The reason why I chose this name is that my boyfriend, Ralph, and I have very different appetites (and sometimes tastes, but we both enjoy good food, home cooked or not). See, he's a moderately to vigorously active male in his twenties, and has a much larger caloric requirement than I.
As an example, he can easily consume two bagels well smeared with cream cheese for breakfast; two average homemade sandwiches for lunch (average being maybe 4-5 slices of meat plus one slice of cheese); and 3/4 of a pound of pasta for dinner with a hearty tomato sauce. In comparison, I eat about 2 standard servings of bread for breakfast, a sandwich and a piece of fruit for lunch, and I could definitely make a pound of pasta and a jar of sauce last at least 4 meals. I admit that I also snack more than he does in a day, but either way, we have very different views on how much food is necessary for our meals together.
This is my attempt to chronicle the meals I make for when he visits me. I hope you enjoy!
For my first meal, I decided to use a canned sauce. I'm usually not a huge fan of canned sauces, but they are certainly convenient and I'm not afraid to try a sauce at least once to see how I like it. I chose to use this curry sauce with some chicken to see how far I could stretch it:
To this sauce I added about 2 pounds of chicken drumsticks and thighs on the bone:
Last night's chicken was with the skin, but that's very much optional. Part of me wanted to try it because it's out of my usual cooking comfort zone.
After browning the chicken and adding the sauce to simmer for roughly 20 minutes, I started working on my grain component. I had about a cup and a half of buckwheat groats that I wanted to use up. I browned the groats with a little bit of canola oil for a minute at most. Then, I added roughly 2.5-3 cups of water and half a bouillon cube, brought it to a boil, then reduced to a simmer until all the water boiled off (roughly 15 minutes):
The end result? Here's my plate:
And here's the boy's, ahem, first serving:
We were both satiated after these portions, but Ralph went back for another plate after digesting a bit. All in all, I think this recipe was a success: there was enough food for bother of us, and even enough for leftovers for me for the remainder of the week (one meal tonight, and another for this weekend!).
So that was my meal for this week. I'm thinking about making a large pot of split pea soup for this weekend. Any other recipe suggestions? Let me know!
-Emma
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