I'm making this for the "One Pot Meals Speed Challenge"

https://www.instructables.com/contest/onepotfood

The other meals look very nice but they all (ok, I only looked at maybe 10-15 of them) look kind of complicated and time-consuming.

So I timed making this yesterday and from entering the kitchen area to having clean-up done and the bowl with spoon in it ready to eat, it was 10 min. 39 sec., and I wasn't trying particularly hard to go fast.

This recipe is highly flexible in that you can parboil whatever vegetables you feel like and substitute any protein you have on hand. I find it tasty enough that I could eat it almost every day, particularly by doing variations.

I wanted a non-wheat carb and last year discovered this garri stuff which is fantastic, just pour on hot water and in a minute or two it's ready to eat. It's a granular cassava root product from Africa--"West Africa Garri is the powdery food material flour made from the tuberous roots of the cassava plant, which in the process of its manufacture is changed into dry edible granules." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garri) It might sound a bit exotic but it (cassava at least) is eaten by hundreds of millions of people in Africa, so, not that exotic in a sense.

Sorry if this is not the traditional way to prepare it and someone's offended. I'm just using for it being practical in a way that works really well for me.

Supplies

water

garri

vegetables (e.g. raw carrots, frozen peas, mushrooms)

protein (e.g. can of tuna, sardines, tofu chunks, leftover meats, scrambled eggs, whatever you like)

Step 1: Basically Do Everything at the Same Time

Put some water on to boil, ~2.5 cups but not really critical.

Chop a carrot into thin disks (so they cook in a couple of minutes)

Chop some mushrooms into chunks.

Throw vegetables into water, which will probably be near boiling by the time you finished chopping.

Put some garri in a bowl (I find ~80 grams about ideal).

Add spices to taste, I put in about 1 tbl. paprika, ~1-2 tsp. garlic powder, and a lot of pepper (I like spicy)

Squeeze one lemon (or lime, also very nice)

After the water boils a couple of minutes pour over garri-spice mix. Maybe 3/4 cup, but you will see after making it once if you want to use more or less. Some, but not all, vegetables will fall in, who cares.

You can save an underdose mistake by adding more water and to some extent you can save an overdose of water by adding more garri. I like the consistency to be about like cream of wheat. See the attached movie (if it shows up...I added it but Instructables is not showing it for some reason).

Add lemon (or lime) juice.

Stir it up at least a few times over the first half minute of it absorbing water or else it will clump.

If you're happy with consistency, strain the vegetables from the water (I suppose the water could be saved for soup or something since it undoubtedly has nutrients from the veg.) and dump into bowl.

Add your protein. I used a can of spicy tuna (yay, spicy!). Speed tip: flip the canned tuna or sardines on top of the meal and let gravity start the removal while you do something else (like clean up). I found this eliminates some of the scraping to get the remains out of the can, saving more time.

Mix it all up.

That's it.

It's one of my favorite fast meals that has a bit of carbs, some vegetables and protein and keeps me going for a few hours.