Need ideas for high carb food

[KrazyerKate]

So I'm gonna try running another half-marathon this winter, and I'm new to cooking. I've been making casseroles (macaroni+chopped meat+copped veggies+gravy), spaghetti, and pizza (who knew dough+cheese was such a winner?), and things are just getting boring. I'm looking for stuff I can cook up en masse for my disconcertingly large appetite. In this situation, Quantity tops Quality: Spaghetti is usually a pretty boring meal, but when it only takes a couple minutes to boil up a meal for four people (or one me), it's pretty fantastic. Most recipes online are designed for flavor (obviously), and aren't very large. Even crappy cheap food like Ramen or Hungry-Man, whose high amounts of sodium I'd be willing to put up with, are pretty inconveniently small. So I've been focusing on what I can do with the big three (pasta, potatoes, and rice). Post here simple, creative recipes I can make using those three, or simple recipes that are high-carb but don't use any of them, or just any good fat jokes I can make when people gawk at the massive platefuls I bring to the lunch table.


Edit:
This thread's not giving me too many ideas (pancakes were brilliant though. I dunno why I've been focusing so much on dinner and lunch), so I was thinking maybe I should start with a few things I've been cooking recently to get the ball rolling.

I call them "Tub Meals". They're easy to bring with you, reheat, serve, and store. I cook up a huge pot of something and store it in a couple Tupperware tubs.
If I need to go somewhere for a day, I grab a tub. If I'm hungry at home, I scoop out a ladelfull or two onto a plate and stick it in the microwave. Or if I'm really lazy, stick the tub in the microwave.
Bouillon Cubes and Rice. It makes the rice taste less bland as well as make it stickier. I've stirred in some ground beef and/or corn, and suddenly it tastes like much more than "just some rice", despite it still being 75% rice.
Macaroni and meatsauce. Unlike Spaghetti, macaroni is much easier to maneuver. you don't end up with big tangly balls of pasta or uneven distribution of sauce.
Shepherds pie. the resulting brown mush looks disgusting when you stir potatoes, gravy, meat, and beans together, but it tastes incredible.
Tuna Salad. Stir cooked macaroni in with tuna, mayo, and chopped celery and refrigerate and you get an excellent cold meal for a hot day.

Snacks are also great for when I don't feel like cooking a full meal but still want some quick carbs.
Nachos. I found some salt-free tortilla chips at the local grocery. shred some cheddar over them and microwave for thirty seconds. Cheezy goodness.
Microwave-Biscuits. The baking mix that I use to make pancakes is apparently just biscuit mix with eggs and sugar added. All you do is mix the baking mix with a bit of milk and microwave the resulting dough and you have fresh biscuits. Similar to the shepherds pie, these look horrible despite their great taste. Since there's no oven, they don't brown, so they don't end up looking too different from the doughy white blobs they started out as.

Finally, Shrimp Fettuccine definitely has the best fancy-to-difficuty ratio that I know of. Once you know how to make the cheese sauce and shell the shrimp, it's just a matter of boiling the noodles and pouring the sauce on it.

[Izawwlgood]

I admit I'm confused; you're aware you're supposed to carbo-LOAD for a long run, right? And each of those meals you outlined are high carb... Maybe I'm misreading something.

[KrazyerKate]

yeah, I had that other thread in mind while I was writing the post. I meant 'high'.

[mochafairy]

I'm thinking of breakfast right now, so forgive the all breakfast item list

pancakes, waffles, and crap tons of syrup, or tortitas

some cereals have lots of carbs...

ooo...hashbrowns with your favorite condiment...


mmm....breakfast...

[charolastra]

I'd stick with carbs with a high nutritional value, like quinoa and amaranth (if you can get it). Both are higher in protein than the average "white" food (potatoes, pasta, bread, rice) but still high in carbs. Quinoa makes a delicious breakfast cereal with some chopped nuts and fruit.

[KrazyerKate]

Colossal edit to first post. take a look.

[Odd_nonposter]

When I was in cross-country, I ate mountains of oatmeal, cream of wheat, and waffles just about constantly for breakfast. For dinner, X and noodles was a big one--basically whatever-and-noodle soup minus the water. My mother makes something with rice that we call "chicken shit," which is a fried chicken-and-rice casserole. And when I didn't feel like cooking anything, I always had a loaf of bread on hand. I went through several a week; you get pretty hungry running 5-7miles a day for 6 days out of the week. And I still lost ten pounds over one season.

[KrazyerKate]

And when I didn't feel like cooking anything, I always had a loaf of bread on hand.

I'm never THAT lazy. However, I've been wondering if there's anything fun and unusual I could do with regular old wheat bread. At a dollar a loaf, it's by far the cheapest carb I can find, but it's also the dullest.

And I still lost ten pounds over one season.

That one always gets me. Most people go jogging to lose weight, and yet the best runners see weight loss as a problem, not a benefit.

[sardia]

Try Country fried steak with gravy and mashed potatoes. Add in a side of macoroni and cheese with stuffing. Place the whole thing on a plate or between 2 pieces of bread. It stores decently and has tons of starches. Don't forget to serve on a plate of white rice with biscuits.

Level: Intermediate
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Times:
Prep
45 min
Inactive Prep
10 min
Cook
30 min
Total:
1 hr 25 min
Ingredients
* 2 pounds beef bottom round, trimmed of excess fat
* 2 teaspoons kosher salt
* 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 3 whole eggs, beaten
* 1/4 cup vegetable oil
* 2 cups chicken broth
* 1/2 cup whole milk
* 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

Directions

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.

Cut the meat with the grain into 1/2-inch thick slices. Season each piece on both sides with the salt and pepper. Place the flour into a pie pan. Place the eggs into a separate pie pan. Dredge the meat on both sides in the flour. Tenderize the meat, using a needling device, until each slice is 1/4-inch thick. Once tenderized, dredge the meat again in the flour, followed by the egg and finally in the flour again. Repeat with all the pieces of meat. Place the meat onto a plate and allow it to sit for 10 to 15 minutes before cooking.

Place enough of the vegetable oil to cover the bottom of a 12-inch slope-sided skillet and set over medium-high heat. Once the oil begins to shimmer, add the meat in batches, being careful not to overcrowd the pan. Cook each piece on both sides until golden brown, approximately 4 minutes per side. Remove the steaks to a wire rack set in a half sheet pan and place into the oven. Repeat until all of the meat is browned.

Add the remaining vegetable oil, or at least 1 tablespoon, to the pan. Whisk in 3 tablespoons of the flour left over from the dredging. Add the chicken broth and deglaze the pan. Whisk until the gravy comes to a boil and begins to thicken. Add the milk and thyme and whisk until the gravy coats the back of a spoon, approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Season to taste, with more salt and pepper, if needed. Serve the gravy over the steaks.


Double the ingredients as needed, it scales extremely well. Add in macaroni, stuffing, or biscuits to your meal. White rice is like salt, you can add it to anything.

[Lagbert]

I suggest Date Bran Muffins. They are easy to make, taste great, have lots of fiber, and lots of carbs. Blueberry muffins are good too, but don't have as good a shelf life as the Date Bran Muffins.

Hashbrowns are probably another good option. They cook up fast in frying pan and can give you a lot of carbs with very little salt and fat if you cook them yourself instead of using pre-cooked hashbrowns.

[TheNorm05]

I know what you mean. I make my own tomato sauce for spaghetti by the vat pretty much. I finally finished off the sauce after around 2 weeks of spaghetti 2-3 times a day. It gets pretty boring. I'm not sure what kind of time constraints you have when it comes to food, but any kind of baked bread would work. You can refrigerate dough for all kinds of things like pizza base, or different breads(my mind is drawing a blank). The idea being that the dough is the longest part and you can store it en mass to an extent, and you can do different things with it, though myself, I'd just make pizza for like 4 days strait then get bored, but you can at least put different things on it, and freshly baked bread is amazing I think. Some grocery stores even bake it fresh and I can usually eat a loaf and a half by myself before I realized what happened.

Stir fry and large amounts of rice would help too. I'm probably going to cook like 3 things this Friday that I can just save for a while so I don't just have to eat spaghetti for weeks on end.