Cooking for Two (or Twenty?) My family consists of me and HWMMS. (He Who Makes Me Smile) so how is it with two people under our one roof at Weber Wonderland I somehow cook for twenty?
No kidding.
Yesterday, I finished up some work and saw it was about hit-the-wall o’clock (approximately 3) and decided to get something started for dinner. I turned on the radio and tuned out the world. (Timely right—I missed the onslaught of the NYC terror.)
I promised I would make seafood alfredo last week and maybe the week before and well, it was calling our name.
In the pan goes scallops, sardines, crab (of the fake variety), mushrooms, onions, capers, garlic, oregano, parsley, salt, pepper and olive oil. Then I took two jars of roasted garlic alfredo sauce from a jar and dumped it in the mix. Just add angel hair pasta. Not too shabby.
Just add cheezy garlic bread.
HWMMS brought leftovers to work today and said his coworkers mentioned it smelled good. I think he missed the sarcasm. No seafood anything should ever be reheated in a tiny workroom lunch spot. Or even a large workroom lunch spot.
Anyhow, so yeah. I made the one thing I wanted to make.
But wait. I’m waiting for a phone call. And the phone call didn’t happen yet. So, well. Um, yes. Ignore the world still and continue to cook. I call this stress cooking/yummy life avoidance.
I opened the refrigerator and found tomatoes I haven’t used yet. Crap, what was I planning on doing with those tomatoes? Hmmm. I know. Let’s make another pasta dish!
Time to wash the giant pan.
Add tomatoes, broccoli, onions. Oh look! I forgot all about this bag of tiny colorful peppers. Chop those up and add too. Garlic. Parsley. Scallions. Salt. Pepper. Olive Oil. (Seriously this is how I cook.) I boiled a pot of twisty veggie pastas and added some parmesan cheese.
And somehow ended up with two casserole dishes of sauteed veggie goodness. Half went right into containers for the freezer for another day.
And…since I’m STILL waiting for the phone call (which came around 8pm by the way…) and it’s not 5pm yet and HWMMS isn’t home from work for dinner and I have a bunch of potatoes I picked from our garden a few weeks back that needed love I decided to continue on my cooking adventure and make Shepherd Pie.
Hahahaha. No really. Cause I wasn’t already in a carb-o-loaded-comfort-food-enhanced-mania.
I quarted the potatoes and cooked them in the InstantPot with two jars of homemade beef broth. While waiting for the potatoes to finish, I washed my trusty giant pan (I swear I have 5 others but only use one) and add two packages of sage sausage and a package of scrapple. Because, well, I found a package of scrapple and didn’t have anything other ground meat available.
In with the meat goes onion (of course) and scallions and baby carrots and a package of green beans and a can of corn (or two, I forget.) And a can of diced tomatoes. And olive oil and worcestershire sauce and garlic and salt and pepper and fresh rosemary and thyme and sage and parsley (I have a lot of parsley from the herb garden what can I say?) Oh and then a handful of flour to make the meat juice thicken. I have no idea how much of anything I use, I just wing it.
I smashed the potatoes (skins on, ALWAYS) with butter, low-fat cream cheese I found in the fridge and some milk. SPread the potatoes on top of meat and veggie mixture. Added bread crumbs and more scallions. (Never. Enough. Scallions.)
Bam.
Way WAY too many Shepherd Pies.
And also, OH MY GOD THEY ARE SO DAMN GOOD. One of the smaller casserole dishes might have already disappeared.
How DO people cook for only two? I will never know.