Hello hello! So I’m trying to broaden my culinary horizon right now, things have gotten a bit stale since I have a mild case of ARFID and tend to fall back on safe foods (protein bars, fruit pureés, burritos) when I don’t keep an eye on my diet. Ideally I’m looking for something that’s healthy and reqires little prep. And it should be obtainable in Germany. But if the title speaks to you in any other way I’m interested to hear your thoughts anyway.
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For a healthy and affordable diet: beans, rice, bread, collards, kale, mackerel, salmon, sardines, raisins, oatmeal, almonds, and chicken.
lentils! chick peas! beans! legumes in general, they are great! you can integrate them into anything…
(ie. cook a bunch of lentils to eat warm with whatever veggies you can steam… but leftovers the next day are turned into a salad, etc. )
Soups. Find Cooks Illustrated Best Soups cookbook. Learn to make and can your own broth. It doesn’t change everything but it changes a lot.
Cotton sheets here. So, I guess the food I’m sleeping on is long sugar chains?
Get a rice cooker with a timer. Aside from steaming rice to perfection it can also make perfect omelets, al dente pasta, soups(no raw chicken! Not hot enough) I replaced my old gas stove for this and a microwave to effectively reduce my energy bill. So slowcooker + microwave for sauces and garlic infused bread you can make very diverse combos of 15 minute meals. I am on a lean meat and vegetarian diet.
Also a cool hobby is fermenting and preserving. Like making your own jam from leftover fruits.
Get a rice cooker with a timer.
This! My wife and I got a fancy Japanese rice cooker that will keep rice warm for hours. Comes out perfect every time and it’s a vehicle for all kinds of delicious things. Eggs, tofu, chicken, all sorts of veggies and sauces.
Hard boiled eggs, super food, very portable, easy to throw in a backpack or lunch box. Available in most convenience stores
Chicken caviar? How fancy.
My bed, normally, with a rare nap on the couch. Why would anyone sleep on food?
You just had me look up the idiom to make sure I got it right 😅
Let me rephrase in accordance with the definition that came up: Which important or impressive food items are people not paying enough attention to?
Personally I think it’d be nice to sleep on a giant, freshly baked loaf of sourdough bread.
Due to disability I practically live in my bed. I often sleep on nuts, noodles, peas and rice. Once I slept on a chicken nugget.
Brining chicken for salads! I eat a salad every day for lunch, which sounds boring. But if you brine your chicken breasts in a salt solution for about an hour before baking, it gives you amazing salad chicken, like you’d get in a restaurant. Just pat dry, brush with olive oil, season with your vibe of the week, and bake for like 45 minutes. Then you can mix up what else you put on your salad greens - different nuts, cheeses, veggies, dried and fresh fruits, etc. I also eat pretty seasonally/locally so salads change with the seasons. But in general, brining meat is a game changing kitchen hack that few people take the time to do.
Take vegetable. Saute with olive oil, a little salt, and some seasoning. Vegetables taste amazing and people just don’t eat enough of them, and I think it’s because they don’t cook them right.
I personally love roast veggies. The issue with eg stir fried or sautéed vegetables, for me at least, is that they don’t microwave well because for both stir fry and sautéed veggies, part of the appeal is some crunch that remains in veggies like broccoli, carrots, baby sweetcorn, etc. But microwaving them to reheat just makes them go mushy. With roast veggies, they are quite soft anyway, so as long as you are not going for a crispy exterior they will microwave well.
I guess that’s one of my big issues with vegetables, is that I feel I usually have to cook them fresh. Otherwise the texture is not nice to me if I cook a lot of veggies to reheat over the next few days.
For roast veggies: olive oil and whole cloves of garlic with the skin on. You can smash them to release more flavour, but that also makes it more likely that the garlic will burn, which is a shame because roast garlic makes for a delicious garlic-flavoured spread on toast. Add whatever seasoning you like; I go with rosemary and then whatever spices on my spice rack look good.
Piggybacking this comment because similar:
Chop up some veggies (I like zucchini, yellow squash, onions, and maybe carrots), toss them in olive oil, salt, some seasoning, and an acid like lemon juice or wine (or a little balsamic vinegar if you want that vibe), then throw it into a lubed pan and into a preheated oven until roasted to your liking (probably like 15-20 minutes at 400°F).
I like this method because it’s largely passive, so this can happen while you deal with some other part of your meal. Sauce, meat, rice, whatever. Plus it’s pretty hard to fuck up unless you forget to use a timer lol.
Millet, Spelt, Cranola, …
There’s many grains you can put in pillows 🛌. Although you generally use the chaff.I’ve heard good things about buckwheat
My partner says tomato paste, not that it is slept on but that most people use it incorrectly. She also thinks people should use more cilantro but she is a fiend for cilantro so take that with a grain of salt. In my opinon people don’t eat enough seitan, that shit is gas and very healthy. Most people seem to view it as a meat substitute but I think that takes away from how fantastic it is as an ingredient in its own right.
Wer nie im Bette aß weiß nicht wie Krümel piekenSince you’re talking about Germany: Tofu has been unfairly demonized here (maybe because it can serve as a meat substitute).
It is a great source of nutrients and protein. It can be prepared in many different ways. It is environmentally friendly, can be conveniently stored and has a relatively long shelf life.
I haven’t tried tofu many different ways, but I worked at a tex-mex restaurant in high school and I’ve enjoyed it the way they made it ever since. Squeeze the excess water out, dice it, marinade it in the same marinade you would use for tex-mex steak, saute it, and serve it in tacos or burritos or whatever.
See, this is why I come to the comments: To pick up tiny little bits of interesting cultural knowledge.
A family member said they disliked it because of it being gummy.
Might also be a brand thing because silky tofu from the asian store was just silky but tasteless and would need some type of marinade.Tofu tastes like soy! It’s a very mild flavour but I can definitely taste and smell it in tofu and soy milk. I suppose people who are not used to eating tofu might think it has no flavour at all, but as someone who’s eaten tofu their whole life, I can definitely recognise soy as a flavour. Just a very subtle one.
Maybe it was the brand/dish I used it (once) with didnt make it very obvious.
oh well. Maybe next time :)I think people who didn’t grow up eating tofu, or just haven’t eaten a lot of tofu, may easily believe that tofu has no flavour. Or maybe if your nose/tongue is just less sensitive. I can most easily smell it when tofu is frying in a pan, personally. Like I said, it’s really subtle, and easily overpowered.
I could take or leave tofu, but I really like tempeh.
Tofu has been unfairly demonized here
Could you give me some more context on this? Is it the usual “phytoestrogen will make you a girl” or agricultural industry propaganda?
I feel like the EU in general has been quite pro-animal agriculture (for example plant-based milk can’t be sold as “milk”), but how is it in Germany specifically?
Most of the experience, including your examples, is not specific to Germany. The notion that tofu is not for “real men” can be seen in other meat-heavy societies. Just like the idea that tofu is not a filling meal. In pop culture, it is often associated with weak traits (e.g. “soy boy”), and described as tasting bad or bland in general.
In Germany, a special permit was required until the 1990s to produce certain types of tofu. If you offer people something with tofu, many still turn up their noses or laugh because they think you’re joking. I don’t notice this as much with any other widely available food.
There is also far too much discussion about whether something can be called tofu sausage, tofu burger or tofu butter. But I think here we’ve passed the low point and common sense is slowly gaining ground.
Sometimes you still come across the false claims that tofu raises estrogen levels and that the rainforest is cut down to produce it.
Thank you for the insight. Yeah, I expected the “cultural” talking points to be pretty similar across the western countries, including Poland, where I live.
The vast majority of pro-meat arguments I hear are based on these conservative ideas mixed with a large dose of protectionism, so any progress tends to be very slow.
But I think here we’ve passed the low point and common sense is slowly gaining ground.
This topic got ridiculously politicized, so hopefully once people get tired of the debate they will be more willing to consider the economic/health/environment/etc. aspects, not just cultural.
It’s good that you’re looking to expand your food repertoire
If you’re dealing with arfid though you should consider a desensitization protocol to help deal with sensory or phobic response driving the arfid. What this looks like varies because it depends on what drives your arfid: is it a fear of aversive reaction, is it sensory, disinterest, etc.
That said building on what you have can be helpful. Changing the burritos slightly - change the protein, add a new vegetable, add guacamole, etc. try a new flavor of protein bar, etc.
If you’re looking for something in the healthy/low prep side of things I tend to make one big meal on sundays for the week and portion it out. It takes about 30-60 minutes depending on what I make. Japanese curry, various pastas, salads, soups, etc. how healthy these are varies. I am vegan so they tend to be a little bit better than the typical recipe you’d see online but some are still not the most healthy (Japanese curry for example is fairly high in fat but portioned correctly with rice is still filling and a reasonable amount of calories)
Various spices and dried herbs? Get a whole bunch of different ones, perhaps even some premixed from India (though unnecessary, but may be available even in places like Lidl every now and then IIRC)
I always fall back on chicken breast, what most people seem to find bland and dry. Well, you can mix up some spices together, figure out some combinations you like and put them on your protein/vegetable of choice (will work well with olive oil too as another person mentioned). Want it done quick? Chop it up into smaller pieces and throw in a frying pan. Don’t want it oily? Swap it out for butter (just use lower heat) although I prefer sunflower oil.
You’ll probably have few that you eventually always use in combination with others. E.g. my favorite to use are sweet paprika, coriander and turmeric. Turmeric seems kinda crap on its own, but works well with other spices. Coriander doesn’t need much added, if anything and smells good imo and paprika just goes well on lots of various stuff (note that smoked or plain paprika is also very different from sweet kind though)
Lidl
Curry (powder) is tricky because it can contain so many different things. The cheapest (and Lidl is always the cheapest, despite colorful packaging) usually sucks.
