Simple dinner for a large family (for tired mums (or dads?))

If you have a little kid (or kids) and you have to clean your house, wash dishes, play with a kid, cook a lot for a family and you even want to spend some time on your hobby (really?), at the end of a day you should be like a sucked orange, no doubts. Here comes a day when here's no dinner for your big family for tomorrow but you've already planned too many things for this day or you simply don't wanna do it tomorrow! What will you do? I'm gonna tell you what i do in this case (in addition, if i'm already a little tired).

Here, in Belarus, we used to have soup as a first dish, meat or fish (or something like that) with a side dish and something to drink (milk, kefir, compote, etc.). If you're tired and want to cook something simple, pretty quick but at least a little interesting you can follow my way.

I've cooked three things: vegetable soup, potato and meat.

I started cooking at 4 p.m. while my husband was playing with a kid :)

Vegetable soup and potatos

To make cooking process as fast as it can be you should combine doing several things together. I advice to start with soup and potatos. I use this casserole for soup:

Big enough, but i have a family of 5 adult people!

And this one for potatos:

Vegetable soup. I took
7 potatos
1 big carrot
3 medium onion
water :)

I used potatos of this size:

You can use less or more potatos depending on their size

I don't know how many potatos i used for boiling, i just filled a casserole :)

So, after you'd cleaned the vegetables, put a casserole with potatos and water on fire, fill a casserole for soup with water (~ 3/4) and put it on fire as well. Heat a pan, add vegetable oil, chop onion and rub the carrot on a grater, put it all into a pan. You may have something like this:

After a pan is hot, make little fire and close with a cover. Mix it time after time.

You can just chop the carrot into pieces if you don't want to rub it or hurt your fingers. But then you won't get nice orange soup color (as shown below).

Start chopping potatos into pieces of desired size for soup. I prefer small size (but not the smallest!). Later throw potatos into a boiled water. If you want, add a spoon of flavoring. This time i used this one:

Pretty good and gives nice odor.

When water in the casserole with potatos boils, salt it and make fire less.

Don't forget to mix carrot and onion time after time!

Now that potatos and soup are being cooked you have time for another dish. I've decided to cook pork under cheese with sour cream. You can use beef instead of pork, what you like more.

Pork under cheese and sour cream
You will need:
1 kg of pork
100 g of cheese
100 g of sour cream
onion (if you like and how much you like)

Chop meat into pieces and put into a hot pan. If your choice is pork don't use oil on a pan. This is what i had got:

Fry your meat so it will get nice color, maybe something like this:

Now rub cheese on a grater into a plate and mix it with sour cream:

After that make fire under a pan less and add cheese with sour cream, mix it well and leave under a cover. Let it stew until it's ready. And you'll get very soft meat with cheese taste, really yummie!

If potatoes in the casserole for soup are almost ready and your carrot and onion on another pan looks like this:

you can add pan contents into a casserole, mix it, add spices (i like bay leaf and allspice), salt if needed and leave soup until it's ready (3-5 minutes).

Nice color, right? I love rubbed carrot for this

Perhaps, now boiled potato is ready! Pour half of water out of a casserole. Then make puree out of potatos, adding some butter and pepper (if you like):

That's how a dinner looks like in plates:

Sorry, my husband had already eaten a half of a portion when i took a photo :)

This dinner is super simple and ordinary, you'll get light vegetable soup, very delicious meat and pretty good side dish as potato puree. It's so perfect when you're tired, have no much time, want something simple for several days and you have a big family (including 3 adult men - they eat much! :)).

I finished cooking at 5.50 p.m., so i spent about 2 hours for cooking, including keeping work space clean, washing dishes, cleaning vegetables and even playing with a kid while everything was being cooked! Not very much for a big dinner! After that i even had power to walk with a baby, wow! :)

P.S. It'll be super yummie if you fry some onion before feeding a dinner and add it to potato puree. Bon appetit!

Music playing: Coldplay - Amsterdam