Category: Recipes

This recipe actually came out pretty darn good! I could not believe it since it seemed too weird.

Ingredients

3 Tbsp olive oil
1 16 oz can spinach, drained
1 3.5 oz can sardines
2 eggs
1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp capers, drained
1 Tbsp Parmesan cheese
pepper

About 800 calories

Heat 2 Tbsp olive oil in a pan over medium high. Empty can of sardines into pan and crush the sardines in the bottom of the pan, creating a mash. Cook for a while. Add can of spinach, very well drained. Cook the two together for 8 minutes or until done. Put the spinach-sardine mixture on a plate. Now add 1 Tbsp olive oil on medium high.

Take two eggs and break them over the pan, emptying them carefully into the pan. Now cover the pan and cook for 2-5 minutes, or until the egg has the desired consistency. You want to cook it until it is very well done, almost hard boiled. Take a spatula and remove the two eggs and put them over the spinach mix. Now add the Parmesan, capers, lemon juice and the remaining olive oil from the pan. Add pepper to taste.

This tastes a heck of a lot better than you might think, if you like such dishes, that is.

I’m still trying to use up that chili garlic sauce, so I am coming up with uses for it. Here is another one. Anything using this stuff tastes somewhat similar, so keep that in mind.
1 10 oz can of turkey
1 1/3 Tbsp chili garlic sauce
1 1/3 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp sesame oil
1 Tbsp dried cilantro
1 Tbsp lime juice
2 tsp chopped onion
1/3 tsp wine vinegar
1/4 tsp Thai seasoning
Combine the first four ingredients in a pan and cook on medium for a few minutes until it starts cooking well. Then add cilantro and turn down to low and cook slowly on low for about 15 minutes. After cooking about 10 minutes, add the onion, vinegar and seasoning. Add lime juice at the very end, turn up to medium again, and cook a bit.
Serve over Thai jasmine rice.
I don’t know why, but this mixture came out fantastic. The flavor was superb. Don’t know if it was the cilantro, the slow cooking, the sesame oil, or the way I added the ingredients bit by bit.

This dish actually came out pretty good. I used some chili garlic sauce from the store that I had lying around.
Ingredients:
1 6-8 oz can of tuna
1 4 oz can black olives
2 Tbsp lime juice
1 1/2 Tbsp canola or peanut oil
4 1/2 Tbsp wine or garlic vinegar
1/2 onion or 1 1/2 tsp onion flakes
1 1/2 Tbsp chili garlic sauce
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1/4 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp cumin or coriander
1/4 tsp Thai seasoning
1 cup rice
Empty the tuna into a bowl and flake with a fork. Pour the lime juice into it and stir well.
Add the oil and heat. Add onion and chili garlic sauce and cook on medium for about five minutes until the onion is well cooked. Add the oregano, coriander and Thai seasoning. Now add the vinegar and bring to a boil. When it’s done, pour it over the tuna. You are supposed to let it sit in the fridge for a few hours to pickle, but I was impatient. Pour the mixture over rice and add the olives. I used rice but I think a salad with lettuce would have been better, but I was out of lettuce.
It tasted pretty darn good!

Ingredients:
1 tbsp flour
1-3 6 oz can sardines
6 tbsp lemon juice
1 bunch Italian parsley, leaves only
3 tsp minced garlic
3 tbsp olive oil
1 15 oz can garbanzos
1 package cherry tomatoes
Put flour on a plate. Sprinkle with seasoning. I used Italian Basil and Pepper, Green Pepper and Garlic and Pesto. Remove sardines from can. Roll sardines in flour until coated.
Chop parsley, removing stems. Add parsley leaves, 1.5 tsp garlic and 6 tbsp lemon juice in a large bowl and mix together. Set aside.
Open can of garbanzo beans and empty into a bowl. Half tomatoes and put in a bowl.
Add olive oil to large pan on the stove. Turn on high. Turn down to medium when oil starts to bubble and pop. Put the sardines in the oil and add the leftover flour. Cook sardines for 3 minutes on each side. Remove from pan and place on plate.
Turn pan to off or low. Add 1.5 tsp of garlic. It will cook very quickly.
Add in tomatoes and garbanzos to the pan. Turn heat back on medium to medium high. Place sardines back in pan, snuggling them between the vegetables. Cook until vegetables are hot. Add parsley mix on top of mixture on pan and cook for a minute or two.
I served it over rice.
This is one of the best dishes I have ever prepared. Check it out.
Calories with rice and 1 can sardines: 1,300.

This is actually two separate recipes, but you can combine them if you like.
1 15 oz. can peas, drained
1 15 oz. can beets, drained
4 TSP margarine
2 TSP dried onion flakes
2 tsp dried parsley
In a pan, melt 2 TSP margarine over medium heat. Add peas. Add onion flakes. Cook for 5 minutes on medium.
In another pan, melt TSP margarine over medium heat. Add beets. Add parsley. Cook 5 minutes on medium.
You can eat them separately or combine them, but I combined them over rice. The onions go very well with the peas, and the parsley goes great with the beets. Good vegetarian meal. 12.5 servings vegetables. 600 calories.

This isn’t really a formal recipe. I had a package of Sesame Chicken, and I wanted to add to it. Adjust the recipe according to your ingredients.
1 10 oz. pkg. Sesame Chicken with Noodles (microwaveable)
2 14.5 oz cans of green beans, drained
12 oz chicken, drained
1 8 oz can of water chestnuts, drained
peanut oil
1/3 cup of lemon juice
2 1/2 TSP sesame seeds
2 TSP sesame oil
3 TSP soy sauce
2 tsp minced garlic
1/4 tsp Chinese five spice
1/4 tsp chili flakes
1/4 tsp pepper
The package calls for cooking it first, but that was not a good idea. The package ingredients ended up too hot when cooked with everything else.
Most recipes called for 2.5 times more chicken than green beans. My recipe calls for the opposite – 2.3 times more green beans than chicken, but I like my veggies.
Add enough peanut oil to cover the frying pan or wok. Peanut oil is important to use here because it’s almost impossible to burn with it.
You can turn on the heat at any time. I recommend medium high as this is the best temperature to cook Chinese food at. Get an apron because stuff is going to splash around a lot. Add ingredients from Sesame chicken package. Add chicken, green beans, water chestnuts and garlic.
After it cooks a while, add the sesame oil and soy sauce and cook some more, stirring all the time. Ordinary recipes would have called for doubling the soy sauce and sesame oil, but I cut those in half because sesame oil is expensive and 6 TSP of soy sauce is way too much sodium.
After a while, add the lemon juice. Later add the five spice, chili flakes and pepper.
Cook for a long time, stirring all the time. Cook until most of the liquid is taken up. At that point, add the sesame seeds and cook until they are toasted. They are toasted when you can’t see the white seeds anymore. Recipe would normally call for 4 TSP of sesame seeds, but those are expensive so I halved it.
Tastes pretty darn good! The longer you let it sit, the better it tastes.
Calories: ~1,250
9 servings of vegetables
Sodium: 2,900 mg (high)

I had this can of beef puree lying around and I did not know what to do with it. I looked at some recipes, but they didn’t help much, so I made some soup out of it.
Ingredients:
1 very large soup pan
1 multiple measurement measuring spoon
1 stirring instrument
1 15 oz. can of beef puree
2 15 oz. cans of mixed vegetables, drained
1 14.5oz can of diced tomatoes, drained
8 cups water
2 tsp minced garlic (2 cloves)
2 TSP minced dried onion (2 onions)
2 1/2 TSP dried parsley
1 tsp dried pesto
1/2 tsp dried marjoram
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
Add first four ingredients into a large soup pan. Turn stove to medium. Add onion and garlic. Turn to medium high, stirring continuously. Add spices later on. The thyme will smell very strong. Cook until the thyme smell starts fading, and you can smell other smells mixed in with the thyme. There is so much liquid that it will barely even boil, even on medium high. Ladle into bowl. Turn down to low and simmer. It will taste better as it cooks on low.
This turned out pretty darned good! It tastes a lot like the beef puree, but it also tastes like the vegetable beef soup you grew up on! Good meal for a cold late fall evening.
Total calories = ~1,050, so it’s not even a full day’s meal. You won’t be able to eat too much of it until you have to put it away for the next day. Contains 10.5 servings of vegetables, plenty for one day.

Ok, I think I am finally getting the sardines thing down. I have tons of sardines and lots of rice, so I am trying to figure out something to make with them. This was by far the best one of them all:
Ingredients:
2 tins sardines
2 cups cooked rice
1 cup canned spinach
1 small onion, yellow or white, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/3 cup black olives, finely chopped
2 Tbsp Basque fish sauce
2 Tbsp chili sauce
1 Tbsp red wine garlic vinegar
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp stone ground mustard
1 Tbsp capers
1 slice lemon
20 shakes of pepper
Directions:
Cook the rice. Boil 2 cups of water in a pan and add 8 oz. rice to boiling water. Turn to low, cover and cook 15 minutes or until water has boiled away. Set rice aside.
Peel the onion and garlic clove and remove 2 cloves. Peel the 2 garlic cloves. Chop the onion and garlic cloves on a board and set aside. In a large pan, heat 1 Tbsp olive oil on medium high. Add the chopped onion and garlic and cook on medium high until caramelized (light brown).
Turn heat off. Drain and chop olives and add. Add fish sauce, capers, mustard, vinegar, chili sauce and sardines to pan. Set one sardine aside to add as a garnish. Turn heat back on to medium high and cook, stirring. Break up sardines as you stir. Stir until well-cooked.
Drain spinach and add to the mixture. Cook spinach on medium high with the rest of the sautee. Add 20 shakes of pepper and stir in. Now add rice to mixture and cook on medium high. Stir rice in well with the mixture until the rice is sort of a greenish-gray color. Add spices to taste.
Can be served hot or cold, but I ate it hot. Add slice of lemon on top. I squeezed the lemon out onto the rice. Add final sardine as a garnish on top. Eat away!
This was the best meat and rice dish I have cooked so far. I was dubious about the chili sauce, but chili sauce is used with seafood and in shrimp cocktails, so I decided to take a chance. I hardly knew what capers were, but the capers go with sardines perfectly and the capers just about make the dish! I was also unsure about the spinach, but the spinach went fantastically with the whole dish. You can definitely add some Italian parsley, but I didn’t have any.
It has a really strong, Mediterranean, fishy smell and taste, so if you don’t like sardines, you won’t like this.
Capers are little things in a jar that look like miniscule olives. They’re cheap – about $1.50/jar. The chili sauce is cheap – $2/bottle. A good bottle of vinegar will set you back $3. Extra virgin olive oil is expensive, but worth it, at around $7-8 bottle. The lemon, onion and garlic bulb cost almost nothing.
The Basque fish sauce, sardines, olives and spinach were lying around. Rice is cheap. Sardines are cheap too.
Keep in mind that to get 2 cups of rice, you use I cup of rice and 2 cups of water, because rice expands in water.
You need to wear an apron because stuff splashes around a lot.
Cooking isn’t gay, it’s macho! If you’re a bachelor, you either learn to cook or you eat like a dog. Real men cook!

This is another in my series of bachelor recipes for single guys, especially single guys who hate to cook, are broke and don’t have many ingredients lying around.
Ingredients:
2 cups rice
2 cups water
2 cups stewed tomatoes
12 oz tuna steak or slab
1/4 cup Teriyaki sauce
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp stoneground mustard
1 tbsp Basque fish sauce
2 chopped olives
1/4 tsp marjoram
Pepper, lemon pepper, basil, herbs, etc, to taste
Heat 2 cups water to boil, then pour in rice. Reduce heat to low and cover until done.
Pour ingredients into large frying pan and stir fry until desired consistency is reached. Add marjoram, pepper, spices, etc at the very end. Put rice on plate and spoon the tuna tomato mixture over the rice.
This actually ended up pretty good. You might think that’s a lot of teriyaki sauce but it worked out just fine. Teriyaki goes great with tuna and you can use lots of it and get away with it. If you don’t have Basque fish sauce, use any white wine.
One might think that the olive oil was excessive too, but it worked out just fine too. Usually, you only need 1 tbsp olive oil, but sometimes you can go higher. The mustard was about right too – 1 tbsp seemed too little and 2 tbsp seemed too much. Marjoram goes well with any tomato dish.
This is a good dish for guys who don’t like to cook, don’t have much money and don’t have much food lying around. You can buy tuna in little packets ready to cook and eat. Rice is really cheap. I got the tomatoes for free from some church surplus food giveaway. They had huge tins of them and they were begging people to take them so I grabbed one.
I’m welcome to suggestions from any of the amateur chefs out there to how I might improve this recipe.