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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP. Lots of these are great-- and I'm taking notes!-- but I was expecting more like "deceptively easy" or "seems complicated and fancy but actually takes 10 minutes." A loaded baked potato is a beautiful thing, but it's not that IMO. (I'm still using that idea, though!)

I suppose if you have fancy ingredients around, that helps. Like precooked lamb sausage or w/e.

Off the top of my head, I do have a more unique one that was given to me by a friend, but I think I modified it down the line for ease or something.

[u]Orzo/Chick Peas/Goat Cheese Thing:[/u]

You need:

Orzo or very small pasta, but you can actually use whatever.
Baby spinach or regular spinach
Canned chick peas
Goat cheese (preferably crumbled)

Olive oil
Seasonings of your choice

Cook orzo on stove.

When it's almost done (maybe 1-2 minutes left), throw in baby spinach and rinsed/drained chick peas. (This might add 1 minute to your cook time for the orzo since you cooled down the water with the extra ingredients.)

Drain and mix back in the pot with some olive oil or butter to taste, mix in an herb blend you like-- like Badia Complete, or some herb mixture like Herbs de Provence or something-- some herby, maybe garlicky mixture with salt and pepper is good. Rosemary goes good with goat cheese, but so do lots of things.

Mix in goat cheese (chevre)-- it doesn't have to be crumbled, but that's easier to work with IMO.

Done.

Obviously figure out the proportions you prefer, but I like this because:

-It's easy to have most ingredients on hand. We usually have baby spinach at least for smoothies, and everything else is a non-perishable staple. You just might get in the habit of picking up goat cheese crumbles once in a while. They have them even at Aldi, which brings me to:

-Cheap! Quite cheap outside of the goat cheese, which is still as little as $3. I shop Aldi and Giant sales mostly, so if I did a pound of pasta, a can of peas, 5-6 oz goat cheese tub, some spinach... this is like $6-7 including olive oil, etc. and would make enough for 8+ individual meals.

-Vegetarian (we're not veg but almost everyone could benefit from eating less meat)

-Adults AND kids seem to mostly love it. My kid is not picky, but the kids of the friend who shared the "recipe" with me were pickier. It's almost like mac and cheese in a way, but it's kinda fancy-tasting, too.

-Actually doesn't use a bunch of prepared foods, except the beans are canned, I guess?

-EXTREMELY fast. It's basically all assembly, and total time is only as long as it takes to boil water, cook the orzo, plus maybe 2 additional minutes. So maybe 15-ish minutes, but like 5 minutes active time. You can unload the dishwasher and set the table in those 15 minutes.

-Pretty low dish use. Pot. Can opener. Maybe a colander/strainer for the chick peas. No knife, no cutting board, no additional bowls or pans.

-Versatile. Add chicken, change up the beans, maybe do feta instead of goat cheese, change the herbs...

---

Of course you can make it even better by sauteeing the spinach and/or chick peas, etc. but this is my lazy meal.

And I'm 99% sure I'm leaving out an ingredient my friend uses, for no reason other than I didn't have it the first time I made it and then forgot it existed. Jarred red peppers? I don't think that's it, but I can't remember, and anyway that sounds great.  
  [/quote]

We make this orzo dish, too, but we use feta- it is kind of like a spanakopita pasta dish![/quote]

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