Lee and I started this series of experiments on food and how to make things RV friendly. The biggest challenges are that we do not have counter space, at all! The table will have to work, no matter how small, as prepping area for our cooking. We also need to simplify our recipes. I like to every now and then try new things and sometimes the recipes are complicated. Well, complicated is not gonna cut it in the RV. I don't mind cooking complicated stuff, what gets me is the chopping and prepping. If I can't have a sous chef, I will have stuff that has been sous cheffed for me ahead of time. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a perfect solution: easy cooking and easy storing (does not mean it doesn't take any room, just no special requirements) and prepping all done for you. The solutions is freeze dried ingredients!!!
As I am typing this I just have my RV soup simmering and it was so easy to make. I was going to make just a traditional soup with veggies and meat in it, until I realized that we were out of potatoes, or had just couple that looked kinda suspicious. And the meat was still frozen. Since I needed to cook for my poor hard working hubby, I decided that I will go with what my conscious has always rebelled against, easy route. So I took all our freeze dried veggies, a can of diced tomatoes, freeze dried meat and tossed a bit of this and a bit of that into the pot with some water, those tomatoes, and some salt, pepper, paprika, all spice, chili sauce and oregano and let it simmer for an hour. Now we have healthy, delicious and most of all super easy soup. Nothing to clean except the bowls we eat from, the pot and spoons. I love this!
When you are snuggled up by a rock or a tree out in the boonies, with as small of a fridge as we do, and you don't have an option to go grocery shopping daily, this is the way to go. The simplicity makes it so effortless too, that even someone who has started to lean towards the take out pizza versus home cooking just for its easiness can not complain at all. All it took was couple of minutes to throw things into the pot and add some spices. Once it started to boil, I just put the lid on it and let it simmer for another hour and by the time all has stopped floating on the surface, was well re-hydrated and cooked. I just sprinkled a bit of cheese on my soup bowl and gobbled it all up. How much easier can it get? And all the ingredients are high quality, dry stored and we don't even have to go to the grocery store to buy them, they can all be ordered online. Hah, I can see how people get extreme on all kinds of things, I am ready to see how far I can go.
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| To our surprise this soup was yummy! |
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| No refrigerator needed |
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| No tears |
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| No peeling and chopping |
Very good! Your title reminds me of a fortune I got in a cookie: This food is so good, even a caveman likes it! I don't know what that means.
ReplyDeleteI did a mini-review of another brand of freeze-dried stuff HERE. We've stopped using them as heavily, but they still come in handy.
The Good Luck Duck
Oh that is awesome, I peeked your post shortly and will definitely check into it more carefully. We have some fruits too and few more veggies, and usually just add some of them to avoid having to go to the store just for that. That specific day I just felt really lazy, and ended up tossing nothing fresh into the pot. I do think that we will be using some of these products if not regularly, at least on occasion.
DeleteAbout the fortune... it doesn't sound that the food needs to be too amazing for a caveman to like it. :D but you never know what a courmet chef a caveman could be ;o)
You'll adjust to the limited prep space, trust me. You learn tricks to work with what you have. Try prepping at home with just 2 cutting boards (one for meat, the other for the rest) for practice. :)
ReplyDeleteI already use that technique and that would not be a problem, there is just no counter space at all, and I mean that there is only two burners and a sink, and no counter. I believe the Revcon was built for a guy who would just pull out his TV dinner from the fridge and microwave it. Cooking there is going to be a challenge. Not impossible, but difficult. We will figure it out, just simple foods, nothing complicated... Or nothing that I am used to, I often have 3 pots even 4 on the stove, one for the frying pan, one for the sauce and one for the pasta or potatoes, but that will have to be reconfigured. :) it will be fine, we will simplify the cooking, hopefully get healthier too and have more time to enjoy our lifes.
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