Cooking when you don’t want to cook

We don’t have a dishwasher and our kitchen is about the size of a small closet. While there are aspects of my kitchen that I have enjoyed immensely — the large farmhouse style sink that initially caught my eye, the white cabinets with black trim that reminds me of a country home, and even the challenge that presents itself when preparing complicated recipes — when the sink fills up to its capacity and dishes spill over, or when you spill one thing and it splatters everywhere, it can become a rather tedious space.

But, we still have to eat! And eat we have.

Due to life, and work stress, and summertime, we have turned to somewhat quicker meals.

One of my favorite meals is vegetable soup, as it involves one kitchen appliance, a cutting board, and a sharp knife. Take a bunch of carrots, as many stalks of celery as you would like, a large yellow onion, and a handful of potatoes and chop these up into cubes. Throw them in the Crockpot with vegetable stock, cold water, a couple of bay leaves and a pretty generous heaping of salt and pepper. Taste and adjust as needed over four to six hours (I always add a drizzle of olive oil to the broth, along with a squirt of white vinegar) and be prepared to be amazed at the flavor bomb of vegetables. We added egg noodles to ours at the end and ate this for days.

For a hot summer day: try this cold soba noodle salad with stir-fried vegetables that can be made a few days ahead of time. I used this recipe as a base but made a peanut butter stir fry sauce on day two of wolfing this down, which is equal parts creamy peanut butter, soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, some version of hot sauce, water, and whatever else your heart desires (lime juice? red chili flakes?). Mix until desired sauce-like.

Another fan favorite of late — sesame oven roasted eggplant. After the eggplant has roasted for about 30 minutes and begun to caramelize, remove from oven and immediately toss in a bowl of your prepared sauce. Mine is typically soy sauce, ginger, garlic, rice vinegar, Sriracha, sesame oil, sesame seeds and lime juice. This is SO good, especially spread on toasted bread.

For snacking, I tried Trader Joe’s Popcorn in a Pickle and while it has the potential for being weird, I love its briny and dill flavor, plus it combines my two favorite things: popcorn and pickles.

On the menu tonight? Angel hair pasta tossed with sauteed veggies and olive oil, topped with cracked black pepper, sea salt, and a mix of cheeses. The perfect non-recipe recipe for the middle of a long week.

Finally, my fiance and I have been squabbling about this lately and I’d like the world’s input: Chipotle or Qdoba? I will always say Chipotle but he seems to think Qdoba takes the cake. Any thoughts?