Cooking's sometimes hard enough, but do I have to wash up also?

The short answer is yes... unless we use banana leaves to serve and eat with our fingers and stir with sticks (not really a bad idea...)

but we can keep the cookware down, which often includes the grottiest implements to wash.

ONE POT WONDERS

Roast Chicken and Char-Grilled Vegetables. 

Bake the whole thing in one pot!!  

This is also a good pantry dinner (not much from the fridge)

Turn the oven on to about 180/350.

Throw together 6 slices of bread (cut off crusts and cut into little squares); a jar of roasted char-grilled vegies (drained), one shredded BBQ chicken and some spinach leaves.  Stir it together IN the dish you're going to cook it in, you don't have to go overboard, just so the chicken isn't all on one side and the spinach wont turn into a black mess in the corner.

Whisk up 6 eggs with about 1 and a bit cups of milk and pour it over the chicken/vegie mix.  Leave it to swoon a bit while you tidy up the little tiny mess in the kitchen.

Grate some cheese over the top of the goodies in the dish and place it in the oven in order for it to consider how it can warm the cockles of your heart.  You should give it at least 35 minutes thinking time.

The bread becomes golden when it comes up with an idea and miraculously the eggs set at about the same time.

Eat it!!  Sometimes it looks like this - but the bottom of the dish couldn't possibly be this clean if you've just taken out a slice.  If it is, all power to you - your washing up is going to be even more minimal.  If it's not, it's because you just BAKED in it, which is how things should be.

Sometimes there's just no time to cook

I know this, you know this.. suddenly it's food o'clock and there is no food being dished out: there is no aroma tantalising your tastebuds: you haven't even entered the kitchen or opened the fridge.

Is it time to opt out and dial-a-dinner? Absolutely not! (unless you feel like dial-a-dinner, in which case go right ahead...).  There is another way that doesn't necessarily mean inordinate amounts of time spent cooking, or for that matter cooking at all.

I want to know who said we have to have dinner at dinner time?  I've yet to get the name and number, or even era of the person who said dinner must be hot and substantial (probably somebody who had their meals cooked for them).

I have 2 healthy grown sons - both over 25.  Solid, strong and both keen on their food.  I'm going to let you in on a secret:

Sometimes we didn't eat cooked dinners.

Sometimes we didn't eat uncooked breakfasts either, but that's another story.  What I'm concentrating on here is the need to ingest hot food in the evening.  There isn't one.  We do it out of habit.  

so before you resign yourself to cook something when your heart's not in it, or worse - to buying take away, here is a list of uncooked meals that will sustain you and your family throughout the evening, and well into the next day and breakfast time:

Chopped up fruit (yes, really truly) & Yogurt served with Couscous or rice (anything you pay over $14 for in a cafe has to be ok for dinner)

Go all hog and give everyone 2 mangoes each.  That's so decadent! Make out you're stranded on a tropical island.  Add some bananas, pawpaw and mint.  Put some sultanas and chopped apple or pear in, and this fruit salad has just won an award for its looks alone.  No washing up!!  Still not sure about it?  Check these out:  

Groovy Fruit Salad

Ingredients 

• Diced avocado, banana, grapefruit, orange, papaya, and Pear
• chopped, crushed mint leaves
• 1 cup grated coconut
• Sugar (optional) - because it's dinner, perhaps we should opt out of this ingredient
• honey (optional)

Directions 

Peel and remove seeds from the fresh fruit as necessary, cut fruit into bite-sized pieces. Combine all fruits in a glass bowl. Add the mint leaves, some sugar and water. Stir gently. There should only be enough liquid to coat the fruit.

Cover the fruit salad and allow it to stand for a half hour before serving. Top withgrated coconut immediately before serving     

Pankcakes:  I know - it's almost cooking (ok, it is.. but such little cooking). With pancakes the world is your oyster:  You can go sweet or savoury; plain or wildly exorbitant.  Ocassionally we contest each other in our kitchen to see who can put the most added extras in the pancake mix and still be able to flip it!  Try flipping a savoury pancake with nuts, bacon and zucchini in the batter mix! or a sweet pancake mix with a whole packet of Trail Mix* dumped in the batter.  That's just the batter, you then get to add a filling - from jam or chopped fruit & cream for a sweet filling through to asparagus spears or shallots and sprouts (with or without any sauce you feel like).  Pancakes should never be slotted into daylight hours alone.  They were always the perfect evening snack when you had run out of chocolate or ice cream.

Here is a link to the perfect savoury pancake recipe starter....

http://www.nibbledish.com/people/Laynie/recipes/savoury-pancakes#blogthis_toggle

I'm not finished with my notions of uncooked and semi-cooked dinners. There is no end to this notion of what to eat when you don't feel like cooking:  I will come back to this as I move along and add them as they come to mind (and stomach)