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Category: Food

It only leads to trouble

Hee! So after those elaborate plans for dinner yesterday, I got home and decided I didn’t want to do dishes to start in on making food.

So I bought a loaf of white bread and had a hamburger.

Happily, however, after a scant cup of stew, a hamburger, and a lettuce sandwich (to use up the leaves that had been pulled off and cleaned but not used to quesadillas the night before), I was quite full and satisfied.

And I did the dishes this morning, so we are on course for bizarre chinese-ish food tonight.

Also, I might be a homewrecker. By accident. And without sex.

See – the new neighbors next door are a woman about my age and her slightly older boyfriend and his daughter.

I am occasionally nice to his daughter when I am sitting out on my porch and she is outdoors playing. Nice for such values that include giving her a young adult novel I had finished (and was reading the sequel to at the time) and giving her a harness and leash for her new kitten who they were letting wander around outside with just a collar and a general optimistic attitude that it wouldn’t stray from the back yard.

And then last week I was making red beans and rice and ended up using too much pork, so I used the entire one pound bag of beans… so I popped my head out and asked the girlfriend whether she’d like some for dinner the next day when it was finished. She said yes, and I filled up a bowl for her… but apparently she has never had red beans and rice and the boyfriend is very very fond of the dish.

Item three. So I was just popping out to get bread, and I paused a moment on the porch to admire the backyard, as I do, and then I noticed the boyfriend was out on his porch – so I covered for my standing a bit there like a dork by saying I was trying to identify the smell. And then I covered for saying he smelled by pointing out that he was smoking. And then mentioned that it was actually a rather nice smelling cigarette (one of those dark ones). And it was three steps down the alley later, when he was saying, “Yeah, it does smell nice,” that I realised I had just complimented the smell of the cigarettes for which he had been banned to the outdoor porch while it was raining.

*facepalm*

If they break up, I will be full of guilt.

Cowboy Chicken Fajitas w/ Mango Salsa, Ma Po Tofu variation, Pumpkin & Lentil Mulligatawny

I am so hungry. Every now and then – two or three times a year, I’ll be at a point where it feels like I can eat infinite quantities of food and still be hungry (or at least able to eat more). It’s a bit weird since just last week, I was getting full at the drop of a hat (or fork, as the case might have been), but I can roll with it.

I have fun food things going on.

I made an amazing dinner last night.

It started off with the acquisition of a mango.

So I looked through my spice rack (which is painfully small due to the amount of space int he apartment) and came up with one of the odd spice blends I have adopted due to my mother’s neglect. Cowboy Barbecue Rub. Who can resist that name? Its ingredients are: chile powder, garlic, onion, black pepper, cilantro, cumin, oregano, basil, cinnamon, clove, cayenne – and it always smells like it has dry mustard in it, but apparently it doesn’t.

So I pulled out one of the packages in my freezer with two chicken breasts and dumped a lot of the seasoning in there – and then left it to thaw/marinate in the fridge for a couple days.

Last night, I started off making a mango salsa by slicing purple onion very thinly, cooking it until caramelized, adding a little bit of the seasoning, and then adding the diced mango to the pan just briefly. Then I poured it into a container and added red wine vinegar (less than a teaspoon, I think) – popped that in the fridge.

Then I cooked the marinated chicken on slow heat because I was worried about the whole breasts cooking through – I put some aluminum foil loosely over the pan to keep some of the moisture in.

I assembled all the other ingredients I had to make the meal – red oak leaf lettuce, sharp cheddar cheese, tortillas, sour cream, and an avocado – and then I had an anguishing decision (and called both my mother and Meghan for advice): do I serve it as a plated meal, a quesadilla/fajita kinda of thing, or as a salad?

Oh, yeah – there was also a random sweet potato that I cut up and turned into french fries while I was making the meal.

Both my advisers agreed that it should be fajita night. Oh, man – great decision! MMmmmm!

There’s some salsa and a breast and a half of chicken left over, so I put them together to co-mingle until I turn them into another meal.

~*~

So tonight, I am thinking of putting together ground beef, mustard greens, and possibly an eggplant. To me, this says spicy chinese food. None of my chinese cookbooks agree with me. I think I just don’t have the right cookbook.

So plan is – clean as much of the greens as I can be bothered to do. Pickle them (cook briefly in boiling brown sugar and rice vinegar). Then brown and drain the beef. Add onion, garlic, and eggplant. Add some five spice powder. Perhaps mix some spicy stir fry sauce with some oyster sauce so that it doesn’t blow my head off. Add greens.

I have a feeling that this will taste more like an experiment than something good, but we’ll see.

~*~

When I start cooking tonight, I shall also be putting a pumpkin in to roast and lentils to soak because I’ll be setting up the soup that [redacted] suggested in the comments to the last entry. I don’t have lemongrass, but other than that, I’m good – limes are even on sale this week.

It sounds like I won’t actually be using a whole can of coconut milk (it’s just a small pumpkin) – so either the rest will go with the chicken and mango somehow (Oooooo) or I can make sweet coconut rice.

Okay, so I need to do a quick inventory of which perishables will not be used up in this clever plan.

produce
1 zucchini
3 apples
2 (peeled!) sweet potatoes (yeah, so either I vastly underestimated the size of a cut up sweet potato or overestimated my capacity – basically I had three potatoes, so that’s how many I peeled) – they might end up wasted… or maybe I’ll make some random mashed potatoes.
probably some of the mustard greens will be left over
1/2 head red lettuce
scallions (can totally go in the chinese food)

meat
1 cup beef stew
duck stock! (duh! So freeze half in the beef stew container once you empty it, and use the rest to make the pumpkin lentil soup)
lots of meat is on sale this week. I need none of it.

bread
breadcrumbs – so these aren’t really perishable, but I have leftover bread I dried to turn into bread crumbs, but my container is all full.

dairy
2% milk
light cream
greek yogurt (which I bought without a plan because it was there!)
sour cream
cream cheese
gorgonzola
italian seasoned cheddar (open!)

soup queries

Ever since I had a cold last week that had me with almost no appetite, I’ve been having trouble getting back to normal.

I drank about 6 liters of water yesterday, and I still feel dehydrated.

And I keep being ravenously hungry and then getting full on small portions – and then being ravenously hungry again.

This is relevant because I was going to make soup yesterday, but I only got as far as deciding that I’d try roasting again and putting the sweet potatoes, garlic, and apples in the oven before I gave up and made myself an omlet.

So here’s the thing. I shall be making sweet potato and apple soup tonight. To eat tonight and tomorrow, but with no other leftovers. And then next week, I shall be making pumpkin soup. I want this soup and the pumpkin soup to be very different soups.

So I have three roasted sweet potatoes, a roasted pod of garlic, 3 small roasted apples, and a whole bunch of not roasted apples.

First question is whether I put them in a stock base or a cream sauce base.

Cumin or not to cumin?

I think the pumpkin soup next week should have lentils in it. And maybe tamarind. That’ll make it different. I’ll have to buy lentils.

Comments suggested:

You could make next week’s soup a thai mulligatawny, with thai green curry paste, a cinnamon stick, lemongrass, minced ginger and garlic, red lentils, and then, added at the very end, some coconut milk and lemon or lime juice and fresh cilantro.

1 part lentils to 3 parts pumpkin

Food flailing

I have food, but it’s not the food I want.

I had a cold last week, and my throat is still all kinds of raw as a result.

I want soup.

And yet I have a whole bunch of apples, two mangoes, a lot of sweet potatoes and sales this week on chicken leg quarters, london broil, and bolar roasts.

I could make a nice mango salsa and marinade and grill the chicken legs… only that’s not something I want to eat right now.

I have pork stock, which isn’t recommended as stock for soup but does make an excellent starter for red beans and rice. I should put some beans to soaking. Maybe I’ll want to eat that in three days, when it’ll be finished (soak beans overnight, cook beans, cook a second day).

I want spicy, sour thai soups.

I have a recipe for a sweet and sour red cabbage soup that will use two (maybe three) apples.

I have a duck carcass to turn into stock and then baby bok choi to put in the soup. But I’d need the pot I’d be using to make beans – so one or the other, but not both.

Food lists

So I haven’t had much interest in cooking the past couple days. This is a problem, since I have a lot of lovely produce waiting to be eaten… or go bad. I’m hoping some lists will get me more in the cooking mood.

lists! of food!
Produce
onions
last of the farm grown tomatoes
a couple small turnips
hot peppers
a few tomatillos
red potatoes
collard greens
spinach
2 zucchini (now grilled)
carrots
turnip greens
1/3 butternut squash
grapefruit
most of a can’s worth of refried beans

dairy
greek yogurt!
sour cream
gorgonzola
italian seasoned cheese (open)
mild cheddar (open)
2% milk (shouldn’t last much longer)

meat
cooked chicken (1 meal)
cooked ground beef (1 meal with a extending)
ground beef
chicken stock (about 8 4 cups)
(and chicken breasts are on sale this week, so I’ll buy some of those)

Meals
I want to focus on gravies and cream sauces: a) because they are tasty, and b) because I’m about to pitch about 3lbs worth of store-brand flour because it was cheap and makes nasty bread.

Hee – let’s call this Chicken Florentine:
Creamed spinach – clean and cut all the spinach, cook an onion and some garlic in 2T butter, add 1 heaping Tablespoon flour, make roux, add spinach.
I can add the cooked chicken to that. And a hot pepper.
I could add pasta to that to make a real meal, or I could just eat it with a spoon. I’m thinking spoon.
ETA: Done. Wasn’t as tasty as I had hoped. No idea what went wrong.

Soup:
I’ve been wanting something bisque/chowder-ish with corn. And I have corn in my freezer. So onions, white roux, and then… how about butternut squash chunks? Roasted garlic. The rest of the roasted bell pepper I have in a jar with oil in my fridge. And some collard greens cut into thin ribbons. Sound decent? Does it need anything else? I could roast the turnips and tomatillos for a side dish. This sounds like it needs fresh parsley.
ETA: Started. I have the cream base with squash in it. I have a sprig of rosemary floating in it today. I roasted some hot peppers yesterday, so maybe I shall add them as well.

Hamburger Helper:
Shut up – it makes a great starting point.
Onion, garlic, ground beef. Zucchini. Collard Greens. And shred cheese on top and slices of tomato.

Kenyan Collard Greens:
greens, tomato, rice. (get my 5 spice powder back from my mother’s)

What’s left? Tomatoes, Potatoes, Turnip Greens, Refried beans, chicken stock – and I haven’t made use of the greek yogurt that was so hard to find!

All right – here’s a thing. These are fresh and tasty tomatoes, so I don’t want to cook them. I refuse to use the last tasty tomatoes in a dish where canned would work just as well. I’ll probably just end up eating them while I cook other things… but still.

Ummm… how about open-faces quesadillas – I know those have a name.
Tortilla, topped with a thin layer of refried beans, topped with shredded cheese, topped with tomatoes. With sour cream. Probably I won’t be able to eat enough to use up the refried beans, but maybe put a dent in them.

greens. Ummm… More soup? Turnip greens, diced potato, and carrots in chicken stock. That actually sounds rather dire.

Ummm… I could pickle the rest of the turnip greens and wait until I have leftover roast pork to make more of the excellent soup I made last night. My parents have a roast to make, so that should be soon.

Freeze the chicken stock.

Okay… Moussaka?
Layer a casserole with a mixture of ground beef and eggplant and potato slices, use lots of seasonings, pour a can or two of tomatoes over all, and serve with yogurt on the side?

That should do.