the crab, I usually make an alfredo sauce and some pasta and put the crab in and he loves it, but I dont have any milk for the alfredo, might you have an alternative idea?
As for the canned tuna and salmon, they are the only protien I have in the house now. I did find I had bread crumbs in the counter. Do you think it would be ok to make tuna patties out of the tuna, breadcrumbs, maybe shredded carrot and some egg?
I really do appreciate all your help, but I’ll be honest, his pallete isn’t very sophisticated, He’s into hamburgers and french fries, so the simpler the better. He wont eat soup, though I love it. I’m interested about your Toad in the Hole recipe. Is that like pigs in a blanket? As for extra ingredients, I literally have maybe $3.00.
Somethingfromanything // August 9, 2008 at 11:36 pm |
Shame your husband does not like soups. I just remembered that I once made a delicious soup with V8 as a base!
Yes, I looked up ‘Pigs in a blanket’, and it seems very similar to ‘Toad in the hole’. What funny names people make up for dishes! A typical example for the British version would be this one.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/toadinthehole_83871.shtml
You could leave away the lard and the bacon.
At work, my co-workers usually just dumped a few sausages into an oven tray of batter mix and let it rise to cover the sausages. That was then served with mash. I thought it was a bit bland, so I tried making different batters and mashed potatoes. I found mustard mashed potatoes worked well with it. One day, one of my colleagues accidentally used some sage stuffing mix instead of a second packet of batter mix, and it tasted alright. But you could try adding other types of ‘covers’ for the sausages.
Your tuna patty idea sounds great. I’ve got a burger recipe here, which might also help:
http://somethingfromanything.wordpress.com/2007/12/
As for the Alfredo sauce alternative I don’t know how close you want to stay to the taste. It’s like a garlicy, cheesy type of Bechamel sauce, right? That would be pretty difficult with what you’ve currently got. Could you make a tomato sauce with crab meat in it or have it really stripped down. For instance, I sometimes just eat my pasta with some oil and some minced herbs and a couple of sliced mushrooms. You could take some dried herbs or spices with some salt, leave them in the oil for a few hours (with or without the crab meat) and make some sort of ‘crab pesto’ to go with the pasta. The pickle spears and the broccoli might even come in handy if finely chopped. What do you think?
Cyrillia // August 10, 2008 at 11:49 am |
Thank you so much for your help thus far. Luckily today I had an unexpected windfall and was able to get my hands on some more groceries.
I was able to get the following:
3lbs of Ground hamburger meat
green onion
hearts of romaine
2 pkg of instant alfredo sauce
4 eye of round cut steaks.
frozen french fries
polenta
mayonaise
milk
eggs, (I only had 1, I used it tonight, now i have 18!)
misc fruits
1lb of preshredded cheese
grape tomatos
etc…
I think I now have the makings of quite a few meals. Tonight I made salmon patties. I used 1 can of salmon and picked out most of the bones and put it in a large mixing bowl. I added breadcrumbs, grated carrot and the last egg I had as a binder. I mixed it all up by hand and made 3 balls out of it. I poured more breadcrumbs on a plate. I took a salmon ball and shaped it into a patty and pressed in into the plate of breadcrumbs and coated it on both sides. I had a skillet with a little olive oil hot in the pan and fried up the patties. I served it with some japanese style fried rice and topped off both with soy sauce. He loved it.
For lunch I tried some pasta with the herbs and mushrooms and found it fantastic.
Are you English? Hubby and I were talking tonight about when he visited England and they had something called a 7 second burger… sounds scarey but he said it was good.
Somethingfromanything // August 10, 2008 at 12:55 pm |
That sounds like you’ve got quite a lot of meals to choose from with all those ingredients you’ve got now. I can see a Spanish Omelette in there with frozen French fries and salad, burgers, several kinds of pasta sauces (you can make pasta bake with cheese now, too!) etc. Congratulations!
By the way, the pasta also tastes good with something nutty in it, but nuts are not always easy to come by.
As far as I know, Wendy’s fast food restaurant does 7-second-burgers. They are put together in 7 seconds, but the burger patty is fried as normal before they start counting
I’m not English, but I’ve lived here for almost exactly ten years now. I’m from Germany originally, but most of my professional or volunteer cooking experience I’ve had in England with cooks from all over the world. I keep on learning new things every month! Am currently being initiated into Iranian and different kinds of African cooking. Very fascinating… and TASTY!
Cyrillia // August 11, 2008 at 10:33 am |
That sounds facinating! If you have any Iranian or African recipe’s to share, I’d love to try them out!
Cyrillia // August 11, 2008 at 10:34 am |
Oh, And I wanted to add that I lived in Germany for 5 years. In Kaiserslautern.
anon // August 17, 2008 at 2:10 am |
Hi Cyrillia,
I just wanted to give you a helpful hint re: stretching your grocery budget. With your unexpected windfall, you could have taken it a bit further if you had purchased unshredded cheese and potatoes, rather than shredded cheese and frozen french fries. A bag of potatoes is soooooo cheap and making roasted potatoes in the oven is healthier than french fries anyway. I just toss about 4 or 5 potatoes with 1/3 vegetable oil (in a baggie or a plastic tupperware container). Then you can season them with whatever you have on hand (seasoning salt, garlic, pepper, parmesan cheese, rosemary, whatever) and they are sooooo good and soooo cheap!
Also, I buy a giant rectangle of cheese and shred it myself. You can freeze the cheese in individual baggies and save yourself a ton of money that way.
Just remember — you pay dearly for convenience!
Oh — and flank steak is an inexpensive but lean and tasty cut of beef. If you marinate it for several hours in soy sauce and honey (you could even top it with those green onions), it grills beautifully.
I’m kind of in the same boat — but by choice. We are trying out a new budget and I have about $70 to feed my family of 4 for the rest of the month. I just took inventory of my very diverse pantry and I am looking forward to coming up with some creative menus and filling in with the $70 for the rest!
Eventrouble // August 20, 2008 at 12:36 am |
Hey there,
I’m a college student in Honolulu, my roommate and I bought a buck of groceries like two weeks ago that we thought would last us for at least the month but we ended up feeding all of our (also broke) friends so now we don’t have much to work with and still need to try to make the rest of what we have last. I usually have a little bit of extra cash for additional ingredients, but not much — I’d really like to be able to take what we have and stretch it as far as possible. Here’s what we have:
Non-Perishable:
oatmeal, crispy rice cereal, fritos, nature’s valley granola bars, sky flakes crackers, several cans of tuna, 1 can spam, 1 can clam chowder, pancake mix, brown rice, lots of ramen noodles, dry manicotti noodles, garlic and herb and parma rosa pasta sauce mixes, lots of spaghetti sauce
In the fridge:
bread, bagels, butter, cooked beans, strawberry jelly, peanut butter, tortillas, soba noodles, tortillas, cream cheese, dill pickles, sweet relish, old grapes, pineapple and papaya fruit cups, soy milk, sour cream, miso paste, red potatoes, several large mushrooms and a cucumber
Freezer:
frozen stir fry veggies, broccoli, edamame, portuguese sausage, ground beef, hamburger patties, precooked breaded chicken strips, frozen shrimp (alot), ahi tuna steaks, green chile, orange juice and pot stickers
Our condiments and spices include:
Ketchup, yellow Mustard, dijon mustard, black bean garlic sauce, bbq sauce, soy sauce, maple syrup, stir fry sauce, mayo, Worcestershire sauce, whole garlic cloves, garlic salt, lemon pepper, red chile powder, oregano, furukake, cinnamon, basalmic vinegarette and sesame ginger salad dressing
any ideas you could give us would be great!! thanks for the help!
Angela // August 20, 2008 at 1:55 am |
Hi!
I’m just about to go to bed, but I will try and give you some quick ideas before I go off to the land of nod.
I would try to get some fresh vegetables and make something along the lines of:
• Fish stir fry with brown rice
• Meatballs with spaghetti sauce
• Tuna steaks (e.g. turned in lemon pepper, crushed garlic, salt and chilli powder mix) with fried potato slices and veg
• Fried pot stickers with a dip made from your condiments (not sure what these dumplings taste like – I can only guess from previous dumplings) or dumpling soup (can you put them in clam chowder?)
• Hamburger bagels with dill pickles and BBQ sauce, or have leave the pickles out and use them in a cucumber salad (possibly with some grapes or papaya if you like sweet and sour)
• Chicken wraps (if you have soft tortillas) with pickles and relish or garlic sauce or make hard shell tortillas with either chicken or beans or chicken and something like edamae hummus (made from mashed edamame with miso and chilli powder for instance or maybe even ginger & sesame dressing – can also be eaten with Fritos I assume).
• Take the batter of the chicken strips (or not) and make soba noodles with chicken, stir fry veg and peanut sauce (made with peanut butter and chilli powder) or make shrimp soba (can also be eaten cold as a salad with beans – I’ve seen the recipe on the net somewhere)
• You could stir some mince into the pasta sauces and fill the manicotti noodles with it and top it with some cream cheese and see what that turns out like. Or top is with your garlic and herb sauce.
• What about having savoury pancakes as a main meal – prepared like pizzas, filled with mushroom and garlic sauce or turned into wraps with BBQ sauce, veg and chicken? Or just make sweet ones with maple syrup and have something savoury as a dessert
• I also heard that in Honolulu, fried rice with spam is popular?
• I’ve never frozen soya milk. Would it be possible to reheat the jam, stir in soya milk and make ice pops with it?
• If need be, you can always add almost anything to ramen noodles (mushrooms, stir fry, broccoli, fish, shrimp).
• I’ve never had clam chowder. Would it taste good if you added some of your frozen seafood to it (prefried or grilled shrimp/bits of tuna steak)?
• Portuguese sausage seems to be eaten with fried spam and either eggs and/or rice. Have never had it before either. Can you make a sausage casserole with the pasta sauce, the potatoes and some broccoli with it?
• Try making spam and potato dumplings with pasta sauce
• A friend once made a surprisingly nice dish called ‘cabbage rice and beans’ from a student cookery book which is basically rice with cabbage (you could use your stir fry maybe) and a hot peanut sauce (I also added some sultanas). It sounds awful, but tastes very good!
• I also once had a nice Thai potato curry with peanut sauce and rice.
• If you want to make something British for a laugh you can even make some sort of cottage pie with mince, pasta sauce, some vegetables and a mash potato topping.
• Garlic mushrooms rice are also great, but then I eat mostly vegetarian.
That’s me for tonight. Will have another look at it tomorrow morning!
Here are some links to recipes that may serve as possible templates for your own experiments:
http://isitedible.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
http://hiphostess.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/edamame-hummus/
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=665587
http://happyhomebaking.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-frills-meals.html
Angela // August 27, 2008 at 8:51 pm |
hi! won’t be able to do the recipe generator for a couple of weeks as i’m gonna be without home internet!
jt msgypsysolo // September 9, 2008 at 6:14 pm |
I hav some pre cooked chicken patties, lot’s of frozen vegetables (some have pasta and veggies, some are just veggies, some are veggies and rice.). I also have some veggie burgers, and some mac and cheese and am wondring what the best ways are to combine some or all of these into unique
tasty meal(s).
<<I have a new microwave oven,
a toaster oven, and a crockpot, besides the stove top
and the oven (>
please send suggestions
or post some here.
thanks.:)
Angela // September 9, 2008 at 7:47 pm |
Hi! Just got back a few hours ago!
Uh, that’s quite a difficult one for me. I don’t know what your vegetables are, what’s inside your burgers or what other ingredients you have in the house, but I will give it a try!
You could just have burgers with salad (if you have salad or frozen veg that can be turned into salad), like I’ve had tonight. You could try jazzing up your maccaroni & cheese with some chicken meat and vegetables and additional spices such as chilli powder or herbs. Or you could try making a rice casserole along the lines of jollof rice with your frozen rice & veg and maybe chopped chicken patties). You could also make a pasta bake with chopped veggie burgers or chicken patties. Or you could get some potatoes and layer potato slices (raw, fried or cooked) with bits of veggie burger and veg and grate some cheese over it. You could also batter your vegetables and have them with sweet chilli sauce.
That’s it for the moment! Hope that sort of helps!
jt msgypsysolo // September 9, 2008 at 8:35 pm |
the veggies are bow tie pasta and spinach leaves, carrots, red peppers from trader joe’s.
other veggies are peas and carrots from whole foods or trader joe’s,
curried rice with veggies (vegetable biryani) from trader joe’s, and I often add additional veggies.
also vegetable fried rice and veggies (again I often add additional veggies) from trader joe’s, sometimes this also includes some chicken in it or just the plain without chicken in it.
these are my staples of veggies that I try to keep stock in the freezer alot.
jt msgypsysolo // September 9, 2008 at 8:36 pm |
thanks for your suggestions.:)
I think I might try a casserole or something.
Angela // September 9, 2008 at 9:04 pm |
Great. You could also make pancakes and fill them with chicken and creamy spinach!
My grandma was also a great fan of chicken with curried rice and veg.
Ala // September 25, 2008 at 4:18 am |
Hi. Okay I don’t really know how this works but I’ll try. Theres 10 of us and I have no money till next month. So theres like 7 days that I have dinner and don’t know what to make.
I have …..
Rice
Tomato sauce
3-4 five pound rolls of hamburger meat
Chicken
Lasagna noodles (lots)
Sticky rice
Canned corn
Canned green beans
Canned yams (but none of us like them)
Flour
Instant oats
1 Box instant potatoes
potatoes
5oz can tuna
3-4 cans cream of mushrooms
7 bags of blackeye peas
5 Boxes of some kind of vegetable soup
Pasta
Burritos
I think thats about all. But it has to be something easy to cook. I’m only 15. I’m also in the USA. But am willing to try different things (as long as they don’t look gross cause than my family won’t eat it, picky)
Thanks alot. Ala
Angela // September 25, 2008 at 9:50 am |
Hi!
That looks quite good. Not sure how much tomato sauce you’ve got (have you got any fresh vegetables e.g. onions or garlic?), but here are some potential recipes:
Chilli/Chilli Burritos
If you have onions, garlic or hot spices, fry them, then add hamburger meat (otherwise just fry hamburger meat). Add tomato sauce when meat is browned. You can cook some blackeye peas and add them to the mix and/or some drained corn. If you don’t want to use too much of the meat because you want it for something else, fry some uncooked rice with the meat and let it cook through in the meat/tomato sauce. (might need some water or stock added). You can then fill your burritos with this or have it with rice.
If you leave away the hot spices (and the beans/corn), you can also use it as a lasagna filling. If you have milk, butter and flour, you can make your own white sauce (brown flour in butter, stir in milk bit by bit so you don’t get lumps, add salt, pepper – and nutmeg if you have – to taste) and if you have cheese, you can top it with that.
Meat Balls with Tomato Sauce (or Mushroom sauce?)
Make some meatballs by mixing hamburger meat with spices (don’t know if you have eggs, if not, don’t worry, if yes, add couple) and a bit of flour or grated dry bread if you want to (you can even use oats – a friend once told me about very tasty turkey and oat
burgers, so it probably works with beef, too! You can even make burgers just from oats and a few other bits, but that’s maybe too crazy for your family!)
Fry, grill or bake the meat balls. Serve them with tomato sauce and either pasta, roast potatoes or rice) and, if you want some veg, green beans. Is instant potato the stuff you use for mash? If yes, you could also have it with mash. If you want to use the meat for something else, make bean burgers or potato patties (with egg, flour or ground dried bread, spices). You could even add tuna to the potato patties.
Not sure if cream of mushrooms is the same as in the UK, but maybe you could use it as an alternative sauce for the meatballs with some modifications?
Potato & Blackbean Bake
Peel & slice potatoes, cook black eyed peas. Make something a bit like the chilli, if you don’t want to use tomato sauce, use some of the vegetable soup instead. Cover with potato slices, put some oil, salt and spices over the potatoes and bake until potatoes are cooked & browned.
You could also make a kind of potato moussaka by layering fried potato slices with the mince-mix and making a white sauce (see above). Can also be topped with cheese. If you don’t like white sauce or happen to have yoghurt, you can also paste that on top – yoghurt turns into tasty cheese in the oven!
Chicken & Rice
Again, I don’t know how the cream of mushrooms tastes like, but would it be possible to use it for a sauce for chicken that you could then have with rice (and green beans?).
Vegetable Soup
You could ‘beef up’ your vegetable soup and add potato cubes, pasta or rice, black beans, chopped green beans, small meat balls, chicken – and the yam (if any of you liked it).
Just thinking: I’ve never had canned yam. Could you use some of it for making burgers/patties?
If you feel adventurous, you could attempt a wine-less risotto. I don’t think I’ve ever made one, because I’m allergic to alcohol and my colleagues tend to make it, so I cannot give any advice there.
Hope some of this helps. Let me know if you have any more questions. I have to shoot off to do some cooking now – it’s peanut butter & potato curry at this end!
Jo // October 2, 2008 at 4:26 am |
ok.. I have in my fridge
capsicum
tomatoes
carrots
broccoli
celery
onion
asparagus
little bit of spinach
two beetroots
olives
parmesan cheese
then I have – flour, a little bit of dried pasta and rice… and thats about it. i’m feeling entirely uninspired
Jo // October 2, 2008 at 4:30 am |
oh and i also have,
frozen peas
frozen beans
frozen corn
and some frozen pastry
I have 2 lemons
some black bananas
and oranges
Jo // October 2, 2008 at 4:31 am |
and red lentils.
That really is all this time
Jo // October 2, 2008 at 4:54 am |
alas I lied again, but not intentionally!
I also have various spices, some fresh basil, 1 can of chick peas and some milk.
Cheers.
There’s more all the time. This is what comes of opening the fridge/pantry and staring bereftly.
I have a tin of crushed pineapple as well, BUT it has been in in one pantry or another (moving houses) for about the last 8 years so so don’t entirely trust it (it might contain new life forms) and as such have not been able to make myself open it.
Angela // October 2, 2008 at 2:16 pm |
hi! you’ve got a lot of stuff there. are you looking for a one-off recipe for yourself or are you cooking for several days for several people?
If it’s the former, I’d suggest a vegetable tart (made with the frozen pastry and whichever fresh vegetable you want on it) accompanied with beetroot & carrot salad. You could have baked bananas or another dessert involving mashed ripe bananas (banana ice, banana yoghurt if you happen to have some of that). Do you have eggs or cheese?
Anyway, for the beetroot & carrot salad coarsely grate both types of vegetables and make a dressing from lemon juice – and if you have, salt, oil, and garlic.
For the vegetable tart, use frozen pastry according to directions. You can then decide whether you want to make the tart just with roast vegetables, fresh basil, (olive) oil and (parmesan) cheese (this version can be eaten on its own or with a sauce), with a tomato base, an egg base a spinach base or a hummus-style base (made with chick peas).
Other options depend on what kind of spices you’ve got and what you’re tastes are. Here are some examples:
Beetroot & Celery Curry with Rice
Tomato & Teriyaki vegetable hotpot (to Dungeon’s & Dragons players also known as ‘Flamestrike’s Soup’)
Pasta bake with capsicum, spinach & onion
Mediterranean Vegetable Soup (with or without pasta)
Hope that is some inspiration…
Jo // October 2, 2008 at 9:05 pm |
Hi
Thanks, lots of ideas there. I think I will try the salad and a the tart tonight, I have some friends coming over so that should be good. I will have to get some eggs though.
Thanks, thats a few different ideas for me. All I could think yesterday was stir fry or pasta which I have had far to often lately.
Jessigrl // October 16, 2008 at 7:21 pm |
So this is what I have on hand and hope to make something from. I don’t necessarily wnat to include all ingredients:
Boneless Chicken Breasts
Green onions
white potatoes
carrots
celery
white onions
chicken bouillion
BBQ sauce
seasoned bread crumbs
and of course all the basics:
veg oil
eggs
milk
butter
Please Help!!
Angela // October 17, 2008 at 12:41 am |
Hi! Sorry if this is a bit rushed. Just between two shifts! I am not cooking chicken breast very often, but I would suggest chicken breast with vegetable bake.
First, make the vegetable bake:
Chop & fry onions, add halved and sliced carrots, celery and potatoes. If you also have flour, you can make a white sauce from flour, butter, milk – or you can make a gravy later with the chicken juices and the bouillon, herbs and cornflour.
If you decide to go with a white sauce, arrange vegetables in an ovenproof dish, pour over the white sauce and top everything with the bread crumbs.
You can then fry the chicken breast – stuffed and battered or just plain – or you could try marinating it with a mixture of oil, BBQ sauce and/or herbs and spices.
You could also not pre-fry the vegetables and just arrange potatoes, chicken, celery, carrots and quartered onions in an oven tray and pour a mixture of oil, rosemary, thyme, chilli powder, salt and pepper over it (cajun spice mix is also excellent for this) and bake it until everything is cooked thoroughly. This would even go well with your BBQ sauce or, again, a vegetable or chicken gravy.
An alternative would be to make a chicken & celery soup, a chicken frittata, a chicken & celery stirfry.
Hope that helps. Off to making a chick pea, coriander and coconut curry and a middle-eastern lentil, okra and aubergine stew!
Shannon // November 11, 2008 at 11:14 pm |
OK…I would like to make this soft granola, I bought them froma lady who makes them when I was 3 states away…and there is no contact info, but they are SO GOOD I must figure out how to make them! Here are the ingredients that are listed…
Rolled oats
Peanut butter
eggs
craisins (like raisins but cranberries)
white cocoa chips
sugar
brown sugar
sesame seeds
sunflower seeds
flax seeds
shortening ( I would prefer not to use this given it’s bad for your arteries)
baking soda
vanilla
natural orange oil (this makes it taste so YUM)
These are like a softer granola, very smoothe, but not like chewy granola, they are so good! Help!
Angela // November 12, 2008 at 12:52 am |
Granola! I actually had to google that word. I thought it was mainly an insult hurled at people with Birkenstock type sandals! But thanks to Wikipedia I found out that it is a baked form of muesli. Good to know! Anyway, I sometimes make a fried muesli which is similar to a ‘granola’ and I experiment with flapjacks, so between the two, I think I can work out some bits of your granola recipe…
My first experiment would be the following: Use only the egg whites, whisk them. Mix them in a bow with the brown and the white sugar, the baking soda, the vanilla and orange oil, the peanut butter, the rolled oats and the flax and sesame seeds. Normally I you would add the shortening as it increases the shelf-life of your cereal. An alternative would be a shortening-type fat made from palm oil or ‘coconut butter’ (apparently you can get the German ‘Palmin’ in European delis in the US). That would be my suggestion. Then bake everything to the desired softness.
Wait a moment: what does the granola look like? Are the craisins and white chocolate loose within the cereal or are they ‘fused’ to the oats? If they are loose, then just add them after the baking when the granola has cooled, if they are ‘in the mix’ you will need to add them somehow in the oven or straight after the baking.
Angela // March 19, 2009 at 11:05 pm |
I will be away for a few days, so I won’t be able to answer as quickly as usual!
Paul // May 20, 2009 at 1:19 am |
Well I’m on a super budget hopefully you can help. My cooking skills leave something to be desired, but I haven’t yet accidentally created something that would try and attack small children…
I have
Flour
Rice
Peanut Sauce
Soy Sauce
Wild Rice
Coffee Beans
Oats
Butter
Coconut Milk
Evaporated Milk
Garbanzo Beans
Popcorn
Maple Syrup
And of course Lentles…
Any ideas oh great one?
Angela // May 20, 2009 at 1:37 pm |
Can just give you a super-quick reply as I’m off to do a tour with my band in a few hours, and I still have to pack! I would go for a rice dish (combination of wild rice and rice) with satay sauce made from peanut sauce/butter, cocount milk, soy sauce. So now you can either do the simple thing of putting beans into the satay sauce or try and make little fried bean or lentil dumplings to provide a more pleasant taste experience. Depending on your equipment you can make these from flour, beans or lentils and spices and then deep-fry them. You can even use oats in them or coat them with ground popping corn (not the popped corn!). You can even experiment mixing a bit of maple syrup and evaporated into either the sauce or the dumpling mix for a sweeter taste. Alternatively you can make a lentil-peanut curry with rice dumplings! Hope that helps – sorry it had to be just a quick one!
Angela // May 20, 2009 at 1:39 pm |
PS: you could also try making a dessert with coconut milk, evaporated milk, maple syrup, coffee and rice! Or you could make a very interesting porridge!
Angela // May 20, 2009 at 2:47 pm |
Will be away from 21 May- 04 June 2009.
Rachel // June 8, 2009 at 10:21 pm |
Ok, I’ve got chicken breast, baby bellas, cream cheese…. Sounds good together but I’m not sure what to do. Any ideas?
Angela // June 8, 2009 at 10:31 pm |
Hi! I assume by baby bellas you mean a type of mushroom? Do you have anything else in the house like stock cubes, spices or onions? What you can do is fry the chicken breast, take it out of the pan, then in the same pan fry the mushrooms (at a very hot temperature) and anything else you’d like in the sauce (e.g. garlic, onions, peppers). Either take the mushrooms/veg out again or leave them in the pan, depending on whether you want your mushrooms/veg crisp or soft. Now add the cream cheese (still the same pan). Add a bit of vegetable stock and, if you’ve got, a bit of cream. If you have neither, try water or milk. When the cheese is dissolved (be careful that it does not curdle), season the sauce with e.g. pepper, garlic, capers, paprika or curry powder or herbs – or just salt, depending on what flavour you feel like. Then add the chicken breast (and vegetables if you took them out to leave them crisp) and serve it! Any good?
Angela // June 8, 2009 at 10:36 pm |
You can also stuff the chicken breasts cordon-blue style with mushroom-cheese filling. You can do these either with or without breading the chicken.