Ghetto Cuisine

Didn't have any scallions, went out in the yard to get the tops off of some wild onions.

It worked.

Step 1.  Put some Ramen noodles and water in the container from that takeout egg drop soup the other day.  Microwave for 2 minutes and forget about it for an hour or so.

Step 2.  Put a hardboiled egg in a jar of pickles a week ago.  If you did not do this, then do it now and come back in a week.  These are locally made pickles called Moustache On Fire that come with free pickled garlic after you are done.

Step 3.  Use a box cutter or other small knife to slice up the egg, and half a pickle because why not.  Add pickle juice because of course you should.

Step 4.  Mix and eat!

I don't have the "recipe" but Alli made dirty rice kind of thing the other day.

Browned hamburger meat in the instapot, threw in rice, beans, corn, and some other stuff. 

30 minutes later we had this great cheesy rice dish with meat and veggies.

With limited time to get the "right" ingredients, my wife has been making the kids "pizzas" by taking a flour tortilla, getting a bit of oil on both sides, slathering one side with tomato sauce, and topping it with shredded cheese. Bake 350 degrees for a 5 or so minutes, until the cheese melts.

In reply to MadScientistMatt :

Yeah that's a great "pizza".  Lil Stampie is a very picky eater and that's what he ate for pizza for years.  He's so picky that it took some convincing before he'd eat a cheese quesadilla after I told him it was just his pizza folded in half.

Was feeling a can of sardines for lunch, but wanted more of a meal than just little fishies on crackers (not that i'm knocking that), and have been craving pasta, so I did some Googling and found that sardines in pasta is a classic (and hella delicious) Sicilian dish that's really pantry-friendly. 

You need: 

1 can sardines in olive oil

2/3 C fresh (soft) fine breadcrumbs

half an onion, chopped

1T capers

1t lemon zest

1T fresh parsley

2 servings of angel hair, cooked al dente

Drain sardines, reserving the oil, and heat about 1T of oil in a frypan; drop in breadcrumbs and fry until golden and toasty. Remove to a plate. Meanwhile, bring pasta water to boil. Pour a generous couple T more sardine oil into pan, add onions and cook until onions are soft. Drop pasta into water, add sardines to frypan (clean out spines if they are big ones) and chunk ‘em up with the spoon. Cook a couple of minutes to heat through. Add T capers if you like—I didn’t have any here—and salt and pepper (more generous with the salt if no capers). Zest lemon over, add add pasta directly in from pot and toss with extra oil and pasta water if needed so it glistens, give a final toss with your breadcrumbs and lots of fresh chopped parsley.

Serves 2, unless you're alone in the house for lunch because Tim's out in the shop working on the Elva so there's no one to share or to stop you, in which case it serves 1.

Margie

Marjorie Suddard said:

Serves 2, unless you're alone in the house for lunch because Tim's out in the shop working on the Elva so there's no one to share or to stop you, in which case it serves 1.

Marjorie Suddard said:

Was feeling a can of sardines for lunch, but wanted more of a meal than just little fishies on crackers (not that i'm knocking that), and have been craving pasta, so I did some Googling and found that sardines in pasta is a classic (and hella delicious) Sicilian dish that's really pantry-friendly. 

You need: 

1 can sardines in olive oil

2/3 C fresh (soft) fine breadcrumbs

half an onion, chopped

1T capers

1t lemon zest

1T fresh parsley

2 servings of angel hair, cooked al dente

Drain sardines, reserving the oil, and heat about 1T of oil in a frypan; drop in breadcrumbs and fry until golden and toasty. Remove to a plate. Meanwhile, bring pasta water to boil. Pour a generous couple T more sardine oil into pan, add onions and cook until onions are soft. Drop pasta into water, add sardines to frypan (clean out spines if they are big ones) and chunk ‘em up with the spoon. Cook a couple of minutes to heat through. Add T capers if you like—I didn’t have any here—and salt and pepper (more generous with the salt if no capers). Zest lemon over, add add pasta directly in from pot and toss with extra oil and pasta water if needed so it glistens, give a final toss with your breadcrumbs and lots of fresh chopped parsley.

Serves 2, unless you're alone in the house for lunch because Tim's out in the shop working on the Elva so there's no one to share or to stop you, in which case it serves 1.

Margie

Ha! It's like you're looking into our kitchen as well. 

"Yes, I WOULD like a third serving of grilled chicken and rice. Thank you.

hot pocket defrosted? Deep fry it. 

frozen burritos , cut in 6-8 bites ,  green chili verde sauce , grated cheese.........ZAP for 2 minutes.....

Yum ,  even better with Blue cheese......

OK.......I even put yellow curry sauce on the frozen burritos once !

Stay safe........and have a stomach pump nearby :)

Not gonna reread this whole thread, but I don't think we've mentioned baked taters? 
Anyway, baked taters. Uber cheap, hard to do wrong. Stab them a few times, chuck them in the oven, add copious amounts of butter, s&p, and whatever else you fancy. I've been eating this pretty regularly lately and thought I'd throw it out there. 
 

barefootskater (Shaun) said:

Not gonna reread this whole thread, but I don't think we've mentioned baked taters? 
Anyway, baked taters. Uber cheap, hard to do wrong. Stab them a few times, chuck them in the oven, add copious amounts of butter, s&p, and whatever else you fancy. I've been eating this pretty regularly lately and thought I'd throw it out there. 
 

I did actually, they are a staple food around here for easier meals.

Plus you can put everything on them and it'll taste good. Here's a list of what we've tried and liked

Cheese(duh)

Bacon (duh)

Avocado

Green onions

Strips of beef steak

Onions

Steamed broccoli

Steamed romanesco

Ham

Sour cream

Salsa

Horseradish

The secret is to rub them down with vegetable oil and season the skins with a butt ton of pepper and paprika and ground salt, chunky stuff.

Believe it or not there's some potatoes under there

Oh and not just taters, but their skinny orange cousins too!

Marjorie Suddard said:

Was feeling a can of sardines for lunch, but wanted more of a meal than just little fishies on crackers (not that i'm knocking that), and have been craving pasta, so I did some Googling and found that sardines in pasta is a classic (and hella delicious) Sicilian dish that's really pantry-friendly. 

You need: 

1 can sardines in olive oil

2/3 C fresh (soft) fine breadcrumbs

half an onion, chopped

1T capers

1t lemon zest

1T fresh parsley

2 servings of angel hair, cooked al dente

Drain sardines, reserving the oil, and heat about 1T of oil in a frypan; drop in breadcrumbs and fry until golden and toasty. Remove to a plate. Meanwhile, bring pasta water to boil. Pour a generous couple T more sardine oil into pan, add onions and cook until onions are soft. Drop pasta into water, add sardines to frypan (clean out spines if they are big ones) and chunk ‘em up with the spoon. Cook a couple of minutes to heat through. Add T capers if you like—I didn’t have any here—and salt and pepper (more generous with the salt if no capers). Zest lemon over, add add pasta directly in from pot and toss with extra oil and pasta water if needed so it glistens, give a final toss with your breadcrumbs and lots of fresh chopped parsley.

Serves 2, unless you're alone in the house for lunch because Tim's out in the shop working on the Elva so there's no one to share or to stop you, in which case it serves 1.

Margie

You need to get this from your local library:  It has some good-looking recipes...

I made vodka sauce the other night. Super easy, and the only "expensive" parts of it were the cream and parmesan. First time doing it. Read a few recipes to get an idea, and then just did it on my own. Note here, except for the tomato sauce and paste, which came out of cans, everything listed is an estimate. 

Ingredients:

• 1-3 onions
• 3 TBSP Olive Oil
• 1/3 cup Vodka
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 14 oz Tomato Sauce
• 6 oz Tomato Paste
• 2/3 cup cream (we used heavy cream)
• Spices, to taste
  • ~1 TSP crushed red pepper (I like it hot, I actually used more than this)
  • Oregeno
  • Pepper
  • Basil (fresh if possible)
• Metric berkeley-ton of parmesan cheese

Method: 

• First, finely dice an onion or 3. I used 3 shallots, about 1/4 of a white onion, and 1/2 of a red onion. Why those amounts of those onions (and shallots)? Because that was what I had. 
• Throw about 3 TBSP of olive oil in your saucepan. Put your onions in there. Sautee them for a while - until they're soft. Maybe 5 minutes
• Crush your garlic in with the onions, continue to cook for 3-5 minutes
• Pour the vodka in. Continuously stir, while cooking on medium heat for another 1-3 minutes. 
• At the same time, put in your spices. I used a lot of red pepper,  dried oregeno, dried basil, because that is what I had. 
• Put in your tomato sauce and paste. Reduce to low heat, constantly stirring. 
• After 10 minutes or so, add your cream, slowly, while stirring. Bring to a simmer
• Slowly add in your cheese, constantly stirring/folding until all melted and combined
• Add whatever pasta you want
• Eat way too much of it 

EDIT: The picture makes it look pinker than it really was, for whatever reason. It was more red in real life.

If you ask Pillsbury, they are "Mini Crescent Dogs".

Still pigs in a blanket to me.

In reply to stroker :

Oh no, that looks like a keeper. It's in my Amazon cart :)

Not sure how ghetto cuisine this is, but I've been living off the following recipe for about two years now:

• 1 cup of cooked rice.  Wife bought me a rice cooker years ago and I think I've used it every day.  Basically, the small cup you use for a single serving.  Instant rice or rice in a pot would work fine too, but the rice cooker just makes it easy (and they're cheap).
• Protein.  At first, it was a can of tuna, but my local HEB has frozen turkey sausage 4/$5 so I've been using half of one of those.  Or, chicken or ground beef or whatever I have around/bought on sale. 
• 1 Can of mixed veggies

Start the rice and cook up the protein.  Toss in the can of mixed veggies (drained) to mix it all together.  Pour over the rice in a bowl, mix it up and add hot sauce/soy sauce/taco seasoning to taste.  Maybe $0.10 of rice, $0.75 of protein (if I use the tuna or the turkey sausage) and the veggies are $0.50 a can.  Sometimes I eat it all, sometimes I eat half and save the other half for lunch.  If I'm feeling really hungry, I'll mix in a pack of Ramen. 

Easy to add/adjust dependent on what's around.  I've slow cooked on sale chicken/beef as the protein or substituted eggs or peanut butter.  I've grabbed leftover veggie plates from the office and cooked those instead of the canned veggies.  The rice seems to hold flavor better if I cook it a day before and let it sit in the fridge. 

-Rob

In reply to rob_lewis :

Leftover rice is always better, now I think about it. 

There was a time when I was going to write a recipe book called The White Trash Gourmet. The T in gourmet is pronounced dammit. 

I grew up poor and in a trailer and ate a ton of fish sticks and tatertots. I later became a chef. I figured it'd be a great book.

With the blue box mac I tend to make chili mac. ad a pound of ground beef, some chili powder, a good amount of cumin, garlic, and whatever else. Delicious!

I did a baked tater last night. Smothered it in butter, French onion dip ( no sour cream or scallions so I improvised), shredded cheese & canned hot dog chili. Probably not the healthiest meal, but tasty, quick, easy & filling.

When I was single I would get a pouch of Lipton Instant Chicken Noodle Soup Mix and heat some corn.  Mix it together and have dinner for les than a couple bucks.  Probably not good for you but it was filling.

Take two pieces of bread, dump leftover spaghetti sauce, shredded cheese and sausage all in one container and throw in microwave to melt cheese.

preach (fs) said:

With the blue box mac I tend to make chili mac. ad a pound of ground beef, some chili powder, a good amount of cumin, garlic, and whatever else. Delicious!

That sounds great, even if I think using homemade cheese sauce may be even better.

Last night I dusted off a recipe that a co-worker gave my wife. The recipe had the not so promising name of "Dog Food", probably for its appearance.

1 cup white rice
2 cups water
1 can water chestnuts
1 pound boneless chicken, cut into cubes
Olive oil
Dash oif garlic powder or a few diced cloves of garlic
1/2 cup Kikoman teriyaki glaze

1. Put rice in water, bring to a boil, and cook 20 minutes.
2. Saute chicken with olive oil and garlic until cooked through.
3. Drain water chestnuts.
4. Mix everything together and serve.