[msroboto]

You could check out the ABS 6 minute meal cookbook from Men's Health. It goes along with the ABS diet but it's mostly healthy and sensible. The nice thing about the 6 minute one is that most of the recipes are simple.

My theory is this book is for guys and the stereotypical thinking is guys don't like to cook but they do like to eat.

They encourage the use of already cooked chicken. You can't really screw that up. Avoid the skin of course. I usually eat it as chicken and then pick whatever is left and use it in a pasta (or rice) sauce.

This recipe is from the book. Easy and hardly any cooking except the pasta. 10 minutes and you'll be eating.
2 ounces Barilla Plus whole wheat pasta - penne or rotini anything like that
12-14 precooked shrimp
3 cups chopped spinach
1 tomato chopped
3 tablespoons Gorgonzola cheese
2 tablespoons diced walnuts
3 tablespoons ready made pesto -
i have tried pastene found in the Italian section at the grocery and Classico found in the pasta sauce section both are good I think I like the Classico better.

I boil the water for the pasta but before I put the pasta in I toss in the frozen shrimp.
Let them thaw and remove into large bowl that you are going to toss all this in.

Cook the pasta.

While that's cooking throw the rest of the stuff in the bowl.

When the pasta is done just drain don't rinse and toss in the bowl.
Mix it up and eat. This takes maybe 10-12 minutes to make depending on how long you cook the pasta.

5 powerfoods.
2 servings described here
372 calories per serving 19g protein, 29 g carbs, 21 g total fat, 5 g saturated fat, 488 mg sodium, 5 g fiber

This is good cold as pasta salad too.

[WebRover]

Mmmm. This sounds really good. Even better as a pasta salad.

[broadabroad]

Oh, bless you!

I agree that something like Delia Smith's 'How To Cook' would be a useful thing to start with - the kind of book that assumes you have NO IDEA what the **** to do in the kitchen, as is true of so many people these days. That would be a nice helpful starting point, and would explain about things like how to cut and clean veggies, or the names of kitchen utensils or whatever. Nobody is born knowing this stuff - some people get the chance to learn it at school or at home, but lots of people don't, and there ARE recipe books out there pitched at absolute beginners.

Look, love, don't freak out about things being complicated and 'getting it wrong', or about recipes being carved in stone. It's just a learning curve. I love cooking, but I really can't be arsed with recipes - I'm very much a DIY girl.

If you'd like to make soup, then vegetable soup is EASY EASY EASY and yummy.

Get a biggish pan.

Get some veggies you like. (I'd always include onions, because they are yummy, imho, but use whatever you like.)

Get maybe a stock cube or two (I tend to use chicken or vegetable, but use whatever you like. Or don't bother! They're just an easy way to get something flavourful as a base.)

Wash the veggies.

Chop up the veggies into little weeny bits. (I don't normally bother removing skins unless we're talking onions or something, where you have to. Just make sure the skin is clean.)

Put water in pan and heat it up till it starts to bubble.

Sling in a stock cube or two.

Add the onions first - they take quite a while to cook.

Add everything else. (If you have any leftovers sitting around in the fridge - like leftover cooked veggies, leftover chicken, leftover sauce, leftover rice, leftover ANYTHING, pretty much - chop 'em up and add them too!)

Let it cook until it looks and tastes like soup (probably at LEAST 20 mins, but really, you can cook it for ages and it will just keep getting nicer and soupier. Just keep an eye on it from time to time to check it doesn't boil over or run out of water.

Now, sure, you can make it more complicated - you can add salt'n'pepper, or soy sauce, or chili, or whatever other things you like in your food. But basically, soup is just bits of stuff chopped up and slung in water and boiled. (Boiled on a LOW heat, so it simmers gently, rather than on the top heat, so it goes all Volcanotastic on you.) And you can make soup out of ANYTHING! And you can put it in the fridge, and then you can use leftover soup as the base for another new soup, and sling DIFFERENT leftovers in it (pot roast, or stir fry, or whatever the **** is lying around), and heat it up again, and bingo you have an entirely new soup!

BUT DON'T FEEL BAD IF IT DOES BOIL OVER OR RUN OUT OF WATER! (Or if you burn the toast or whatever, you know?) Because these things happen to all cooks, including the ones that write the recipe books! It's fine - it's just a matter of practicing so you get the hang of it, same as learning baseball or parallel parking or any other thing. You can't have good judgment about a thing until you've had the chance to practice for a bit, you know?

[AussieDaria]

The super-lazy, "I need to eat REALLY SOON" alternative to major soups is to pick up a packet of pre-diced fresh veggies (not the dried ones, and not the flavourless frozen ones*) at the supermarket. These are usually sold as 'soup mix' in Australia (no idea what they're called elsewhere), but you can also check out some of the more obscure packages labeled as 'coleslaw mix' - they often have carrots and all sorts in there. Plain, raw, diced veggies that you don't have to cut up... that's what to hunt for.

Boil your kettle. Throw boiling water in a pot. Add chicken-flavoured stock. Bring to boil, add veggies. 10-15 minutes later, call it soup and eat it.

This is not in any way an awe-inspiring recipe, but if you're walking in the door hungry and otherwise inclined to scoff 4 slices of toast while dinner's cooking (not that I'd do any such thing, of course... *cough*) then you quickly learn the value of semi-instant soup with a practically zero calorie count.


*Peas and corn are okay for adding in, and to be fair, the diced mix that has carrot, potato, etc in it can be tolerable when added to fresh vegetables... just bear in mind that it's not suitable for making soup on its own as it doesn't taste like anything when cooked on its own.