Hey, I have a little experience cooking, but not too much since we usually get readily made foods like TV dinners, or canned soups, but I want to start cooking more often, and need some idea for about a week worth of dinners to make.

I only need 6 two person meals, since it is just me and my elderly father, and 1 4 person meal since I want to have dinner guests to get a less biased opinion on my cooking. I also need to get the most for my money since we are on a limited income.

Thank you for any suggestions. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

cooking pasta is a good start to learning how to prepare meals i reckon. with it, you can use the sauce-in-a-jar approach if your short on time, or you can make the sauce yourself, or you can do a little of both and add things to premade sauce

dont forget about baking pasta as well

meat + 3 veg is also a relatively easy choice. brown some meat, steam some greens, saute some other vegetable (mushrooms, etc), and throw on a starchy food like beans or mashed/baked potato

cooking pasta is a good start to learning how to prepare meals i reckon. with it, you can use the sauce-in-a-jar approach if your short on time, or you can make the sauce yourself, or you can do a little of both and add things to premade sauce

dont forget about baking pasta as well

meat + 3 veg is also a relatively easy choice. brown some meat, steam some greens, saute some other vegetable (mushrooms, etc), and throw on a starchy food like beans or mashed/baked potato

I was thinking about pastas since I have quite a bit of experience in how to boil most types (Staying in the ghetto makes buttered noodles a favorite), and was thinking about preparing some sort of meat at some point also.

what i would do is buy a bone in ham or a whole chicken. if you do the ham i would make a bourbon apricot glaze using some bourbon, some dry mustard, some apricot jam, and some rasins. cook your ham at 350 f for like one hour per pound. in your last half hour spread your glaze. serve with boiled potatoes and a some steamed frozen veg.

after you have eaten the ham you can make split pea soup out of the bone
1 ham bone
1 lb. dry split peas
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablepsoon each butter and olive oil
2 quarts water
2 bay leaves
1 lb carrots
1 lb potatoes
2 onions
salt and pepper, to taste

saute your garlic an half an onion then add your water. boil your bone in the water for a while skiming off the scum. after a hour remove bone an take off any meat still atached, put the meat back in the pot. add your bay leafs and your split peas. cook for about 1 an a half hours. then add your carrots onions an potatoes. cook for another half hour or until desired consitency.

you should easily get 6 2 people meals an one 4 person meal from this.


for the chicken make sure it is dethawed, then pat it dry with a towl, then cover it in poultry seasoning. roast it in a pan with some potatoes. think 350f for about an hour to an hour an a half. serve it with a green salad (lettuce onion carrot an cucumber) and some steamed broccoli.

use the bones to make stock, kind like how you made stock from the ham bone. then add carrots parsnips an noodles an you have your self chicken noodle soup.

again you should be able to get 6 2 people meals from this




things you should look up are meatloaf (dead easy) and lasagne (also dead easy)

the meat an three as already said is a good rule of thumb

Lazy man's hotpot:

Pan fry pack of mince (preferably Quorn mince) with diced onion and 2 sliced carrots and a drop of olive oil.
Shallow fry sliced potatoes in oil with salt and pepper.

Pour mince onto plate, place potato slices on top.

Two words. Ground beef. You can make anything with that and it is almost always delicious.

I started out by making soups and stews. Good for learning the basics and pretty difficult to really screw up.

Focus less on following recipes and more on learning techniques. Cook often and experiment. I guarantee you'll figure out something useful each time that you can apply the next time.


*ObZ

look up an easy recipe for puerto rican rice and beans. it's basically just rice (you can really use any kind here. the shit i got can be made in the microwave, in a covered bowl of water), a can of pinto beans heated up on the stove top, and about two tablespoons of "sofrito" seasoning (sold in a jar, uhh...Goya makes it, its like tomatoes and other peppers and shit mixed together) mixed in with the beans. put the still white rice on a plate, put the beans on top and mix together and magically the rice gets flavor. traditionally it's also made with beef stew and potatoes, but those aren't really needed.