So…when is home cooking really not ‘home cooking’? By my definition, ‘faux cooking’ takes place when the entrée for your meal is a ‘ready to cook’ product from a restaurant, a grocery store or a friend and neighbor. During the pandemic, these means of meal preparation are not only acceptable, but rather they are desirable!
Of
course, there are winners and losers even in the ‘faux cooking’ school of meal
preparation. Some items just don’t strike
a positive note on your taste-buds while others turn into repeat meal
items. Despite that fact, with meals of
this type, usual non-existent prep and easy clean-up are very welcome in this
Covid-19 stay-at-home era.
The fact
is that we just aren’t motivated by food like we might normally be. Cooking from scratch generally doesn’t appeal
to us. We’re at about 2 meals per day
and, even with snacks we wouldn’t normally have on hand, our total calorie
count is down and we’ve actually lost a few pounds.
On to the food! In this case, we’d purchased a Ham and Cheese Quiche Lorraine from Fresh Market. Nothing like an easy meal to prepare…and it certainly simplified clean up when the meal was over! Laurie gave this quiche her stamp of approval while I thought that it was just OK. To be fair, I’ve never been a full-fledged quiche fan… She plated this slice of quiche with some amazing grapes that also came from Fresh Market. Pink Lady I think they were called?
Another dinner…another prepared meal to consider. This is Omaha Steak’s Meat Lover’s Lasagna. This lasagna is made with Omaha steak’s premium ground beef, a sauce made from crushed tomatoes and a 5-cheese blend of Mozzarella, Parmesan, Romano, Monterey Jack and Ricotta. You don’t even have to thaw this entrée… Just pop it into the oven and serve it when it’s heated throughout.
Our
mutual verdict on the Omaha Steak’s lasagna was that it was decent but that it
doesn’t come close to measuring up to Costco’s sausage and beef lasagna. The sausage in Costco’s version adds a lot of
flavor. Of course, in this case, Omaha
Steak’s version got an extra vote in its favor…as it was part of a gift box for
either Father’s Day or my birthday.
Back in ‘medieval times’…when I was a youth, I remembered having fried corn meal mush with butter and syrup for breakfast. I hadn’t run across any corn meal mush in the local grocery stores but I did find a ‘tube’ of polenta…a refined big city cousin of corn meal mush.
So, what
the heck. One morning I cut the tube of
polenta into discs and fried them in butter.
After they got a little crispy, I plated them, slathered them with more
butter, and then added pure maple syrup. Laurie even gave them a try. We both agreed that they were OK but they
weren’t quite on a par with my youthful memory bank.
Stepping aside from commercial sources for our meals during the pandemic… Nothing beats homemade, especially if the items provided are high on our list of favorite foods! In this case our friends Larry and Bev delivered some of Bev’s famous and fabulous yeast rolls that were ready to pop into the oven. Here they were just fresh from our oven…
Back to commercial prepared food items… The beef pot roast on that platter was yet another Omaha Steak House gift item! Laurie did have to prep the carrots and potatoes and there was some clean up after this meal. However, we gave the pot roast itself 4+ stars out of 5. It was very nice…and I had leftovers too!
This photo shows what Laurie’s plate looked like before we dug into our feast! One of Bev’s yeast rolls was featured too… My plate was a bit more crowded and not too photogenic as I put gravy on everything except my roll.
One final and very happy photo! In addition to those lovely yeasty dinner rolls, Bev and Larry also treated us to this batch of yeasty sweet rolls. They made for a great breakfast…and there weren’t any leftovers either! These sweet rolls were excellent…
Unlike
us, Bev and Larry have been creative cooks during the pandemic. To view some entrees that are truly deserving
of publication, go to Larry’s/Big Dude’s blog site at https://bigdudesramblings.blogspot.com.
Just
click on any of the photos to enlarge them…
Thanks
for stopping by for a visit!
Stay Safe
and Take Care, Big Daddy Dave
Some good looking grub, especially that pot roast meal. I really enjoy fried mush but mine gets topped with fried eggs.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your definition of faux cooking, Dave. We are not members of Costco or BJs although are here in Nashua. And while we could pick up frozen dinners at the supermarkets we frequent, we haven't done that. But at times our faux home cooking is leftovers thrown together to create something NOT found in any cookbook for sure. Those rolls looked so good as did that Omaha Steak meal. I have never tried polenta in a tube, but my late mother used to make a polenta meal with dry corn meal, which she would cook, add sausage and bike. It would be served like a pie with a tomato sauce topping. Other times, she would prepare it as a corn mush. Definitely peasant type food for which folks pay $ for in places these days.
ReplyDeleteGood to know that you and Laurie are doing well, friend David! Same with my family and myself. As for cooking, as you know, I am living Keto, and do my own. When working a long stretch, I tend to cook a batch ahead, then freeze and use as needed. Love, cat.
ReplyDeletenice definition of "faux cooking" ..... we sometimes did faux cooking as well....
ReplyDeleteBread looks so appealing ...yummy.
I would eat a huge portion of everything Dave, it looks so appetizing. You know, just today I found out that Barilla has a "kit" project...it's not ready made food, but in the boxes you find either rice, cereals like quinoa or couscous, and vegetables or lentils ... all you need to do is put everything in a pan and cook it.
ReplyDelete