It doesn't look like much.
Coming from a long line of peasants, this is real peasant fare. Here's the simple way it winds along that humble path.
Today is my first day back at the gym after more than one month. That's the longest I've gone without training since I was 17 or 18. So post workout out I'll be hungrier than usual. But I don't like having to wait while the food is cooking, which makes this ideal.
The bag contains 250g (half a pound?) of 'beef ham'. That's just very thin slices of topside beef. Maybe aka minute or sandwich steak? It's usually lean enough, but I trim it in any case. Salt and pepper. It gets browned in a shallow pan with about one teaspoon of butter.
Potatoes - that's going to be about 500g (just over one pound) of potatoes. The variety is 'Maris Piper'. I once knew an American model (
) who while I was cooking dinner for told me that they resemble 'Russet' potatoes. Unfortunately (although completely unlike the American model
) they don't tend to hold their shape very long. But that's ideal for this use.
Anyway, the potatoes are peeled to the memory of my auld granny berating me "Ach, yir peelin awa too much o' the tatties!" They're sliced to about one cm and added to the pan.
Along comes the mushrooms and onions. From the freezer an ice cube of stock dissolved in warm water.
A lid/tinfoil or aluminium foil cover gets placed over the top and the heat reduced to the minimum. That's it. I'm leaving and when I return I'll give it a stir just once, cover it again and then 15 or 20 minutes later feed my face. And I'll have it with one pint of full fat milk.
If money is tight you can pad it out with pasta. True exotica? - add a carrot. And for an experience liable to incapacitate via a nervous breakdown inducing taste sensation, a teaspoon of mustard.
Fwiw if I eyeball that it's about 1000 calories. My TDEE is (depending on the formula used) between 2400 and 2700 a day. But I don't look at it that way. I've enough discipline so that the weekly total is more important.
