"Cooking" for big lazy cheats!

As the chilly almost Winter winds set in here, I've been devoting a lot of time to keeping my belly happy cos Mr Brain refuses to cooperate if Comrade Tummy is kicking up a fuss!

This weekend I had two small boon discoveries which will no doubt ease some of my slaving over meals this week...MSG and chemical free frozen pork and cabbage dumplings...and frozen hand made empanadas...of course you need to know where to get these things too ;)

Having always grown up with a superwoman mother who cooked every meal meticulously from scratch, it's taken me a while to master the art of cooking "quick"...when I first moved out, cooking meals would range anywhere from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours as I followed my mother's meticulous style free of time saving cheats. I'm glad to say due to necessity I've now got the cooking process down to 15-30 minutes Max...

Cos of the chilly cold I was in the mood for some asian soup noodles with particular craving for the taste of fresh coriander...which I have to admit my tastebuds are really maturing into lately.

So this was what I had...

Soup stock with boiling water, some chicken stock from a box, some vegetable stock from a box(first time I've ever been such a cheat!!), some sprigs of coriander roots and leaves torn up, some enoki mushrooms, some torn up shitaake mushrooms, some very finely sliced pork (need to get this from asian butcher - you can get pork or beef), some ripped up baby spinach, some ripped up bak choy...and some Japanese somen noodles. All up cooking time and preparation was close to 15 minutes....not bad, and healthy too! To the soup I added a few drops of sesame oil, you can also add some salt, white pepper and soy to taste if you like but I just wanted a very clear and cleansing soup. The best part is that I'm pretty sure if I had served it to someone like M I could have convinced him I spent an hour in the kitchen slaving over it-hehe ;)