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Category: Food

Have another food list – Mexican Corn Soup

food I have
Produce
1 grapefruit
oranges
2 tomatoes (1 urgent)
3 roasted bell peppers
2-3 bell peppers (yellow & red)
broccoli
mixed small lettuces

Dairy
3/4 container of sour cream
1% milk
1/2 pint heavy cream
goat cheese

Starch
1/3 loaf of brown bread (ETA: just heels left)
1/2 round of pumpernickel
small amount of leftover white rice

Protein
carnitas
some leftover cooked chicken (from the breasts marinated in peaches & cowboy rub)

Miscellaneous
some prepared enchiladas that need to be baked
sauce to go with them

meals
Tuesday, February 19 *done*
take 1 link of turkey sausage from freezer to thaw.
take container of small cut pork from freezer to thaw (with black bean & pepper sauce?)
put enchiladas into the freezer
Make a sandwich with chicken leftovers, tomato, and lettuce (and goat cheese?)

Wednesday, February 20 *done*
make a “bread pudding” with some of the pumpernickel bread, eggs, cream, cheese, tomato, and grilled turkey sausage with onions and peppers. Possibly bacon, too. With a little side salad, of course.
*freeze some of this for lunches*

Thursday, February 21 *done*
stir fry of pork, broccoli, onion, and peppers over rice.

Friday, February 22
leftover rice needs to be used up. So do carnitas. Would it be sacrilege to dump them together with cream of chicken soup? Probably. So it would be slightly more respectable to… make burritos! with lots of cheese and sour cream – and maybe a zucchini. And all the rest of the lettuce.

plus bonus recipe – Mexican corn soup
Oh, and I almost forgot to give you the recipe for the soup I made the other day.

If you remember, I had some stock with tomato paste mixed in (let’s say a 3-4 cups of stock with 1/2 a little can of paste).

I also had some liquid I had drained out of the carnitas at the very last minute because I didn’t have the nerve to see what happened to my cooking pot, if I let the pork get completely dry. This was only about 1 cup of lovely pork/citrus/spices essence.

So I went looking in my Mexican cookbook, and found a recipe for corn soup I could use as a starting point.

So I boiled the stock/tomato paste mixture for 20 minutes to kill any bacteria.

Then I combined in a blender:

  • 1 onion, cooked down in some of the fat skimmed from the pork liquid (there wasn’t much, really – I was using pork loin instead of the fattier cuts the carnitas recipe recommends) and then seasoned with paprika
  • 1 can of corn, drained
  • 1 tomatoes, peeled and seeded
  • enough stock to make everything juicy and blending smoothly

In a saucepan, I think combined:

  • everything from the blender
  • the rest of the stock
  • salt & pepper

If I were following the recipe, I would now add 1/2 a cup (a whole cup? I don’t remember) of heavy cream. But since most of this would be going into the refrigerator and getting reheated, I decided to add the cream right before serving. And then I found that lumps of sour cream were more satisfying than cream.

I also considered adding chicken at that time, but I ended up also just adding cut up chicken to the bowls while reheating so that I could have the option to swap in carnitas instead of chicken (though I never for around to trying that). It was also a good soup without meat.

It has been a while since a food list

food I have
produce
1/2 pt fermented peaches soon to die of oxidation
3 wintery roma tomatoes
butternut squash
2 jalepeno peppers
1 yellow bell pepper
4 roasted red & yellow peppers

dairy
I need to buy milk and/or heavy cream
cream cheese
sour cream
goat cheese
parmesan

protein
a little bit of leftover roast chicken (1 sandwich worth)
2 chicken breasts marinating in onion, fermented peaches, white balsamic, and cowboy rub

meals
So I need to go ahead and make the chicken, but I haven’t decided whether I’m just popping it in the oven, or whether I want to cut it up and saute it and turn it into real food (maybe fajitas, and that would use up the bell pepper, too. Oh, and a tomato.).

I also need to go ahead and make the butternut squash. I think I want a soup, and I have thousands (slight exaggeration) of butternut squash soup recipes, but I’m not feeling inspired about it yet. I think it’s that I’ve been wanting food I can chew, lately.

I’d been looking for something to do with the bits of fermented peach after I’d strained the liquor off… I thought of making little tarts with peaches and goat cheese, but if I don’t make it either tonight or tomorrow morning, I think the peaches will end up in the compost, instead. I’m wondering whether a little dab of tamarind sauce would make those tarts even better, but I won’t know unless I get off my ass and try.

I’ve been eating a lot of mexican (inspired) food lately. I had tasty carnitas quesadillas (and I still have half the pork left in my freezer), mexican corn soup, a few trips to the mexican restaurant, and I’ve also been making some of my sleazy cheezy dip.

Chicken stock and swine flesh

I think I might be back to eating food like normal. Woo!

And since I have more energy, I am getting back into the swing of cooking.

This morning I threw together some ingredients that were starting to worry me (roast chicken leftovers, tail end of a jar of salsa) with a rice mix and cooked then thoroughly. Then I tossed in a can of kidney beans and a can of corn. Those were all packed up into containers for lunches.

Yesterday, I started a pot of chicken stock. This morning I finished it and strained it into containers.

Tonight (or tomorrow morning), I shall cut the pork loin in my fridge into 2 roasts and a pile of chunks. Then it and some of the stock will either go toward goulash or carnitas. I have all of the ingredients for both except for the (optional) orange for the zest in the carnitas recipe.

Maybe soon I’ll go buy some vegetables. Hmmm – I should check the few remaining vegetables in my fridge for whether they need to go in the compost pile or whether they’ll still be good for eating.

Shopping List
orange(s)
lettuce
tomato(es), if tasty smelling
limes
bread
milk

Health and Food

So I pushed the recovery on the injured knee and let myself get worn out. And when I am tired, my immune system crashes. So I have a cold.

I’m having the weirdest relationship with food right now. It just doesn’t taste like much, or I have to put a lot of work into tasting it.

And the stuff I am making at home, mostly seems to make me actively uninterested.

Part of it is that I’m worried without a reliable sense of smell that just cooking is becoming a high risk activity – especially as food sits around longer when I’m not interested in eating it.

But even when I make something safe (like a whole tube of Pillsbury cinnamon buns because I’d just finished reading Sunshine by Robin McKinley and was craving cinnamon rolls as big as my head like you would not believe), it still hardly registers as having eaten food – I just feel vaguely starving and uninterested in eating.

I am going out to eat more because I can trust that food to be food.

And I am craving fancier food because then not only do I know the food is good, but the atmosphere is also soothing.

And yet right after I eat, it still feels as though I haven’t. And I don’t know if that because I’m still hungry because it was over 24 hours since the last time I ate or just that I’m not registering my innards correctly.

So I’m pretty much trying to make sure I keep track of time, but that’s never been the easiest thing for me to do, either.

I just want to be back on kilter.