Consumed
Meals for the work week
So this is the terrible truth about the workday: you spend all of it working. As a result, you burn up precious and limited energy and enthusiasm that might have otherwise been spent on preparing a fancy dinner. It’s not a question of physical fatigue, but of mental or psychic weariness. You get home, you stare at your mocking pantry and you just deflate. You say, “I got nothin’.”
Perhaps you have a spouse or partner or an uncharacteristically committed roommate? Good for you, but that’s hardly a guarantee of timely home cooking. Sometimes they’re running on empty themselves. Makes for a tragic situation.
The thing is, you can’t go to Applebee’s every night. A better option is to have a repertoire of reliable recipes - something a step or two above open, heat, and eat - that are tested and ready. You don’t have to think. All you have to do is cook. You take thinking out of a situation, and all manner of things become possible.
So two such standbys from the past week:
Cornish hen prepared according to the roasted apricot-ginger glazed game hen recipe from Fine Cooking (please search, as their search results can’t be reliably permalinked), except that I exchange a simple basting with bottled orange glaze for the fancier apricot-ginger route. Paired that with Israeli - slash - pearl couscous prepared with butter (salted, for taste) and chicken broth (low-sodium, for control) and diagonally-sliced asparagus sauteed in unsalted butter with a dash of kosher salt and ground black pepper until just tender, then served with grated parmesan cheese. That asparagus recipe is straight outta Fine Cooking as well, but you have to subscribe to either the magazine or the website to get it. You can ballpark it, though, right?
And:
Inside-out cheeseburgers - twin thin patties that sandwich a blend of hard and semi-hard cheese, in this case white cheddar and parmesan; crimp the edges; four minutes each side makes it medium-well - and zucchini slices and chopped rosemary sauteed in garlic-flavored olive oil, which is precisely as tasty as it sounds. How lucky for you that both recipes are available in full, for free, online - the burger recipe from Eating Well, and the zucchini recipe from Domino.
Well, that’s two days out of the work week covered. The other three you can handle yourself, I’ll bet.
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Those sound delicious — and I was just on a recipe hunt earlier today for some new easy thingies, so they are timely as well! :-)
Happy to oblige, Liss! Now if only I could think of something to fix tonight…
Bertolli dinners suit me just fine on those days! They definitely fall into the “you don’t have to think” category. You just have to remember to buy them in advance of needing them.
http://www.bertolli.us/classicdinners.aspx
My favorite is the chicken alfredo which tastes nothing like the alfredo at, say, Olive Garden.
But I admire your willingness to do real cooking, even in the face of real fatigue.
Bertolli! Those commercials are all over the Food Network.
Some days, Bitty, even handy recipes don’t do it. We really did do take out from Applebee’s last night. ;-)
Tell me what you find edible at Applebee’s because my last two experiences were depressing. I mean, they don’t even have potatoes!
And my d-i-l used to manage one, so I tried to like the food.
Bertolli is probably all over the Food Network because they’re the closest thing out there to real (and good) home cooking. Guess what I’m having tonight?
Applebee’s does have potatoes. M got a “topped-off” baked potato yesterday. Granted, their idea of “topped-off” and ours differs by a good handful of cheese, but still.
I ordered an “Amazing Trio” consisting of two mini bacon cheeseburgers, “Ultimate” shrimp (fried, breaded), and chicken wings. Not the best meal even from Applebee’s, but adequate to the purpose.
I thought I remembered having an apple-rosemary chicken dish from Applebee’s that was surprisingly good. Thought it was a Tyler Florence-branded dish, but I can’t find a mention of it on the intarwebs.
There used to be an Outback next to this particular Applebee’s, but it closed rather mysteriously - very odd, as they seemed to be doing land office business. That Outback closing was a loss to M and me, because their ahi tuna appetizer was (as the kids no longer say) da bomb.
Hmm. Re: potatoes — times must have changed since I was last there.
The apple-rosemary thing was probably a limited-time offer thing.
The good thing about doing your own cooking is that no one’s going to discontinue your favorite dishes on you.