I say post it and let the haters flow 
The haters going to be real upset if they ever visit Hawaii…it’s a staple out there
1 Like
7 layer salad
This is to be made in a 9x11 baking dish and will provide 8-12 servings or multiple days worth of snackage. It looks like a lot of work, but the biggest part of the prep is hard boiling and shelling the eggs in advance and mixing the dressing. Total time is about 30 minutes, including the eggs and dressing.
1 2lb bag garden salad
2 15 oz can sliced beets
2 15 oz can sweet corn OR 2lb frozen bag
2 15 oz can green peas OR 2lb frozen bag
2 lbs cubed spam, or ham, or even pre-cooked hotdogs sliced works!
8 hard boiled eggs, sliced or 4 avocados as substitute for eggs
2 cups Mayo or miracle whip
2 tbsp white sugar
3 tbsp white vinegar
1.5 tsp ground black pepper
Paprika for dusting
Open and drain veggie cans, or allow frozen vegetables to thaw on counter 1 hour before prep start. Combine in mixing bowl, mayo, sugar, vinegar, pepper. Whisk together until smooth. Taste and adjust sweetness/tartness by adding more sugar or vinegar to your liking.
Layer salad greens on bottom of pan. Next layer beets on salad like you’re tiling a floor. Add in corn, spread evenly. Add peas, spread evenly. Add chopped meat, spread evenly (there’s a theme here, if you haven’t noticed), lastly add sliced hard boiled eggs, again like you’re tiling a floor. Lastly, pour dressing into ziplock bag, snip bottom corner like a piping bag and drizzle over salad. Dust with sprinkle of paprika. Note: This salad looks really pretty layered in clear glass dish, with all the colors inside. So if you wanna extra endorphin boost to see pretty things in your fridge, put it in clear glass bakeware.
You can make this salad more summery/tropical by changing from garden salad to spring mix and changing the beets out for pineapple, the corn out for sliced strawberries, the peas out for candied pecans. Instead of adding pepper to the dressing add 1/2tsp cinnamon and reduce vinegar to 1 tbsp of apple cider vinegar (rather than white). Taste and adjust for sweetness/tartness as you like.
WARNING: this is a massive salad and can take many days to consume and you might get bored with it if you’re eating it alone. Halve the recipe and put in a smaller dish.
Salmon Mousse
10 oz can salmon
8 oz package Neufchatel or regular cream cheese
1 tsp lemon juice (optional)
This one is stupidly easy. Open and drain salmon, blend with cheese & lemon juice. You can go wild with all kinds of spices and flavorings here. I like adding a 3oz bottle of drained capers and fresh dill or fresh lemon thyme. You can go spicy instead with cajun or creole seasoning or even chili powder/seasoning is tasty mix. Experiment away!
What I love about this recipe is that it stays really well in the fridge. You can smear it on toast, eat it with crackers, heap it on sliced cucumber, stuff it in jalepenos and bake. It is an incredibly diverse little power tool with good protein and fast as heck to whip together. High in fat though, so not always the best go-to around.
2 Likes
Y’all this video has a discount code for EveryPlate in the description. Leaving it here in case anyone wants to try it out and save some money!
I regularly make variations of the first 3 recipes!
I like to make Chicken Enchilada Soup instead of actual enchiladas. I use black beans instead of refried beans and add a handful of corn at the end. I top each bowl with cheese/sour cream/green onions/tortilla chips or toasted tortilla strips.
I grew up eating a ton of salmon and we always made salmon patties with the leftovers. I can’t stand salmon anymore so I use canned tuna instead. I like to pan fry them instead of baking.
There’s a popular cracker here called “Pilot Bread” by Sailor Boy brand. They’re basically a really big saltine and they’re great for making mini pizzas.
1 Like
That’s a really sweet gesture Zig, I’m not sure we want to use this post to advertise for a particular company/product as that teeters against some of the WoW forums rules. Making an in text suggestion is probably okay, and mentioning there’s a promo code at the end also okay. I just haven’t been on the forums enough in the past few years to know where they draw the line. In the past, this mighta been a big no-no. Not sure where their enforcement lays now.
I have not been able to find a box or tin of pilot crackers in years! And I’ve been searching all my local grocers, because you are 100% correct. The poor mans pizza is supposed to be made on pilot crackers! Divulge your arcane secrets! Where are you getting yours?
1 Like
I have a couple of easy recipes that are my go to. Nothing fancy
Soft taco shells
Pizza sauce
Mozzarella cheese
Meat of your choice
Easy pizzadilla
2nd
Refried beans
Chorizo
Shredded cheddar
Pigs in a blanket
2 Likes
I take magnesium and NAC to make sure my POTS never returns.
Air fryers are a god send, lol. Cleaning them is extremely easy. The only thing thats hard to clean is if you cook something greasy in them like bacon or hamburgers. I mainly use mine to make hard boil eggs. 
1 Like
Toast
Cold cereal
Beer
Those fruit cups from del monte
Sometimes i boil hotdogs if I have company over but thats not very often.
1 Like
My inlaws got me an instant pot 3 years ago for Christmas and I feel the exact same way about it. Cooking in a pressure cooker takes 1/2 the time and everything turns out so tender. ONE simple pot to scrape clean and toss in dishwasher. I absolutely love it. Even my husband who doesn’t like to cook is down with tossing an herbed pork roast into it and cooking for 20 minutes with natural steam release.
Bonus that I can make homemade yogurt and bone broth for pennies on the dollar. Downside, it is bulky and takes up a lot of storage/counter space.
You can make hard boiled eggs in it too. It’s tricky to get right though because they can explode/stress fracture. You gotta put them in cold water, use the saute mode to bring them up to temp, then pressure cook 2 minutes and that’ll do the trick.
You may or may not be joking but this was very much my diet for several years when I was short on time and energy for real self care. Packages of pepperoni and poptarts are the only thing I see missing.
Heres my go to happy meal,pasta and sauce
1 can crushed tomatos
5 or 6 cloves of garlic
1 onion
1 red pepper
Italian seasoning,no oregano,your not making pizza sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
Crushed red pepper for alittle heat
Romano cheese
Chop onion,garlic and pepper
Put some olive oil in large skillet
Put in onion and red pepper
Cook til almost soft then add garlic
Add crushed red pepper
Add cane of sauce and herbs salt and pepper
Simmer on low heat for about 1 to 2 hrs
Cook your pasta,plate up and enjoy
1 Like
One easy thing is to jazz up your ramen - after the noodles are mostly cooked and seasoning added, just add a slice of velveeta (I’m serious, it just makes it slightly creamier), wait for it to completely dissolve, and crack an egg or two in. I usually cook the eggs in the soup for about two minutes or until the whites aren’t goopy anymore. The end results is really good. If the velveeta weirds you out you can skip it, but try it first 
1 Like
Yessssssssss 
as a person who grew up on the south side of Chicago, if you add spicy links of Italian sausage to this dish (bake at 350 for 25-30 min), you have a full meal. You put them together on a garlic bread toasted hoagie bun or plate and eat with garlic bread.
Also yessss… a slice of easy melt american cheese or velveeta is a game changer for ramen. I like it more in the chicken than the beef, but both are really good. I also drop in a bag of mixed veggies, peas, carrots, corn for fiber. Eggs are awesome, they make it like egg drop soups!
gets rubber chicken ready
2 Likes
I personally tend to cook a little extra chicken or other meat to toss in my ramen over the next few days.
I go through a lot of ramen though since it’s a cost effective meal, even when I dress it up with meat/eggs/ect. Can’t really beat roughly a quarter as a base for a single meal.
Speaking of ramen, I prefer using actual soft boiled eggs vs just dropping a cracked on in while im boiling it. I also only do if I either have some extra cash on hand or find a good deal on mirin (a kind of sweet rice wine used in cooking).
Often times I will toss one of these cut in half in my ramen but at work Im known for bringing these or whole pickles to eat as a ‘lunch’ because of them being pretty quick to pack and carry.
Cooking soft boiled eggs right when your new at it can be a bit of a challenge though. Personally? I use a food thermometer I have on hand and a repurposed beer cooler since it holds temperatures stable for 2 hours to cook them sou vide because I’m not paying that kind of money for a fancy machine.
…I should get to the ingredients list should I?
Marinade recipe I use because lazy and it works without cooking
5 tablespoons soy
5 tablespoons Mirin
Optional Modifications that can be made
2 teaspoons dark soy (if you have it, it makes the eggs darker in color)
You can also use a mushroom infused soy sauce instead (yes i know, that falls on the chinese side of asian styled cooking but its still good)
To cook the eggs
Bring water to a rolling boil then place your room temperature eggs in there for about 6 minutes. If your eggs came straight from the fridge then you cook them for about 7.
To sou vide them? Like I do with my budget totally not a beer cooler ‘sou vide receptacle’. Drop the eggs in your cooler when the water temp is 146 F for 45 minutes. To do that? Bring water to about 150 or so, pour water in cooler, stir water for a minute or two to let temperature stabilize, drop egg in and cover it up when at temp.
Either way. Then take your eggs out and rinse with / place them in cold water to stop them from continuing to cook. You’ll ruin the creamy center otherwise.
After that you peel the soft boiled eggs and then stick them in your marinade and forget about them overnight in the fridge. I would personally suggest using a ziplock bag and doing your best to get as much of the air out of it as possible to store them.
It’s actually not that bad taste wise. It primarily adds a creamy texture to the soup.
Also, if your gonna try and argue that cheese in what is basically ‘japanese soup’ is some sort of abomination? See tsukumo ramen. It’s a shop in Tokyo that is known for adding cheese into their ramen…
4 Likes
It’s funny cuz that thread was shut down by the mods cuz they don’t care about the subject.
1 Like
I like to make big batches of things and then freeze individual portions, that way i can throw together a really good quality meal by heating up a portion of something and making a fresh serving of rice/pasta or whatever to go with it. Also, it’s really easy to churn out high quality nutritious meals for between $3-$5 a pop, that’s hard to beat.
1 Like
I don’t understand the connection with mental health and cooking…
Self care is important.
1 Like
I want some chicken noodle soup and a grilled cheese but am a bit… inebriated ATM xP
1 Like