What can you do in 45 minutes?

Football season has started, at least practices, that is. This is the first year that my youngest son is playing, so I have two to worry about now. The first week was great, they both practiced from 5:00 to 6:45. An hour and a half is a lot of time to get stuff done in. However, my younger son’s coach must have had a problem with that time slot, because he moved practice an hour later, my evening goes a little something like this:

5:15 Drop off elder son
6:00 Drop off younger son
6:45 Pick up elder son
7:45 Pick up younger son

And did I mention that this is not really the start time, they have to be there 15 minutes early? Why don’t they just say practice is at 5? It must be a football coach thing.

Anyway, younger son does have a friend in the neighborhood who we carpool with most days, but they each have a day off during the week, and so far it’s not the same day.

Which brings me to the question, What can you get done in 45 minutes? OK, you have to drive home from and then back to the field, so it’s more like What can you get done in 35 minutes? Here’s what I’ve come up with, and the list is by no means exhaustive. What can you get done in 35 minutes? Please add your comments.

• Tonight I’m putting together tacos for dinner: Scrambling the frozen hamburg, chopping the lettuce and tomatoes. I can even make Refried black beans (the recipe’s really easy, see my entry on May 17, 2008, “The quickest dinner”, just substitute black beans for the pinto beans).


• You can make Artichoke salsa. This was a forgotten recipe, and I made a batch for a bridal shower I did this summer, and it was a huge hit, and reminded me that I like to keep these ingredients on hand for quick entertaining. The recipe is below.
  
• My friend, Lynne and I often use the time to catch up, and perhaps have a cocktail and appetizer, since we have to wait until after practice to have dinner.
  
• You can take a walk (between the last drop-off and the first pick-up).
  
• You can make a grocery list.
  
• You can do your grocery shopping.
  
• You can read the newspaper, or a book — now that’s decadent.
  
• Read to my daughter ... even better!
  
• I’m not a napper (you might as well let me sleep through the night if I fall asleep in the afternoon, I just wake up badly), but I bet there are people out there who would use the 35 minutes to catch a little shut-eye.
  
• Not as fun, but productive: You can dust or vacuum or clean a bathroom. It feels good to get something accomplished.
  
• You can call your mother, sister, or a friend and catch up.
  
• What else have you got?
  

Artichoke salsa

16 oz marinated artichoke heart, drained, chopped
3 Roma tomatoes,chopped
2 T red onions,chopped
¼ c Kalamata olive, chopped
1 T garlic, chopped
2 T fresh basil, chopped
pita bread, cut into "chips", toasted

In a medium bowl, mix together the artichoke hearts, tomatoes, onion, olives, garlic, salt, and pepper. Serve chilled, or at room temperature, with pita chips.

Earl of Sandwich

Yum! I just made the tastiest sandwich ... you know how sometimes something simple just hits the spot? What other combinations (and acronyms) can you come up with?The ALT

1/2 Joseph's Flax, Oat Bran, & Whole Wheat Flour Lavash Bread
4 slices pepper-crusted turkey breast
romaine lettuce
2 slices avocado (the creamier the better)
Honeycup mustard

Spread mustard on lavash, layer turkey, lettuce, and avocado, roll, and enjoy. (Make lots and slice them into 2" pieces for a party platter.)

Leftovers by any other name …, continued

Anyone who knows me knows a few things about me:

1. I hate to throw anything out.


2. I love leftovers, but my family doesn’t, which brings me to ...


3. I try to disguise leftovers in every imaginable form, so my family does not recognize them as having been a previous meal — chicken pot pie, chicken soup, vegetable soup, stews of all shapes and sizes, cheesy vegetable enchiladas (really any Mexican is ideal for hiding the evidence of the previous meal).

Given all those givens, I encountered a surprising piece of information last week that made me ask: How did I miss that?!

I put on an interactive dinner party last week, and one of the dishes we made was Gazpacho. Fourteen women were cooking the meal together. When the duo that was making the gazpacho was chatting with me, one of them remarked, “We always had gazpacho growing up, my mother made it out of leftover salad.”

She what?! I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that. (Even if you know me pretty well, you may not know that I love gazpacho, I seldom make it, because my own family balks at cold tomato and vegetable soup.) n my defense, maybe I never thought of it, because I was never really trying to get rid of leftover salad: I grew up in a family of eight, we never had leftover salad. Even in my own family, my kids love salad, and we seldom have any leftover.

I do remember being surprised when I first met my husband’s family and found out that his Lebanese side of the family even had a name for leftover salad (mixed with day-old Syrian (pita) bread): Fatoush.

So, turning leftover salad into an entirely different dish you could actually serve to people, I love it! I mentioned it to my friend, Eileen, who is a vegetarian, and a very good cook, she said she’d only use the tomatoes and cucumbers from the leftover salad, so I tried.

I used the Gazpacho recipe from a friend I used to work with.

Vivian's blender gazpacho

5 large tomatoes, ripe and firm, divided use
3 European cucumbers, long seedless, peeled, divided use
¼ c olive oil
½ bunch green onions
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch chives
3 garlic cloves
5 dashes red wine vinegar
1 lemon, juiced
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1⅔ c beef broth
black pepper, fresh ground
1⅔ c tomato juice
1-2 dashes Tabasco

Blend 2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, oil, parsley, garlic, lemon, broth, tomato juice, onion, chives, vinegar, Worcestershire, and peppers in blender briefly and place in large bowl. Chop remaining tomato and cucumber coarsely and add to soup. Stir together and refrigerate overnight before serving.

To modify it, I went with Eileen’s suggestion and just used the tomatoes and the cukes, I used leftover tomato soup instead of the tomato juice, and I didn’t have any chives. I had slightly less parsley and green onions than the recipe called for, but I was very happy with the results, and I bet it will be even better tonight or tomorrow, and next time, I’ll try with more of the salad, just to see how it goes.

As a final note, another friend said she makes meatloaf when she cleans out her fridge. As with my gazpacho recipe, I’ve never entertained deviating from my few favorite meatloaf recipes, but in the interest of wastelessness, I may expand my horizons. Check back here for the results some time soon.

The quickest dinner

When I started this blog, I told you: “In my family, food is an event ... it inhabits and enlivens our conversations, our emails, our thoughts, our beings,” here’s some proof. My busy sister, Bridget sent this email on Thursday, within hours 2 of my busy sisters and my busy sister-in-law had weighed in. Now we're all mothers of busy families, so getting something healthy and quick on the table is always a concern. In fact, yesterday I was reading the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs to my 2-year-old (the premise of the book is that the weather brings the food: It snows spaghetti and meatballs and rains marinara sauce), and I thought, wouldn’t I have so much more time in my day if I didn’t have to worry about getting food on the table for my family? Then I laughed out loud at the irony that I'm a personal chef and I do that for my clients regularly, I just need to practice it at home too. Being prepared is the best way to get dinner on the table quickly and easily.

That said, I have had 2 parties to prep this week, so I neglected my email and my blog. This morning I’m combining both:

Hi Sisters,

I need help coming up with some quick meal ideas for crazy spring weeks, especially Baseball nights. I don’t get in until after 4pm, [husband and son] are heading over to the field 2-3 nights a week by 4:45pm. [Son] doesn't usually feel like eating “dinner” beforehand, especially if he thinks he’ll be pitching. I don’t like to have to cook something at 8pm for us to sit down and eat together. Some nights [daughter] and I eat before we head over to the field. I have done some crockpot sandwich recipes (Pulled Pork and Beef, Meatball Subs, Beer Brisket and BBQ Beef, I’ll attach those recipes later.) I have also done BLTs, Turkey Clubs and tonight I’m trying Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad Wraps. I’d really appreciate any suggestions and recipes you have for the really busy nights.

Bridget

Maureen responded:

You are way more creative then I am! We had burritos and tuna sandwiches the last two nights since we were running out. I’d love some ideas too!

To which Sarah responded:

Not so creative but we do tacos which are easy to reheat and I put everything in a tupperware or ziplock and we usually have it again later in the week. I also marinate boneless chicken breast. I throw them in a ziplock with a bottled marinade in the morning and then throw it on the grill. They only take about 5 to 7 minutes. Then I serve with couscous or on a bun. Subway also comes in handy especially since they have footlongs for $5!! Also Italian beef sandwiches are quick.

I appreciate their dilemma and was struggling with it myself this week, when, even though I had made eggplant earlier in the day, I was waiting for the water to boil for the ravioli at 8pm. (Would have been a good night for eggplant subs.)

I have the additional dilemma of Son #1 coming in from his game or practice while we’re at another game. He can’t wait for us to eat (it’s 6:15 and he had lunch at 10:30 at school. Like Bridget, I can never get the boys to eat before the game, they're concerned about cramps. I can’t even get Son #1 to take an extra sandwich to eat before the game that starts at 3:45 (school gets out at 2, so he’d have almost 2 hours before he had to play, but he won’t). I can get the other two to have a more substantial after-school snack when they get home, so they still have a little fuel in them when the games start at 5:45. As for Son #1, his “dinner” of choice when he comes home is cereal, sometimes 3 bowls. I’ve gradually convinced him that an egg sandwich (or two) is a better choice, and he’ll do that on some nights. Regardless, he’s seldom hungry when we are eating at 8pm.

And getting dinner on the table the millisecond you walk in the door with a hungry brood is never easy, especially at 8pm when you’d rather be crawling up on the couch yourself. If I didn’t have the kids to feed, and I’m truthful, many nights I'd opt for cheese & crackers.

Tips I use for getting dinner are the table are very similar to my sisters’:

• I keep sub rolls in the house and try to always have meatballs, Italian sausages, eggplant, chicken cutlets, prepared so subs are always an option. I add veggies and dip as a quick side (and something the kids can snack on while the meatballs are heating in the microwave, if they weren’t in the crockpot that day). Because if I don’t have the veggies and dip, they’ll find something else (cereal or cheese & crackers) that they can nosh on immediately, because even 3 minutes in the microwave is too long to wait to eat at 8pm.
  
• Hot dogs are always an option. Can steam really fast. Same rules as subs:
  Keep buns in the house, and
  Give them veggies and dip while you’re steaming or nuking the hot dogs.
  
• Bridget’s right about the other crockpot sandwiches too. I also make chili in the crockpot, and make the rice ahead. This way, just heat the rice quickly (or in a pinch, serve the hot chili over cold rice and mix them together), and dinner's on!
  
• Egg sandwiches, omelets, or huevos rancheros are a very quick option. Huevos rancheros makes them think they're having something other than “breakfast for dinner” think scrambled egg tacos on a soft tortilla. We always add refried beans, there’s a recipe below, but the No-Fat Casa Fiesta canned brand is very good, just mix in a little Tabasco and light shredded cheese.
  
• Dinner salads are great on a warm night. It's been a little cold here in Newburyport, so after freezing at a baseball game for 2-3 hours, we’ve been looking for a little hot food, and the chilis and meatballs, even eggs, have been winning out, but in warmer weather, we love a dinner salad. If I have time to make it up before we go out, it simply has to be pulled from the fridge & dinner is ready. If it’s not already put together, I pull out all the ingredients and everyone gets to assemble their own custom salad. It’s a great way to get veggies into the family, since that's basically what the meal is. I always make sure to have some protein: Leftover grilled steak or chicken, black beans, chick peas, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, a can of tuna, are all good options.

A client recently told me, “Forget 30-Minute Meals, even that’s too long; we need 15 minutes from walking in the door to sitting at the table.” This is a tall order, but at 8 pm on Baseball Nights, I am in full agreement. I'll be developing some meals that you can get on the table, from beginning to end, in 15 minutes, and I’ll post them here for you.

In the meantime, how do you feed your family on a busy night?

Refried beans
This is a great building block recipe, substitute black beans for the pinto beans, use it as a side for any meal, place it between soft taco shells and hard taco shells to change up taco night a little (and add some fiber to the family diet), add to eggs with some salsa and cheese for huevos rancheros, or serve with chips for a fiber-rich dip.

1 can pinto beans
2 T butter
1 T onion, minced (or ½ t onion powder)
1 garlic clove, pressed (or ½ t garlic powder)
2 dashes hot pepper sauce (like Tabasco)
1/3 c shredded cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese

Melt butter in saucepan. Add beans with liquid, onion, and garlic. Simmer until beans are soft, about 10 minutes. Mash with a potato masher until most beans are mashed, but some remain whole. Remove from heat, add Tabasco, cheese, stir, and serve. Great to make ahead and heat in the microwave or on the stovetop.