Sometimes I Cheat
Posted by terrepruitt on October 2, 2019
I would love to not rely on some processed foods. I am always amazed that as much as I love pasta and bread I do not make my own of either. And I hear that both can be really easy. I would love to be able to cook from scratch every night using high quality organic ingredients, but the reality is I don’t. I am thinking we are a lot alike in that we do what we can when we can with what we can. Sometimes – for me – it is just a matter of not having any ideas of what to cook. Sometimes I am just stumped. I can be stumped in the morning when I actually might think to take something out of the freezer. Then when it comes time to make dinner, I don’t have anything defrosted and I am still stumped. I know there are a lot of people who make homemade meals and then freeze them. Now that I think about it, I have done that, but I haven’t done it lately. So sometimes I “cheat”. I always have something in the freezer I can use as a meal or an addition to the meal. Sometime is it like that old Food Network show Semi-Homemade. I add “something” to “something” that is frozen.
For some people it might seem odd to add something organic to something so processed, but, as I mentioned I do what I can. The other night my hubby brought home some Grassfed ground beef. Oh, that was so awesome because I was having one of those days when I didn’t know what to cook. I still didn’t know what to do with the beef, but at least we had defrosted meat and it was a start!
I decided to cook it up and add it to a frozen lasagna. Sometimes I cook more pasta to supplement the few noodles that are in the lasagna, but I decided not to this time. Here is what I did – working with what I had.
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Quick Semi-Homemade Beef-Lasagna-ish Dinner
1/2 of a small onion
olive oil
3/4 of a pound ground beef
handful of cherry tomatoes
1 small/single serving Stouffer’s Lasagna
Heat up the olive oil. Chop the onion. Cook the onion in the oil. Add the ground beef. Cut up the tomatoes. Cook the beef until done. Turn off the heat and add the tomatoes to the pan.
While the beef is cooking follow the cooking instructions on the box of lasagna.
When the lasagna is done, cut it in half. Put half on each plate. Divide up the meat and tomatoes onto each plate. Then use a fork and knife to mix the lasagna and meat on each plate.
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Since I don’t cook with tomato sauce often this is a treat for us. It was good. Sometimes you just need easy and good to get a meal on the table.
What do you do to get a meal quickly on the table?
Terre Pruitt's Blog 
Betty Galloway said
That looks yummy! I think we all cheat. I know that we have often said that we would love to cook fresh whole foods every meal but the reality is we don’t. It’s just so much easier to use some processed packaged stuff. I read an article recently about obesity and how they now think there are things in processed foods that cause one to be unable to turn on the “stop eating” switch. They actually keep you from feeling satisfied or something! Well if this is true no wonder we have an obesity epidemic even among young people! But when you try to avoid processed you find…..it’s almost impossible to shop without getting some processed food. We all just do the best we can.
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terrepruitt said
Yes, there are a lot of articles that state this. Another thing they say is food that is void of nutrients just don’t satisfy our hungry – our need for nutrients. So things that are fat-free, have artificial sweeteners, and are zero calorie are not satisfying us so there is an over consumption. That is without there even being “things in processed foods that cause one to be unable to turn on the “stop eating” switch.” I know I feel better when I eat “real” food, but unfortunately even our “real” food is not as nutrient dense as it once was. And as you said, we all just do the best we can!
Thanks for reading and commenting, Betty!
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