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restaurant Cookbook

Vegetable Soup

Traditional French Soupe Paysanne is chicken pieces and fresh vegetables in chicken broth. However, you can make a super easy version - just get a bag of frozen vegetable medley (or a can of the same), add salt and pepper (or a bouillon cube), dump it all in a pot of water, and boil for 10-15 minutes. You can do it in a microwave too. Optional enhancements: parsley, dill, sour cream, tomato paste, crackers. Which mix of vegetables you prefer is up to you; my favorite mix is peas, carrots, corn, and string beans.

Easy Recipes:

restaurantSnacks and Sandwiches (20)
Healthy yet simple sandwiches and snacks, both traditional and rather unusual. A few of these require a stove or a microwave, to pre-cook ingredients, but most can be done without either. Feel free to experiment with different kinds of bread: rye, pumpernickel, pita, focaccia, etc.

restaurantSoups and Salads (20)
Soups and salads provide a good balance of protein, vegetables, and carbs, and are extra easy to make. Most of these can be fixed in under 15 minutes.

restaurantMain Courses (20)
Fish, meat, pasta - hot meals that you can have right now, or cook for a whole week ahead and reheat as needed. Some are quick and easy, others take a while to cook, but all use 5 ingredients or less, and, while cooking time can vary, prep time is no longer than 20 minutes.

restaurantSide Dishes (20)
Rice, potatoes, vegetables. Vegetables are important to have plenty of, but hard to come up with. Plenty of exotic recipes that are easy to make and that taste great.

restaurantBreakfast and Sweets (20)
Omelettes, pancakes, desserts, smoothies. Some are yummy, others are both healthy and yummy :)

restaurantLinks to good cooking sites (6)
Recipes for various lifestyles, as well as health and budgeting information.

• seriouseats.com - great site, each recipe is an essay on the dish: its history, variations, options, explanations of what work and what doesn't, so that you understand what you're doing rather than blindly follow the steps and hope for the best, like with many sites/books. Plenty of pictures, ideas, and clear instructions.
• 100daysofrealfood.com - great site, talks of healthy eating but without obsession with calories or other such, focusing instead on less processed food and more on down to earth basic healthy recipes that our grandmas used to eat. Motivational overall, plus tons of recipes.
• allrecipes.com - probably one of the biggest recipe sites there is; may seem overwhelming with so much information, but you can narrow down your searches. Great feature is recipes by continent/country.
• halaalrecipes.co - halal cooking, chabad.org - kosher cooking section, diabetes.org - recipes for those suffering from diabetes
• fitness.gov - eight healthy eating goals from the President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition; simple, but effective
• The Eight Easiest Ways To Cut Your Food Budget In Half - Forbes article, good ideas.

Cooking can be hard for abuse survivors: PTSD, depression, and/or eating disorders aren't good motivators. And if your parents didn't bother teaching you how to do it, cooking can seem overwhelmingly complicated and time-consuming. It indeed can be, if you're doing it as a hobby. However, if your goal is simply to have food to eat - cooking is pretty simple, and a lot cheaper than takeout. The trick is to toss perfectionism and to use cookbook recipes as an inspiration for creativity rather than absolute rules. For example, if a recipe calls for 16oz of green peas and you only have a 15oz can - in all honesty, some people would prefer 20oz, some - 10oz, and most wouldn't care if you skipped the peas entirely or used broccoli instead. Most of the recipes on this page are healthy, use 5 ingredients or less, don't call for anything rare or expensive, and can either be fixed in less than 15 minutes or make enough food for a few days and store well in the fridge. Some are common and included for those who never cooked anything in their life and need a basic manual on how to make boiled potatoes. Others are exotic ethnic foods, helpful if you've developed food fatigue on all the common foods and are looking for something new and exciting. Feel free to email us your favorite recipes, we might add them here so other survivors can benefit from your expertise.