Becca Jane St Clair

Personal Blog

Microwave Cooking?

In a few weeks, Tim and I will be travelling down to Brighton to stay with his friend Nick, and to help Nick and his dad out at a model engineering show. We’ll be staying at Nick’s house for 4-5 days. Without going into personal details, Nick is on some serious pain killers that leave him with no appetite. And I mean, no appetite. Tim told me that one time Nick prepared a trip itinerary and neglected to put in lunch and dinner breaks! So…we’re on our own if we want to be fed at all that weekend.

We don’t want to eat out for the entire weekend because a) that’s expensive and b) that would be unhealthy. Plus with my onion and garlic allergy it can make eating out “interesting”. This goes double for trying to buy ready meals or tinned soup!

We also have one other issue to deal with — Nick doesn’t have a stove. No oven, no hob, no grill. Just a toaster, a kettle, and a microwave. I only use our microwave for 5 things – defrosting meat at the last minute, cooking vegetables, heating up cups of cold tea, making rice, and making a quickie “baked” potato.

Lunch should be pretty easy – we’ll be at the show all day and I can make us some sandwiches in the morning to pack along. Breakfast also is pretty easy – cereal and toast. It’s making sure we have a good dinner that’s proving to be a problem for me!

We DID decide to take the car down. Originally, we were going to rail it the whole way, but then we remembered that we probably need to bring along some additional bedding, as we discovered the last time we were there that the small duvet doesn’t quite cover the both of us. This means, I could bring along the crock pot or the George Foreman grill…or even both. I might just do that, since I know I can cook with both of those, even if it’s just using the GF as a panini press.

So, with no stove…what can I cook? I don’t want to rely on tinned stuff or ready meals, but obviously I won’t be able to cook meat or anything like that. I could buy pre-cooked meat products to then heat up, or I could pre-cook some things at home and take them down in the cooler.

If I DO pre-cook meals and pack them into plastic…what meals re-heat better than others? I suppose I could pre-make pasta sauce and then do “baked” potatoes. Or do a roast and cut it up to be reheated along with some veggies? Should I do lots of pre-cooking and package things into individual homemade ready meals like I do for Tim’s Lunches? (well, he always gets leftovers)

I feel like this is worse than camp-cooking, because at least camping I had the gas camping stove.

Ideas/suggestions….please?

(for those of you who are here for things OTHER than food related posts, real posts are coming! I promise!!)

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4 comments

4 Comments so far

  1. falnfenix February 4th, 2011 14:49

    you can cook ANYTHING in the microwave. seriously…they were created, originally, to replace the oven! i’ll take a peek at my normal sites for microwave-specific recipes.

  2. Rebecca February 6th, 2011 14:56

    Thanks. I just don’t use the microwave at all and so I’m at a loss! Someone on cooking said you can cook a whole chicken in one.

  3. miss m February 4th, 2011 15:20

    Lasagna heats up nicely in a microwave. You can make a big tray of it and portion it out in Tupperware or whatever and have that for a few days.

  4. Rebecca February 6th, 2011 14:57

    mmmm. cheese. If we weren’t trying to cut down on cheese consumption, I’d totally do this, cos lasagna is one of my favourites!!

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