What are some extremely easy things you make from scratch?

Food! Spaghetti sauce, fried rice, pizza, even hamburgers…I cringe when I see anyone open a can, a jar or a pre-prepared frozen meal in a box and zap it. Everybody STOP THAT!!! Cook real food!!!

@Cruiser Totally agree with all you say there I feel you can cook anything from scratch its all easy. I love making my kids fresh food for their meal and can’t believe how many parents have taken to opening anything for dinner. Fish or any seafood takes no time to cook up for dinner with fresh vegtables and its so good for you.

Coffee cake! It’s wonderfullll.

Chicken stock from leftovers
1) Roast a chicken
2) Eat the chicken
3) Put all leftover chicken bones and meat in a big pot covered with with water
4) Throw in an onion and some celery and salt
5) Simmer for an hour or two

Chicken soup from stock
1) Put stock in a pot
2) Add whatever vegetables and chicken meat you have
3) Heat
4) Eat

Hot yellow mustard like you get with Chinese takeout egg rolls
1) Combine equal parts Coleman’s mustard powder and cold water
2) Stir

Peanut butter cookies, no bake oatmeal cookies, microwave fudge. Are you starting to see a pattern?

Hamburger Helper
1lb of browned ground beef
1 minced onion
1 can of Rotel salsa (pureed)
1 can of green beans, juice included
3 cups of whatever pasta
I throw everything in a skillet and slow simmer for 30 minutes and then sprinkle with cheese shreds.

Home pickles
Vegies of my choice
Fresh dill fern
Whole peppercorns
Whole garlic cloves
A box store sized mayonaise jar
Boiled water with more spices and salt poured over the whole. I leave the pickles on the counter for a few days, releasing built up gas and then transferring them to the frigie for another week or so. Yum yum with no sterilizing that goes with canning and no vinegar.

Home jam
I take a spaghetti pot and pour in whatever fruits I want, usually small plums like those that grow around landscaping and shopping centers, citrus that’s been quartered and slice. I pour a 5lb bag of sugar over the top and let it all soak overnight. I then add just enough water to make a glop, simmer it super slow until it liquifies, thins and then thickens up again. I spoon in jam/jellie jars or empty olvies jars and then store them in a dark shelf space. Again, no preserving, no boiling, no special equipment and my fruits are to die for as jam for tea, toast spread, ice cream toppings and glazes for meats.

Chili Beans
I buy cans of different beans, drain them and toss them in a spaghetti pot with a can of Rotel salsa, tiny pasta shells and roasted corn nibblets. I make up sides of cubed pepper jack, extra sharp cheddar and sour cream mixed with minced green onions. Now and then I brown ground beef in loose chunks to mix in for the last 15 minutes of simmer.

Fancy Schmancy Cheese bread
Sliced extra sour sourdough bread
1 jar of cubed feta in herbs put through the food processor to become a paste
minced sun dried tomatoes
minced fresh dill fern
Schmear the bread with the herb cheese stuff and sprinkle the other stuff lightly on top before broiling on a cookie sheet in the oven for a few minutes until browned.

Tossed salad. I won’t buy the premade bagged salads. If I make them from scratch, I can customize the salad to the rest of the meal, and the ingredients to make the salad will cost about the same as the bagged stuff and will go at least twice as far.

Pasta sauces, risotto, pizza dough/sauce. Loads more, really.. from scratch is definitely the best in most cases.

Also, quick ‘happy cookies’ (requires only crackers, peanut butter, and a toaster oven).

Gravy

I can’t even give you a recipe. I do it from instinct.

All sorts of things are easier than people think!

I make jam, bread, herb vinegars, vegetable stock, pickles- all are really, really easy. Even mozzarella cheese and ricotta are pretty easy to make- and fun, too. I did those a lot when I had goats and lots of extra goats’ milk.

Happy brownies are pretty great as well. ;)

I make cheese dumplings to go in my tomato soup. just need some biscuit dough, cheese and tomato soup.

You guys are inspirational!

@Cruiser Excellent. I’m not quite ant procesed food 100% but I’m getting there. I cringe to admit I use jarred food for my baby, but that’s because I want to taste test her on certain foods before i make a bunch. But to be honest, I’ve noticed that she’ll hate something in the jar and love the fresh version better.

@creative1 It seems you can make anything, true. I’ve not done anything with seafood myself. For some reason, I was worried it would be harder to make. Bad seafood gets so rubbery when over cooked.

@KatetheGreat I LOVE coffee cake. I’m afraid if I made it, I’d just eat it all. My father in law actually makes amazing coffee cake. I think it’s the only thing he does, but he does it well.

@jaytkay THANKS for the mustard tip. I also make my own chicken stock, but I always broil the carcass before I boil it in the pot. I’m told it adds flavor. I don’t know if that’s true because I’ve never made it without broiling the carcass.

@chyna cookies and fudge are ALWAYS good. I sometimes just do a quick cake mix cookie if the cake mix is on sale. No matter how busy I am, those cookies take like .. minutes to make.

@Neizvestnaya yum! I will try at least one of those! Jam though.. yikes a bit.

@MissAnthrope I will try the happy cookies with my daughter when she’s old enough. That sounds like a good easy one. I need to get better with my tomato based sauces. They always seem too sour or sweet. I can’t get the balance right.

@aprilsimnel Gravy is like that for me too. My granmda taught me to make sausage gravy as soon as I could stand by the stove. I couldn’t tell you how I made it.

@crisw Jam is easy to make? I’ve always been afraid of that. You make TONS of stuff I’d be afraid to try. But you’ve raised goats too! Wow. I will agree on the herb vinegars and vegetable stock. I always take my leftover veggies and put them in the stock pot.

@WestRiverrat – I make those same dumplings but I put them in a chicken soup for chicken and dumplings. I need to do better with my tossed salads. I buy the bags.. embarrassed!

dustpans. I wansn’t sure if you meant only food. Because of petty theft I usually will find a piece of sheet metal and fold up and rivet it together for my own use. Not having one on the truck is an unbelievable pain in the ass. Apparently others also believe it because I can’t believe they would take mine because it has some kind of street value.

@keobooks

Yes, jam is very easy- especially if you use Pomona’s Universal Pectin.

@woodcutter – That IS useful. Nah, you can answer anything though you have inspired me to ask a question about nonfood things to make on your own. I’m doing a seminar at a convention this summer about printing out professional quality board games—and I didn’t even THINK to add it to my list of things I make! Thanks!

@crisw I will have to try that sometime. I love jam but it is so expensive (relatively speaking)

These are fun and incredibly easy:

Chocolate Pretzel Rings

48 pretzel rings or mini twists

1 (8 ounce) package milk chocolate kisses ¼ cup M&M’s

—Directions
Place the pretzels on greased baking sheets;
place a chocolate kiss in the center of each ring.
Bake at 275 degrees F for 2–3 minutes or until chocolate is softened. Remove from the oven. Place an M&M on each, pressing down slightly so chocolate fills the ring.
Refrigerate for 5–10 minutes or until chocolate is firm.
Store at room temperature.

And of course my all time favorite:

Rum Balls

3 cups vanilla wafer crumbs
½ cup ground pecans
3 tablespoons cocoa
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
⅓ cup water
2 teaspoons rum flavored extract
¼ cup confectioners’ sugar

Directions
In a medium bowl, mix vanilla wafer crumbs, ground pecans, cocoa, 1 cup confectioners’ sugar, corn syrup, water, and rum flavoring together.
Roll mixture into 1 inch balls, and then roll in remaining confectioners’ sugar.
Store, covered, about a week before serving.
This is the virgin version. I use ¼ cup rum in lieu of rum extract

French Toast

@AmWiser – Oh oh! I made those for Christmas this year! They were so easy! My daughter was barely 3 months with bad colic, so I couldn’t do cookies, so i made these. I used “fancy” kisses—the peppermint and almond (?) ones with stripes. Then I used these Christmas shaped pretzels. I loved those.

I’ve neer made rum balls, but I wonder if I could makes some sort of truffle candy without rum.

@JLeslie I love french toast. That’s another one I have to be careful with because I’ll make way too much and eat it all.

@keobooks I make no cholesterol sometimes and use half egg white half egg beaters. It isn’t as good, but a decent substitute. Do you eat yours with sugar, cinnamon sugar, or maple syrup? Please don’t tell me you use that fake syrup stuff.

@keobooks These Dark Chocolate Truffles are easy and Rumless:D

@JLeslie only pure real maple syrup.My husband uses that fake syrup stuff, though. He has no taste!

@AmWiser THERE We go. YUM!

Um. Is there a way to make French Toast that’s not from scratch??

Pork Roast. Marinate roast or tenderloin in soy sauce with a dash of sugar and a lot of sesame seeds, just covering the bottom of the pan, for 45 minutes to an hour in the baking dish you will bake in. Add some sliced mushrooms to the pan just before cooking. Cover, bake at 400 for about 40 minutes, depending on the size of the roast, then remove cover/foil and cook another 10 minutes. Serve wih rice.

@keobooks I just stopped bringing that fake crap into the house altogether a few years ago, and took my husband to Vermont last year to cure him of it once and for all.

Quick guacamole. Scoop out the flesh, coat with lime juice, powder with garlic powder, onion powder, and salt. Mash to preferred consistency, maybe leave in some chunks. Optional: diced roma tomatoes, cilantro.

@longtresses: I open up a can of Rotel, drain the liquid and fold the rest into the avocado. Rotel has all the seasoning plus little diced green chilies. It’s totally cheater salsa that doesn’t need refrigeration to be pretty red, firm and fresh smelling.

Almost everything at one time or another. Bread is one of the easiest that impresses people.

I use my bread machine all the time, just the dough setting I don’t let it bake in there. I use it for the hard work part of soft pretzels, bagels, dim sum dumpling dough and, of course, bread (which I pull out and shape in a real bread pan. I don’t like the weird square with a hole in the bottom that the machine produces)

Cured olives from backyard or residential olive trees. Doesn’t matter what color they are, wash them and put lay them out on cookie sheets to cover in sea salt for a few days in the sun until dried up. Wash, let them air dry and put in jars with olive oil and spices. Free olives are great to make to give as gifts or to keep around the house. We sometimes pit them first so we can later puree them and make them in spreads, pastes and crumbles for other foods.

@Neizvestnaya Great suggestion! I’ll try that next time.

A pot of coffee. I rarely get coffee from a coffee shop unless I’m traveling or meeting someone.

Everything.

A walking stick.

Oh- another one. sauerkraut. It’s ridiculously easy to make. My first batch is done today; I think I’ll try kimchee next! I keep getting these 5-pound cabbages in my CSA box every week!