Week Five of Kitchen Remodel

what do you pressure cook?

Mignon, what ingredients are easily available to you? Pasta dishes are simple to make, just add whatever vegetables you can get or a can of chickpeas, olive oil or store bought tomato sauce. If you have a hibachi, it can be fun putting together veggies/meat, pineapple chunks and tofu.

Am I incorrect in thinking that you don't have much access to fresh vegetables? Under the circumstances, I think those bags of frozen vegetables would be useful.

You could make esquites: saute some chopped onion and bell pepper (these come in frozen bags!), then add corn -- frozen or drained canned. Saute until the moisture is gone & the corn is gently sizzling. Salt to taste, & serve. (to make it more Mexican, you could add epazote at the end, but that seems impractical for you at the moment)

If you used an iron skillet for the above, just put the corn into a bowl, wipe out the skillet, then quickly cook some kind of meat or fish in it to accompany the corn.

Make the old cafeteria stand-by with frozen peas: defrosted peas plus chopped hard-boiled eggs, onion, parsley, etc.

I like the two dishes above because they're vegetables, but they're also sort of starches.

FaN's great suggestion above would lend itself to frozen vegetables. Also, adding eggs to pasta helps make it a nutritionally complete meal.

Boil potatoes and towards the end of the boiling time, add some eggs so they can get hard-boiled -- you wind up with two ready-to-use ingredients.

When you're slicing & dicing, make extra to have in the fridge. Having onions, parsley, garlic, etc. waiting to go without prep will make food preparation in your "camp kitchen" less stressful, & will reduce clean-up time.

Same thing with salad ingredients -- wash (& dry) extra to have it ready on demand. Maybe you could wash the items outside under the hose, so it would be easier than using the bathroom sink for a bunch of stuff at one time. Any way you could set up a table & dish basin outside close to the cooker for a little more prep space, & to save your back?

Corn bread is easy in an iron skillet. Make up the recipe using slightly less liquid than usual. Have a skillet ready with a good amount of oil in it & pre-heated. Put in the batter, lower the heat, & cover. When it's pulling away from the sides & you suspect the bottom is getting browned, place a dinner plate over the skillet, up-end the corn bread, then slide it back into the skillet. Cover, & cook until done.
Adding cheese, peppers, sausage, etc. to the batter makes it more side dish than just bread.

Hope these suggestions aren't too simplistic or obvious. I imagine you've thought of most of this already.

Still, a slow cooker would be good. In terms of future use, these things use like two (regular type) light bulbs over a period of 4-5 hours. Check it out. The thing with slow cookers is that you can use dry goods (chick peas, peas, wheat, beans, etc.) as well as frozen, and inexpensive cuts of beef, plus half a cup of leftover wine (ok, I realize this is a stretch) with - and here's the thing: very little attention and a single dish. Rice is microwavable as I'm sure you have noted already, as is wheat.

Hibachi would also be good I would think. Grilled anything.

As bixa noted, eggs (with shell) and potatoes can always be plopped on top for future use, right from the beginning.

Start making Top_Crimped pasties...

Kez? You spot where the OP says that her house was flooded ok?...post #6 is the first time I heard it - sounded like pretentious Guff before that and, if the OP's kitchen flooded...why the hell not say it in the OP, eh?...

Flooded kitchen?...'this project is over'?...'Prep time'?...

I don't really care.

There could also be less presumption.

The request was a straightforward request met with abuse based upon false assumptions. It would have shown consideration if a question was asked as to why the kitchen was being remodelled rather then presuming the OP was a good target for venting based upon pre-conceived notions and not what the situation was in reality.

I still don't understand why it would be objectionable for her to have her kitchen remodelled for any reason whatsoever.

seppo - stop moralising and take a line from bixa.

bixa: yer entirely reasonable: I can't speak for others but, in one sense, I took it as nothing to do with a kitchen being re-modelled but the use of language which seemed to say 'me, me, me - I'm up my own arse, anyone want to help push me further up?' I may well be very wrong - but that's the way I read it.

Why does the OP have to justify as to the reasons for getting her kitchen remodeled. Its no-one else's business but her own.

P.S. US citizens 'sure know' how to drag something on and on and on and on and on and on and on.