16 oz prepared red cabbage with apple bits

Mix everything except the cabbage and paprika in a bowl. Knead until every item is distributed evenly. Place cabbage on bottom of baking dish. Sprinkle paprika. Spread meat mixture on top of cabbage. Cover and cook in oven for one our at 350 degrees. Forty minutes in, feel free to drain. With ten minutes left, cover with sauce.

Sauce for meatloaf

• 4 tablespoons minced onion
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 4T of brown sugar,
• 4T vinegar,
• 2T Worchestershire Sauce
• 1 teaspoon basil leaves

Simmer everything in a small sauce pan and stir constantly. Serve with meatloaf.

• 1 can condensed chicken noodle soup
• 2 cans of water (this is more than the recommended)
• 1/2 cup cooked rice
• several pinches of canned fancy cut spinach (refrigerate the rest)
• black pepper
• tarragon
• marjoram
• paprika

The spices and the spinach are what really makes this dish stand out from a boring can of reheated soup. This type of recipe is great for people who aren’t used to stocking their pantries with fresh food. As much as I loathe microwaves, you could even prepare this meal with the microwave.

Reheat the condensed soup following the instructions on the label but use twice the recommended amount of water. Don’t be afraid to leave the heat on for too long with this one because the technique I used involved placing cold rice and cold spinach into the soup right before serving. This means that you can add a dash of paprika and a pinch each of the marjoram and tarragon while bringing the soup to a simmer. Sprinkle with black pepper to taste.

After several minutes of simmering, add the rice and spinach straight from the refrigerator. The reason I use this technique is that the heat transfers from the hot soup to the cold rice and the cold spinach warming the latter while cooling the former, allowing you to serve the soup almost immediately.

• 4 radishes
• 2 hard boiled eggs
• Salt
• Black Pepper
• Paprika
• Leftover ranch sauce from Wendy’s

The reason this snack was simple is because I always have a stock of boiled eggs in the fridge from with which to snack upon.

Have you ever noticed that people will actually choose snacks like this over junk food from the gas station if they are presented with a choice yet isn’t it funny how when scanning their minds for food items to snack on, we don’t naturally come to rest on simple items that are already in our fridge?

What do a good portion of individuals do? They hop in their cars when they get hungry and allow the maze of advertising laden streets to direct their stomachs and control their diets as they wander through the city-scape in a hunger induced dream state. Why does this even make sense to them?

So, despite my rant, this snack was still delicious. Peel your eggs. Slice in half. Cover a plate or shallow bowl with a sprinkling of salt. Lightly top your four egg halves with a bit more. Slice your radishes into thirds after rinsing them thoroughly because they are fresh from the dirt, we got these from the CSA farm which I will have to remind you about later, I eat according to what is given to me. Place your radishes face down on the same plate.

Sprinkle some paprika on your egg yolks and then dash some pepper over the whole ordeal. Dip your radishes in the ranch and enjoy. Don’t forget to eat your eggs, too.

I guess I could have garnished this all with some parsley since I had some left that needs to be used soon. Parsley goes good with eggs and radishes. Top it off with a glass of green tea with honey and ginseng and you’ve got yourself quite a decent snack.

I’ll get around to writing about my adventures in stocking my pantry so you can understand the process of how I make these decisions.

• 1 part olive oil
• 3/4 part red wine vinegar
• Pinch of salt
• Dash of dried basil leaves
• Pinch of black pepper
• Drops of sesame seed oil
• Pinch of garlic powder

With the oil in a bowl, add your dry ingredients first and allow a few minutes for the oil to infuse. Add the pure sesame seed oil and then whisk in the red wine vinegar with a fork until the color is uniform.

June Salad:

• 1 part chard
• 1 part romaine lettuce
• 4 radishes
• Sprigs of parsley
• Capers
• Dash of paprika

Rinse the vegetables well. Pull apart, by hand, the chard, lettuce and parsley. Layer in your bowl if you are only serving one and wish to skip the tossing stage. Slice the radishes and arrange on top of the salad. Top with capers, drizzle vinaigrette and sprinkle with paprika.

Eat.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound pork ribs, mine didn’t have bones for some reason
• paprika
• salt
• black pepper
• crushed red pepper
• maple syrup
• basil
• onion powder
• 4 oz can of diced chiles

I always salt and pepper my meat for anywhere from five minutes to half-an-hour. It’s a good habit to get into. Tell you why later. After generously covering my ribs with salt and pepper, I dashed in some onion powder and then generously covered each piece with paprika. Covering the meat so that you can’t see the meat anymore, only in spots. Dash a bit of basil and then spread crushed red pepper all over.

After about fifteen minutes, long enough for the oven to pre-heat to 325, I lay the meat in a single layer in my skillet. I don’t have a pan for the oven and I probably won’t buy one for a while. My pots and pans do a fine enough job of it. Before I built a cute little tent out of tinfoil, I soaked each piece in maple syrup. Taking care not to disturb the dry rub, I placed the syrup on each piece carefully. The syrup should be thick enough to not wash off your rub.

Before placing in the oven for an hour, I made sure that I had maybe an 1/8th of an inch to a 1/4 of an inch of water in my pan before closing the aluminum foil tent just barely enough so that steam could escape.

An hour later I tossed in a can of diced chiles, turned the heat up to 375 and then browned the meat for another 12 minutes. This stuff ended up tasting pretty good. I wasn’t disappointed.

I still had some brown rice from the food co-op and it made for a nice filler tossed with a couple drops of liquid smoke and a hint of mustard.

Minimal effort, happy tummy.