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Cooking decent, healthy and cheaply..

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N/A
pilot
Lunch/Supper:
Hot Dog Puree- 3-4 hot dogs, 4 slices white bread, ketchup and mustard to taste. Pour ingredients in blender and run on high for 45 seconds. Heat in microwave if desired.

Sweet merciful crap, you eat/drink that? Nasty.

If you're working out/running a fair bit, there's a lot you can do with pasta, chicken breasts, and a foreman grill. I'm partial to pesto based sauces. You can also used canned tuna to add meat to pasta for real cheap and easy.

I really wish I had brought some of my single man cookbooks with me on deployment, but there's a lot of "cook helathy in 20min" kind of books out there, and a lot of them are pretty good. Men's Health makes a couple decent ones.

Do you have access to a grill? When my old rooommate had a gas grill, i'd grill some meat and throw some veggies in a foil bag most every night and I've stayed in the same size flightsuit and khakis for a couple of years now.

I'd advise you to stay away from all the heat and eat crap in the commissary, even the "healthy" stuff isn't all that healthy, and it's probably cheaper in the end if you buy some chicken breasts and some simple veggies.
 

TheBubba

I Can Has Leadership!
None
My alfredo recipe:

Cut boneless chicken breast iinto strips, brown in olive oil and minced garlic. Set chicken aside and save used oil.

Boil pasta in water, strain, put back in pot.

Pour some of the used olive oil onto pasta (enough to keep it from sticking together)

Warm store-bought alfredo sauce (preferably roasted garlic variety).

Combine chicken, sause and pasta. Mix thouroughly. Eat.

Don't use too much oil, or it will destroy your stomach.


I did what pat did before I got married... the whole cook enough for a couple of meals... with almost anything pasta & cheese... It works. ate a hell of alot better than I'm eating now...
 

Brett327

Well-Known Member
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Probably the best thing you can do is to start watching The Food Network (AKA Eating Channel) and also browse their website. They have all kinds of shows that would be great for you. Plus on re-runs, you can get a glimpse of Rachel Ray's ass before it got all big. :D I still use their site as a one stop recipe encyclopedia.

Brett
 

joboy_2.0

professional undergraduate
Contributor
Probably the best thing you can do is to start watching The Food Network (AKA Eating Channel) and also browse their website. They have all kinds of shows that would be great for you. Plus on re-runs, you can get a glimpse of Rachel Ray's ass before it got all big. :D I still use their site as a one stop recipe encyclopedia.

Brett


The food network just makes me want to eat unhealthy food! Plus F rachael ray! I'ts all about GIADA!
 

02Navy05VT

Hypertension Anyone?
Advice from a Mom

Advice from a Mom:

Because of my job situation, I am living and working away from home. I Bought a townhouse so I could have a somewhat normal existence here in the northland and, at my advanced age... 48.... I have to be careful what I eat, lest I morph into MB's ex.

l acquired a small George Forman grill (mid-size would be better for a growing, young aviator-type). Buy bags of individually flash-frozen, chicken breasts, fish fillets, shrimp, breaded eggplant and ready-shaped burgers. (veggie, beef, lamb ... whatever) You can even put cut fresh vegetables, like peppers, onions, zucchini and then spritz them with olive oil, shake a little garlic and spice on them, close the lid and you're "good to go" in about 5 or 6 minutes.

Here's a link to some Forman Recipes that will get you started. You're on the computer all the time anyway, might as well do something besides surf for porn and post on airwarriors. (just kiddin'!!!!)

Before you get the stuff on the grill, fire up the rice cooker with brown rice (stay away from the white rice, it's crap and doesn't do anything for you except make you hungry two hours later).

Stay away from any instant-prepared foods. They have tons of salt (it sneaks up on you in your later years) and unidentifiable chemicals in there. I've heard you shouldn't eat tuna more than 2 or 3 times a week...something about too much mercury in there.

For Breakfast, get a mini-blender. Throw in frozen fruit, like raspberries, blueberries etc, a scoop of plain or vanilla yogurt and some milk, if you are trying to bulk up you can throw in some protein powder. The blender I have was intended for college students so the blender recepticle turns into a travel mug when you take it off the base.

Just remember, the frozen food aisle is your friend. You can buy all kinds of flash-frozen stuff, that can be individually taken out of the bag and cooked, blended, sauteed or whatever, and it won't go bad and end up in the trash, at the end of the week, if you decide to go out or order pizza.
 

gaijin6423

Ask me about ninjas!
Before departing for bootcamp in 1995, I worked as a sous chef for almost two years. The trick to eating healthfully (I'm convinced) is built on a few principles:

1. Good, fresh ingredients. MB, if I remember correctly you're in Corpus now, so consider yourself lucky, because the quality and variety of produce options is outstanding. For dairy, I only drink organic*, fat-free milk on a regular basis, and while I enjoy real, full-calorie cheeses, etc, I only eat them sparingly. I also prefer organic free range* poultry/meats.

2. Preparation matters. I don't care how fresh and healthy an ingredient is, if you prepare it improperly, it will at best taste like crap. Worse, if you take something that otherwise would be very good for you and use an unhealthy cooking method (deep frying in saturated or trans-fats), you might as well just eat Whataburger or TV dinners all day, every day. In addition, certain cooking methods can actually destroy the nutrients in foods. An example would be boiling vegetables. Try steaming and poaching.

3. Watch your intake. By that, I mean pay attention to things like fat, sodium, sugar, fiber, alcohol, and overall calories. Too much sodium and fat lead to hypertension, heart disease, while too much sugar can eventually lead to diabetes. Not enough fiber in your diet prevents your body from flushing out detritous material from your intestines. Nasty? Maybe, but so is colon cancer. Much of this boils down to portion size, which is essentially simple math: If you stuff more than the recommended serving down your gullet, there will be an eventual, if not immediate, excess in your body.

4. From my perspective, two of the most important aspects are variety and to treat yourself every so often. Variety is pretty easy to understand, as people tend to like different sorts of things to eat. Personally, I cannot stand eating the same damn thing every day. I get bored. As far as the treating yourself goes... Well, there's just nothing wrong with having something you really like that may not be very good for you, provided you have it sparingly. It breaks up the monotony of things, and hey, chocolate is freaking tasty, not to mention very, very good for you in moderation.

5. This is more along the lines of eating cheaply. Use everything. I like roasted chicken, and I make it every so often. Most people toss out the carcass, but not me. I stuff it in a ziplock, throw it in the fridge, and when I've got a few hours, I make chicken stock, which is one of the single greatest things on the face of the earth. All the home cold remedies aside (and they actually are true), a good homemade stock is useful for many things. You can use it to make your own soup. You can use it instead of dairy in mashed potatoes. You can use it as a poaching liquid. And since you made it yourself, you control how much sodium and other ingredients go into it. Just skim the fat off of the top before you use it.

*--I know organic/free range products are more expensive, but consider a few things: Free range meats are way more flavorfull than the water-injected, mass-produced crap that gets passed off as meat most places. Organic dairy comes from cows that have not been treated with preventative antibiotics or RBGH, and (whether in addition to or because of that) it stays fresher, longer in your refridgerator, thus reducing the amount of wasted milk. Plus, it tastes better.

Here's what I ate on Friday:
-Breakfast: plain oatmeal w/ fresh strawberries, black coffee, apple
-Snack (3hrs later): one piece of low-fat string cheese
-Lunch: turkey sandwich w/ lettuce, tomato, spicy mustard; 1 serving low-
sodium pretzels; apple; diet coke
-Snack (3hrs later): 1 serving of low-sugar, dark chocolate (hey, it's Friday)
-Dinner: Poached halibut filets; steamed vegetables and potatoes; 1 whole
wheat roll; 2 glasses of wine; 1 cup thawed berries w/ fat-free
whipped cream
-I also took a multi-vitamin, lifted for an hour in the morning, and ran for 45 mintues before dinner

Edit: If you haven't already, go talk to the nutritionist at the hospital, and they will give you great suggestions/menus/eating plans.
 

Pcola04/30

Professional Michigan Hater
pilot
Allrecipes.com has an ingrerdient search function. Very helpful when you have a few ingredients in the fridge and no freakin clue about what to make with them.
 

FlyinSpy

Mongo only pawn, in game of life...
Contributor
I love to eat, and my wife doesn't like to cook, so that leaves the ball in my court. Also, like a dog, I continually worry about my next meal...

Three suggestions for you:

1) "Cooks Illustrated" magazine: One of the best sources out there for bulletproof recipes. The M.O. of this magazine is to take a dish, and then try every possible variation to make it better; kind of the scientific method approach to cooking. I've never made anything from one of their recipes that didn't turn out fantastic - I can now make hot & sour soup just like you get in a Chinese restaurant. They have a decent website (http://www.cooksillustrated.com/) that includes a free trial on-line membership - go through and print out whatever looks interesting for later use. Some libraries also carry it, and you can buy collections of a year's worth of magazines on Ebay for cheap-cheap.

They also have an excellent big cookbook that, if you buy only one cookbook, is the one to have: "The Best Recipe". http://www.amazon.com/New-Best-Recipe-All-New-Recipes/dp/0936184744

2) Go to Borders or Barnes & Noble (the brick & mortar variety), and go to their "Sale" book section; look for a copy of the annual "Cooking Light" compendium. You can usually get last year's version for about $5-6 - excellent variety, and good for you too.

3) Build yourself a recipe file of things you like, so you can find them fast. Doesn't have to be complicated - mine is a gallon ziploc baggie that is full of torn out magazine pages, xeroxed recipes, and some hand-written stuff. I make Sundays my "cook something good" day - watch the afternoon sporting events in the kitchen while making something, and then have leftovers for at least 2 days.
 

phrogpilot73

Well-Known Member
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