Cooking in fits and starts.

Good question and I have my ears open....

Oh .. how funny..
as we speak, I have a half cooked tofu scrambler on the stove.
I cant have the stove on with Bean up because she can reach the burners and is obsessed with them.
So dinner waits until Daddy gets home for the help.

In doing things as you have described Boom, i bought a small foreman grilll.
in less then 3 minutes I can grill any veggies with no oil, seasonings .. or what have you .. and I can then drop them directly into the rest of the food wich is waiting on the stove.
You can always grill/ sautee onions and freeze them immediatly.
In small baggies, all you have to do then is open it and add them at the very last second before you take the food off the burner.

To keep veggies from going bad, get a steamer.
Most veggies only take 20 minutes in a cheap steamer before they are soft enough to eat.
Yet again.. you can just take them directly from the steamer and add them to the mixture of food.

why dont you use pots and pans like everybody else?

Well for one thing my fits and starts are in better shape than my pots and pans.

I do the same kind of things for quick dishes, shewolf, but like this recipe today -- an hour of prep time, 30 minutes of cooking (and 10 seconds to eat <sigh>)

I can't realistically spend a solid hour putting together a side dish but if I can break it into 30 minute chunks things become more reasonable.

Hmmm.

Since nobody has any tricks and tips for me yet, and since Bella is interested I will record my completely unscientific findings here:

After sauteeing the onions in butter and olive oil (about 45 minutes, low heat, six cups) and popping them in the fridge while I went to the park, yakked with neighbors and raked leaves I returned to find them still onions had maintained their al dente but the butter/olive oil mixture had congealed a bit.

Since the pie crust has to be prebaked and returned to room temperature before assembling the pie, I took the onions out of the fridge hoping that they too would return to room temperature at about the same time.

Developing.....

It is amazing how we seem to live parallel lives. I'm the same way. I'm eating a hot dog right now, but only because of carefully planned stages during the course of the day.

I knew I wanted this hot dog earlier in the day but because of my hectic schedule I had to plan accordingly.

At 11:30 this morning, as I walked through the house to use the bathroom, I stopped in the kitchen and pulled a cooking pot from under the sink and put it on the stove.

Later, around 2:00, I poured water into the pot.

Now, just minutes ago, I turned on the heat and dropped in the hot dog.
And now I am eating it.

But only because it was done the boomer way -- carefully planned stages.

We are more than soul-mates, gus. I think we're split-aparts. Really I do.

Hot dogs. Yum.

Can I come to dinner at your house?

Uhhh. wait....

You did pull out the pan before you went to the bathroom and you did wash your hands after.

Right?

boomerang: Mo is eating sweet onion pie with gruyere?

Sorry, I have nothing to contribute, I don't cook in stages,
in fact, if it has more than 4 ingredients, I don't touch
the recipe. I'm the original 5 min. cook

If Mo is presented with a dish often enough he will eventually taste it and sometimes he likes it and most of the time he doesn't.

But I love to cook. Really love to cook. And I miss getting to spend hours preparing something. So I'm adapting. I'm usually starting dinner about noon and stage it out throughout the day.

Tuesdays are usually my grocery shopping days because that's Food Day in the paper and I try to pick a new recipe to try every week.

I'm pathetic.

No, you're not boomerang! I think that's a wonderful
quality to have, and trying new recipes once a week
takes a lot of time and effort - so kudos to you!

I had a horde of girls here before and they all wanted
plain spaghetti with butter and cheese.
Perfect: only 3 ingredients!!

You're not pathetic, boomer.

<pats boomer on head>

Ahhh. I feel so much better now.

More from boomerang's test kitchen:

WTF!

The recipe didn't say I needed two pie crusts but apparently the onion blah blah blah mixture makes enough for two pies.

Luckily I bought the two pack of pie shells at the grocery.

(C'mon. I already have to cook over the course of the day. Do you think I've got time to make pie crust too!? No. The answer is "No.".)

So re-preheat, re-poke, re-bake, re-cool, re-fill, second pie crust.

Send e-mail to newpaper asking WTF!

Second pie is going into the freezer so experiment number 2 is already underway.

We shall see just how much of this damn pie can be cooked in advance fercryingoutloud.

Waiting for reply from idiot editor of Food Day. Considering cancellin newspaper subscription.

Developing.....

Cooked ground beef freezes and stores well. You can cook the onion in with the beef for spaghetti sauce and freeze them together.

Boiled hot dogs. Well. . . .

October whatever, 2005.

Debate cooking freezer pie vs. freezing uncooked pie. Decide to precook and freeze the unholy thing.

That's a good idea, roger!

I keep an assortment of stocks and sauces in my freezer and that would be a good addition.

Yeah. I can do that.

G()&&^@#43 socialist mother(^%*&& media and their "enough pastry for one pie crust" bull&*&)!

This recipe filled TWO crusts nice and easy. Picture perfect. You sorry #$$%*!@.

Whatever happened to fact checking you #$@^%$? Huh?

Yeah. They're in the oven you morons.

Bon appitite or whatever.

Losers.

Yeah?

Yeah?

Yeah!

We're talking recipe rage here.

Oven mitts at dawn.

Haha boomerang, by the time Mr. B is home and dinner
is ready to serve, you're probably standing there with
a huge knife, ready to throw it.