Help! Quick and easy ideas for my book club dinner?
terezosa / terriks
10 years ago
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Fun2BHere
10 years agofourkids4us
10 years agoRelated Discussions
Quick dinner ideas or where to find with picky eaters?
Comments (15)Like Deanna, I make good use of my crockpot to make a pot of beans or pork carnitas or pulled pork or beef BBQ. I like to make a big half sheet pan of various roasted vegetables, whatever sounds good to me that day. I can warm them up for a meal whenever I need them, I've used potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga, onion, beets, zucchini, asparagus, cauliflower. I try to keep them "sorted out" with things that cook quickly, like asparagus and zucchini on one tray. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and put in the oven at 400F or so until they are as done as you want. Watch asparagus, it gets crispy quickly! I try to have one vegetarian meal per week, minimum. I think most recipes today contain altogether too much cheese, so I'm not guilty of that, but I often make a tub of hummus and eat that with celery sticks so I'm not sure what those carbs would do to your blood sugar. It at least has lots of fiber. As for low carb, how about a nice frittata? I'm a big "breakfast for supper" person because I don't like much food in the morning but I love breakfast foods. I also like "finger food" sometimes, like a steamed spear of asparagus, or some sticks of veggies of your choice, wrapped in a slice of turkey or ham that's been spread with some low fat herbed cream cheese. Lots of protein, no bread. Finally, I make stir fries with whatever sounds good, add a shot of soy sauce and whatever seasonings you like. You can make it with shrimp, chicken, beef, pork, tofu, no meat at all, a couple of different kinds, any vegetables you like. Stirfry is my friend. LOL Here are two of my favorite recipes. The first goes together really quickly but does require that you keep a bottle of fish sauce, whichi I only use for this recipe, LOL. The cut up chunks of chicken cook quickly, it takes longer to make the brown rice that I like with it. Add any veggie you like. I cut the chilies down to one and I use whatever boneless chicken I have on hand. Sometimes it's a mix of dark and light, sometimes not. Compliments of solsthumper... Chicken in Caramel Sauce 1/2 cup dark brown sugar 1/4 cup water 1/4 cup fish sauce 3 tablespoons rice vinegar 1 teaspoon minced garlic 1 teaspoon soy sauce 1 teaspoon slivered ginger 1/2 teaspoon black pepper 2 small dried, red chilies, broken in half 1 tablespoon peanut oil 1 shallot, sliced 1-3/4 lbs. skinless, boneless dark meat chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces 1/4 lb., skinless, boneless white meat chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces Cooked rice Fresh cilantro sprig for garnishing Combine the sugar, water, fish sauce, vinegar, garlic, soy sauce, ginger, pepper, and chilies in a small bowl. Mix well. Set aside. Heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add the shallot and sautfor a few minutes. Add the chicken and sauté until slightly browned, about 3 minutes. Add the sauce mixture and bring to a boil. Turn heat down to medium. Cook until the liquid is reduced by half, about 12 minutes, stirring occasionally. Place rice in a serving bowl and spoon the chicken over it. Garnish with cilantro. Also from Sol is my go-to-crockpot-recipe, pork carnitas. Unfortuantely I'm at work and don't have it here, anyone else have that recipe handy? Annie...See MoreQuick easy picnic ideas
Comments (16)Jude, that is the weird and wonderful thing about that coleslaw "secret." I just buy the bagged colseslaw ( buy 1/2 purple and 1/2 white if you want to be adventurous, lol!) and pour on the dressing. I brought it to a potluck picnic at work once when I was working at a biological research station (small group) and it was just my "desperation" offering, and it was a big hit. I don't know the name of the brand of poppyseed dressing I used, but it came from the fridge/produce section of the grocery, and it was probably a somewhat higher end product. After that point, you can throw in whatever else you like in your coleslaw. One interesting addition I like sometimes are peas, which you can toss in the frozen ones out of a bag real simple. But that's not part of my poppyseed coleslaw secret recipe. Another easy peasy dressing, which I think would work good with coleslaw although I eat it on salads a lot, is mayo with a healthy glob of dijon mustard and dill weed. A friend turned me on to that quick and dirty secret dressing. I call it "California Dan's Secret Dressing." Don't tell anyone! You could add honey if you like coleslaw sweeter and thin it with milk or yogurt of whatever. Another quick and dirty coleslaw secret is to add celery seed if you don't have celery to put in it or like celery from a texture standpoint. That's something else I learned from my mom, she put celery seed in a lot of things because dad had "celery issues." :)...See MoreQuestion re: Small Island and my book club
Comments (7)I think this is a perfect book for a group - so much to talk about here - immigration, leaving home, settling in to a new life, racism, colonialism, WWII... >it is almost impossible for me to say how a group of Texas housewives ... might enjoy a story of how black people from the British Empire find their expectations of the 'Mother Country' fall far short of what they hoped. If this is the group, then this would be just the book to stretch their minds a bit (but don't tell them that, they'd probably toss the book aside! :) I second veer's comment. You also might want to broach (brooch?) it as a book about WWII, and how it affected the lives of the British as well as immigrants. Also tell them that the book is wonderfully written, very plot driven, and its a page turner. Also tell them its a relatively short book and a quick read. In some groups, that's helpful to know! You might want to read it first tho - you know your group, and you might very well decide its not the book for them. But it might just be :) Cindy...See MoreBook clubs: When the book stinks.
Comments (30)What makes me chuckle when reading this thread is how often book clubs are reading the same books. Fall to Your Knees, The Memory-Keeper's Daughter, Wicked, A Fine Balance (which I loved) Water for Elephants, etc. and I've noticed this in other bookclub-themed threads. My club is 5-6 years old; most of us make a sometimes herculean effort to finish the book out of respect for the person who chose it (though every book we read has been voted on) as well as knowing that the discussion doesn't have a snowball's chance of success if the book hasn't been read. Personally, I could not finish "Seabiscuit" to save my life as I kept falling asleep while reading it. "A Beautiful Mind" was our inaugural book and nearly did our club in as almost noone could finish it. "Wicked" was also an unpopular choice with a number of members not finishing it and so was almost impossible to discuss which I found disapointing. We all read "Crossing to Safety" and enjoyed trashing it, unlike most other clubs who loved it. By and large, our best discussion come when any or all of these factors come into play: most, if not all, members have read the book; the designated discussion leader has come PREPARED with questions, background info, etc.; the book actually has some meat to discuss (please don't ever make me read Sophie Kinsella again); and the book isn't universally liked by the members. My club just had a terrific discussion using "TMKD." Even though I didn't find it well-written, it resonated with our group and had some grist for the mill. So--yes, I usually try to finish up the book, even if it is just a cursory and skimming read. I also thought "The Little Children" was an awful book with flat characters and a nonsense story line and I would have to be "locked in" somewhere to re-read and discuss it. On the other hand, my clubs meets in restaurants for dinner and drinks and I have no doubt that some late nights, the restauranteur would like to lock us out......See More
Annie Deighnaugh
10 years ago
golddust
10 years ago
mtnrdredux_gw
10 years agoellendi
10 years agorunninginplace
10 years agoterezosa / terriks
10 years ago
Lyban zone 4
10 years ago
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