Receipes for Mini Mary Diet

[jmgoforth]

As a man who does 1/2 the cooking at home I'm always looking for ideas? I also need simple receipes. Any ideads.
What are your favorite Mini Mary Dishes?

[Mrs. Doodlepunk]

Here are two I've made this week. These vegetables certainly take up a lot of space, particularly the Chop Suey seems very filling for me. I have two big vats of stuff ready to go, no excuses!

Cabbage Soup

1 head cabbage, chopped
2 quarts canned tomatoes - or equivalent in store bought, this was 8 cups total
4 cloves crushed garlic
1 teaspoon fennel seed
1 large onion, chopped
3 small turnips, small dice
1/2 pound baby carrots (I buy the peeled bagged ones, saves work and time)
10 ounce bag frozen Fordhook lima beans

Put all in big pot and simmer until done. I added the limas as an afterthought and cooked another 15 minutes. The turnips and fennel seed gave this a sweet taste. The flavors are all from vegetables and it's pretty good.

Chop Suey

1 head napa cabbage, chopped
1 head bok choy, chopped
1/2 pound bean sprouts
4 or 5 stalks celery, finely sliced
1/2 pound carrots, grated
1 red pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, pressed
little water if needed, and soy sauce to taste (or save sodium and add at the table)
large onion, chopped (can use a big bunch of green onions)
1/2 pound mushrooms, diced

put all in big pot and simmer, add water if needed. The vegetables cook down and make their own gravy. At the end, stir about 1/4 cup cornstarch into a cup of water and stir into the mixture in the pot, add more if needed to give desired thickness to your sauce. Serve over brown rice with soy sauce if needed.

[slugmom]

I'm trying to focus my "mary mini" efforts on potatoes. I'm not strictly mary mini-ing, but trying to incorporate more "same starch, boring meal" ideas, LOL

so ... potato wedges, baked (nuked) potatoes with a little hot garlic sauce, or with cabbage slaw and hot garlic sauce.

last night I made potatoes, corn & beans

1 bag (2#) of the diced potatoes,
1 bag (1#) frozen corn,
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained.
A little water to make it just slightly soupy.
Simmered together with chicken flavor veg stock,
2 cubes of sofrito*, and
a little parsley.

(My kids like that meal when I make it with tiny pasta (couscous or acini de pepi) instead of the potatoes, but I wanted the dish to be MWL-friendly.)

*sofrito is a Puerto Rican mix of spices. there's a huge range of recipes, but what I make is based on a friend's family's recipe of green bell pepper, onion, garlic, and cilantro, and a little oregano blended together into green mush, then frozen in ice cube trays. Then I can just take out a cube and toss it into soups & stews, it's very tasty.

[Veggiewannabe]

It sounds delicious and what a GREAT idea to have a tasty cube on hand to toss into different concoctions.

TIA