Quick and simple meal ideas that don't require much cooking / any cooking

[MrsGiraffe12]

Just that. But need to appeal to 2 adults and a 6 year old. We eat meat, fish, and dairy, plus the usual rice, pasta and bread.

At almost 34 weeks pregnant I'm finding this heat unbearable to stand there and cook, and DH works 12 hour days so I can't expect him to come home and do it.

Would it be acceptable to live off of soup and french bread for the forseable future lol x

Pasta and pesto - we make this regularly and often put chorizo/pepperoni etc in.

Grilled chicken, cous cous and salad. We have a George Forman grill and I usually put some seasoning on the chicken and in the time it takes to cook, you can prepare your salad and cous cous.

How about nice tuna baguettes with mayo, peppers, onions and carots mixed in with the tuna.

Fab thanks, I'm just so crap when it comes to basic meals but can easily do roasts etc, the mind boggles lol

I made chicken salad sandwiches yesterday. Only cooking was to poach the chicken breasts. I do this early in the day before the heat sets in. Really simple and easy to serve with sides like fresh fruit and raw vegetables like carrots and cherry tomatoes.

Also, microwave quesadillas are a great standby for when I'm really desperate. No oven use to heat up the kitchen. Taste great dipped in salsa and sour cream.

We've swapped our Friday night curry in favour of cheese, crackers, olives, or pate, Parma ham etc. if we're really pushing the boat out we bake a Camembert to have with crusty bread, carrot and celery batons. Just add breadsticks and hoummous for the kids and you're away. There's usually enough leftover for lunch the next day. Not much prep involved as I'm too lazy to prepare a salad. I put a few plum tomatoes out as a concession!

We get a cooked chicken and do chicken, salad and coleslaw when we don't want to cook. Or jacket potatoes if I can find the energy to chuck some in the oven.

Chicken fajitas are quick and easy, just fry up onion, peppers and chicken, add some spices and put in wraps with a salad and maybe a bit of grated cheese. takes about 10 mins but they're tasty.

We seem to be eating a lot of baked potatoes, filled rolls and shop bought quiche and salad just now . I've been off cooking since pregnancy began. Currently 25/26 weeks.

I am in exactly the same situation... here are some things I've tried:

Chop up tomato, spring onion and ham and stir through pasta with a little salad dressing.

Simple egg dishes e.g. omelette, fried eggs, scrambled eggs with good crusty bread and salad.

Pop some lamb steaks or even ready made BBQ lamb kebabs in the oven, have with mixed bean salad (bought or made with tinned beans) and some hummus also good for when pregnancy messes with your digestive speed IYSWIM.

Wraps! Buy flat tortilla wraps and some breaded chicken (or plain chicken if you're healthy). Cook them (or buy ready cooked). Add various things from the chiller (salad, salsa, cheese etc') and roll up.

Cheese on toast with baked beans. If it's good enough for students it's good enough for preggers me.

Cous Cous (made by just pouring hot stock-cube stock over and letting it soak in) with some cold deli meats or cheeses and chunky tomato salsa/salad.

I waste time spend time browsing the cooking sites as they often have great ideas:
allrecipes.co.uk/recipes/no-cook-recipes.aspx
www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/articles/no-cook-recipes these ones are v quick though some of the ingredients are pricy.

vegetables with pasta are our staple in this heat:

1. grill a load of cherry tomatoes until they're starting to burn, squish them with a fork and serve stirred into pasta with a little cream and some fresh basil.

1. fry some sliced courgette with some lemon peel, pine nuts and chilli flakes and serve with pasta.

1. get a whole heap of different mushrooms and fry them in a little olive oil with garlic and the juice of a lemon. serve on top of pasta with some fresh thyme stirred in.

all take as long as it takes the pasta to cook.

Pork casserole - chop up pork fillet, carrots, tin Campbell's condensed mushroom soup. Dish. Cook ~ 2hrs. Rice / potatoes.

Can do similar with lamb - Chicken Tonight mushroom sauce from jar works well.

Salmon steaks - grill, with potato salad / other salad.

I really want beans on toast now it's been mentioned!

We also make chicken fajitas regularly and make up a batch of chilli and have this in wraps too with lettuce x

We like fajitas and salad (just fry the chicken in spices or marinate in Nandos sauce before cooking).

Or slimming world favourite diet coke chicken - fry your chicken, add your stirfry veg & onion, bit of garlic, I put a chilli in, 8 tablespoons of passata, chuck a can of diet coke caffeine free in and splash of worstershire sauce and just leave it to reduce, serve with rice.

We do cooked chicken from supermarket and serve with mash and veg or salad. DH takes the legs to work next day with salad .

I don't mind the odd jar and chuck over some veg or meat with rice or potatoes.

Quorn bolognese is easy - fry onion garlic, peppers and a chilli and whatever else you fancy, chuck in a tin of tomatoes or passata, throw in some basil then a few handfuls of quorn mince cook fot a bit serve with pasta (or rice as I'm not keen on pasta).

We also use our George Foreman grill and serve everything off it with a pack of salad!

Everything I cook requires no more than 10 mins in the kitchen doing effort as I can't stand more than that. I've started chopping everything with scissors where I can as takes up less time!

Tuna pasta - cook some pasta, rinse in cold water mix with tuna mayo and grate some cheddar in. Add some sweetcorn and done. We had this the other night and it was nice and easy and cool to eat too