Packets and jars

[Tinkerisdead]

I'm 30 weeks pregnant with a fussy toddler and for my entire adult life i've cooked from scratch. Increasingly im too tired to cook or standing and chopping etc is hurting a torn ligament injury. Subsequently we're eating too much takeaway or ready meals. Dh gets in too late to help really and he said my problem is i cant cook crap. He lived on birds eye crispy chicken til i came along.

So this week i bought dolmio. It was nice. And easy.
So what other jars/packets do you rely on? I cant order from cook as my freezer is stashed with xmas fare as im saving my cooking efforts for then! I do keep pesto and cream cheese in to throw on tuna pasta but what else?

Tinned sardines or mackerel mashed up with lemon juice and pepper. Goes well with baked potatoes.

I don't bother with Dolmio... find an ordinary jar/box/bottle of passata, a bit of onion and a few mixed herbs does the job there. :) Love the Pataks sauces, though. Very flavoursome, unlike the more anglicised brands which tend to be horribly bland.

Avoid Loyd Grossman. Apart from the recent issues, they taste like shit.

I do normally use passatta but I truly cant be bothered to stand there tasting adding this and that at the moment. i just want to be able to throw sauces on meat or something but seriously as I never use tins/packets/jars I have no idea whats actually out there. pataks I'll look into then.

Should I be using passata instead of chopped tomatoes? What's the difference, in terms of sauce quality?

I know exactly what you mean, i am the same as you OP. My easy meals are eggs in various forms,

fish in a parcely type affair in the oven with lemon and dill served with rice,

sausages and lentils-fry sausages and onion in casserole dish then chuck in lentils and carton of stock for an hour.

Chilli spaghetti-pancetta, mushrooms and spinach with spaghetti and dried chilli flakes

Spaghetti and blue cheese and bacon all swirled around together.

Sorry to hijack above! To get back on track, I always have pataks curry pastes in the cupboard.

Hijack away. I use passatta as I find it thicker, richer than chopped toms which I find too waterey and need cooking down a lot more. I think a carton of passatta is about 25-40p so not vastly expensive compared to tomatoes but I find it far smoother.

some great suggestions savoy, thank you. i do have a slow cooker but Im a bit anal about sweating the onions etc first but Im open to putting chicken in it and throwing a sauce on it. I really do want to save my efforts for xmas and ive made the cake, stuffing, gravy etc all in freezer.

If we run out of passata in our house it's a disaster, I tell you. In the last few days I've used it to make a lentil soup, meatballs and spaghetti & tonight we're having vegetable chilli so it'll be in there as well!!! Used to use chopped tomatoes but found they didn't always cook down so well.

I suppose my other 'cheat' sauce that I use would be a combo of canned coconut milk and Thai green chilli paste. Heated together they make an instantly lovely Thai sauce into which you can add whatever you like really... chunky fish, chicken, veggies etc.

Ha ha - a passata disaster

we do freezer meals more with toddlers - fish and chips, burger and chips, veggie fingers and chips, fishcakes and chips. i'm trying not to have chips more than twice a week though!

I shove chicken breasts/thighs into sweet chilli sauce in a freezer bag to 'marinate' and then bake.

Cous cous is v fast. Just add boiling water.

I also get stir fry packs and shove them into a wok with some sauce while boiling up some quick noodles.

Lee Kum Kee sauces are excellent - I get a delivery from a Chinese supermarket online as you can't usually get them in 'normal' supermarkets. Great for stir fries, char sui pork, satay etc.

If its just you and dh, get a tin of Homepride white wine sauce and a packet of seafood (I keep on standby in the freezer). About as instant as you can get. Great over tagliatelle.

Thankyou for the ideas. Freezer meals are another thing i dont do. My freezer has frozen veg in one drawer, ice cream in another and meat of varying cuts and types. The cupboard is packed full of herbs spices and rice. I can never pull something to warm up. Right next weeks shop im on a pre prepped mission. Standards have to drop til xmas is over and this baby is out.

Do bernard matthews still make hamwiches? Suddenly im craving those from my youth. Or crispy pancakes.

OP I'm 40 weeks on Saturday and I totally feel your pain! I have actually spent the last few weeks getting a few things batch cooked and into the freezer.

The only jars I regularly rely on are red and green pesto and olive tapenades - I let them down with a little olive oil to make a pasta sauce. Maybe I'm just a snob but ready-made packets and jars usually taste far too salty.

My 10 min pregnancy lifesaver has been pasta, with the formula of cheese+savoury+greens. Greens thrown in with the pasta at the last minute, cheese thrown in with the drained pasta to melt so it's all in one pot.

In the last three weeks we've had, mixed with penne or fusilli:
goat's cheese + crumbled sausages + shredded cabbage
gorgonzola (ok when cooked, and apparently even when uncooked now!) + pancetta + cavolo nero
boursin + field mushrooms + beet tops
goat's cheese + ricotta + leftover roast butternut squash + spinach
cheddar + bacon + leeks (and a little cream)
parmesan + olive paste + Ikea swedish meatballs

And that's not including the evenings where I've "made" Marcella Hazan's onion/butter/tomato sauce (recipe here).

Oh lordy now i want the goats cheese sausage cabbage combo.
The second xmas is over then i'll be batch cooking for the freezer ready for baby. I dont even cook amazing stuff just the normal stuff shepherds pie, stew etc but i need to wind down a bit. I work for my in laws and they want me to work up to the end so i need to recoup some time. Not even discussed names for this baby yet. It'll prob end up being named cinderella by dd.

Pataks passanda sauce is lovely. We had it today with prawns and some spinach, mushrooms and green beans thrown in. TASTY!

Mmmm hamwiches. That was tea at my Grandma's my entire childhood! With potato waffles. Ooo I miss that
(sorry, not helpful for topic!)

Totally agree with the Pataks, its the only curry sauce we would buy.

Also, supermarket own pasta sauces, the ones you find near the fresh pasta, Sainsburys do a lovely pea and asparagus sauce. M&S sauces are not too bad either.

That said, none of that sounds as lovely as Tinselperions suggestions!

Sacla stir-in pasta sauces are good - had the tomato & garlic one with tinned tuna & penne this evening. Yum!

I used to like co-op puttanesca sauce. Probably the only ready made pasta sauce I ever bought, being a 'make it from scratch' kinda gal. I tend to plan to cook one day and then have the leftovers the next day. At least that way you only have to worry about cooking half the time! In fact if you cook enough for 3 meals, that is one for one day, one meal the next and one for the freezer. Curries freeze well and you can throw a naan in the grill and not even have to worry about rice.
Other quick meals I do are omelettes (however you spell that?), baked beans on toast (can't beat it!), bagged spinach that you can throw on pasta and stir in cream cheese and ham? Hmmm...run out of ideas, sorry