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The Single Man's Guide To TV Dinners
yokimbo writes "The Food Network had a show about TV dinners and how they're prepared, their history, etc... But, what about the useful information, like how they taste? Ray Cole has your solution at The Single Man's Guide to TV Dinners. Although, I think he needs to visit Web Pages That Suck." (Of course, TV dinners don't scream out the way ramen does for improvement and improvisation.)
Over the years, I've gone from making ramen a meal to making it a carbohydrate base in the occasional meal. I use it similarly to a base of rice for my favorite stir-fry recipe.
Sliced squash and zuchinni, with eggplant, stir-fried with soy sauce and optional sesame seeds. It's a basic ingredient for several dishes. Use it atop ramen or rice. Add drained black beans and rice and roll it in a burrito.
Squash season is here. Yum.
You gotta WORK that ramen. Make it work for you.
Visit Lockjaw's Lair. He won't bite.
Exactly, repeat after me "Life is too short to eat crap". Anyone who can follow basic directions can learn to cook. Cooks Illustrated was a huge help in this process for me.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
Totally agree. I didn't cook much until my girlfriend started to encourage me... Then I found this very funny book which has been a great help - Cooking for blokes: Duncan Anderson and Marian Walls. Note: It even includes a detailed section dedicated to explaining all those weird "gas mark" settings and spoon sizes!! Now I just wish they would write "ironing for blokes" :-)
You might just be trying to be funny, but i'll bite. Capsaicin, the active ingredient in chillies, not only stimulates taste receptors on your tongue, but also pain receptors on your skin.
Capsaicin in concentrated form is extremely powerful, and is being tested in medical science as a relief for chronic pain by applying to the area that hurts and it will knock out the receptors on the skin for about 2 weeks.
So imagine what would happen if that got on your 'delicate machinery'.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
TV dinners are a false economy.
Expenses? Look up the ingredients in a standard pre-prepared meal, then do the math to see what fresh ingredients would have cost you. I guarantee you will find that you come out 10 to 50% cheaper.
Washing up? I suspect you're not eating with your fingers, so you have to wash up after a pre-prepared dinner as well. Let's be charitable and say you eat the stuff from its packaging. You have now saved the time in washing up 2 plates and 3 pans (about what you need for a 2 person dinner). Trust me, that's about 1 minute of washing up and toweling off.
About the only thing I can say against buying fresh is that fresh ingredients come in bulk (e.g. a single head of lettuce will give 4-6 servings), and therefore you will generally have to buy for several days at once. That can be solved with a good freezer, but it is a chore.
I found out myself that cooking with fresh ingredients is an enormous saving. I have more money to spend even though I generally have to spend about 15 minutes on a meal, and I eat like a king.
Also, although I am not a health nut, I do find that I feel better after several days of fresh food. It appears that the methods of conservation do destroy nutrient value, to say nothing of additives.
Lastly, pre-prepared food is often salted heavily. A month of eating fresh will cure you of your salt habit, and you'll suddenly find your taste has improved, you're now able to discriminate more flavours, and whenever you do use salt you will find that in moderation it tends to strengthen other flavours, instead of obliterating them, making for a richer experience.
So do yourself a favour, try eating fresh for a month. You will not go back except occasionally.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?