Hello all,

We're currently having some building work done and our kitchen refitted and trying to live with just a fridge and microwave in the living room.

The work has been going now a couple of weeks and has at least 7-10 days left.

We're running out of ideas/inspiration for evening meals. Microwave Lasagne gets a bit dull after a while!

Anyone have any meal suggestions or ideas??

Thanks in advance.

Get yourself an electric 3 tier food steamer I cook whole meals in mine, New tatties, veg, fish for example. I also use an Induction hob so it's possible to vary menus all week without using the main cooker/oven.

edit: just thought you could try and get hold of a microwave steamer and use that to cook conventional food instead of packaged stuff

I am in empathy, we're having building work too, luckily they moved all our appliances into the spare room, still not the same, no place to chop things e.t.c. Take advantage of the good weather, have lots of salads, or barbeques, is your microwave one of those ones with a grill in it? I lived in a house without a kitchen and we used a camper gas thingy for noodles and pasta e.t.c

Fish cooks well in the microwave but may stink out your room!

Scrambled eggs in microwave are ok - assume you have toaster?

Potatoes cooked in their skins are also ok done in microwave.

Is it just a microwave or a combi? There are lots to do with a combi oven. The manual usually has recipies and timings.

Try here: http://www.microwaverecipescookbook....pasta-recipes/ I've also got a micro cookbook that was donated by a neighbour (one of those collectable magazine things) that has pretty much any meal you can think of, don't mind digging it out and snapping some copies of recipes if you have any requests - not tried many apart from some cakes and puds (cakes were a bit peely wally but tasty nonetheless!)

Get your ray mears on.

edit: seriously though, get a barbie cracking or even a proper firepit. Plenty of rural spots you can do this if u aint got a garden. Plus it'll make for a nice evenin;

try getting one of those mini camp gas stoves?

george foreman grill is also good too

and as someone mentioned above, an electric food steamer

OR if you want you can buy plenty of different types of ready meals, i tend to go to Tesco or ASDA and get them quite cheap IMO

You can buy packs of veggies to steam in the microwave, also packs of new potatoes that steam in the bag (Tesco do ones with sauce or seasoning and butter on them). I buy them sometimes when I'm feeling lazy, they turn out really well

Do you have a toaster?
If I just had a toaster and a microwave I'd live off falafel and salad in toasted pitta bread! Extra points for adding houmous!

three letters BBQ

We had a couple of months without having a Kitchen but we used the microwave had a camping stove but the main thing was BBQ you can do alsorts not just burgers.

Dominos pizza.

I Can understand how you feel, I had a new kitchen fitted just before Christmas, I didnt have a microwave (old one thrown out) no toaster.

Naughty me I just popped round the cafe in the mornings and get myself a bacon sarny on crusty bread. Lovely

there are some perks to having building work

Get yourself some of these:

http://www.zipnsteam.co.uk/

Great for veggies and for fish - and won't make the whole house smell of it for days. I actually cook broccoli and green beans in these in preference to using my steamer - 90 seconds and they come out perfect. Oh, and in spite of what it says on them, each bag can be used more than once, although if I have cooked fish in them I wouldn't then use them for veggies unless I wanted them to taste, well, fishy.

I had kitchen refitted last year. Took them about a month cos of all the plumbing work that needed doing and I was left with no drinking water from anywhere other than coming straight out of the shower.

I lived using the microwave but just before they ripped it all out I'd invested in a mircrowave grill, I've got a combi microwave oven grill but its so much effort to convert it i've only ever used the microwave bit.
I saw this microwave grill though on QVC that is just like the size of a normal dinner plate and looks like its made of sinilar stuff to an oven dish but you can grill the stuff on it, fry eggs, do all sorts. I've gone from only being able to do microwave meals in it to being able to cook virtually anything out of the freezer that goes in either the oven or under the grill. It takes a bit of trial and error to get the timings right on some of the stuff but its well worth it.
Mine cost me £4.99 from this really old and now unfortunately bankrupt shop called woolworths but i would think places like dyas would do them.
They're lovely for things like eggy bread. so its not just a grill, the name is deceiving, look at the picture to see what it suggests. its usually got a full grilled breakfast showing on it.
Sorry dont know how to do links to show you where to get one.

that's why i recommended the combi oven. when we had the kitchen done we lived out of it and after you read the manual with the timings, recommendations, recipies etc you find out how to make regular meals with it.

I wouldn't recommend buying anything pricey just to use in the short term, but I'll echo what NIKKID said: fish in the microwave is excellent.

I have a slow cooker which is very versatile and a George Foreman grill which takes not only grills fish, sausage, bacon etc. but is brilliant for toasted sandwiches.