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Category: Food

Swap one for the other

The original Battlestar Galactica, you know – the one with Lorne Greene, is so much better than the new one.

Driving on highways during the daytime is always worse than driving at night. Driving at dusk, dawn, and 3am joyous.

Dairy products are interchangeable.

The key to running an economic kitchen is just the right amount of storage space – too much, and those exotic sauces and fancy jams start looking sexy; too little, and you can’t stock up on sales. It’s the freedom to be able to buy the six boxes of pasta for $3 that saves you from running out of pasta and getting stuck with a box for $2.50. It’s knowing that you have enough meat in your freezer that you can wait for good sales and never pay more than $2/lb for any kind of meat (and can stubbornly wait for some to get even cheaper – like chicken thighs below $.50/lb, whole chicken and pork shoulders or picnic ham roasts for $.80 – and if you live somewhere these are cheaper, that alone will be enough for me to spend at least 5 good minutes considering moving there). Produce is pure luck, though – luckily, I have people selling lots of good produce cheaply off the back of a truck.

Sewing your own clothes from scratch doesn’t save a dime.

People think I can garden even though most of the pots on my porch are empty. The pots are empty because I have been systematically killing the plants that were passed to me when my neighbor moved out of state. They think I can garden because I have pots.

Applesauce

I have a huge jar of applesauce.

Seriously, you could feed a nursery for two weeks on this jar of applesauce.

No, I wasn’t stupid enough to buy it – my mother did. See, my father will only eat pork two ways – roasted in a pita with lots of condiments and roasted with applesauce on the side. Therefore, applesauce.

Now I had a few jars of tiny applesauce running around, and when I saw that my mother had a HUGE jar and only call to use a small amount of applesauce three times a year, we swapped.

I figured that I am brilliant and creative and always willing to try new food things.

But I can not come up with a single thing to do with a giant jar of applesauce besides starting in with a big spoon.

So it has languished unopened in my refrigerator.

But this is getting ridiculous.

So either I need a LOT of applesauce recipes (and none of that baking stuff, because they always seem to use applesauce as the magic low fat ingredient, and I don’t trust that logic), or I need someone with an applesauce fetish to take it away and have a delightful weekend. Probably the former.

ETA: Suggestions in the comments to this post included: baking; muffins; boil a cup or two of the stuff til it’s syrupy and pour it, still hot, over ice cream; a good addition to newfangled baked bean type things; buy some potatoes and onions and make a lot of latkes; pumpkin bread; curried chicken and apple stew, with a jar of applesauce in that as part of the gravy; pork roasts in a crockpot and instead of adding juice/wine/water added a jar of applesauce and some sauerkraut.

I have a muffin recipe that uses applesauce, but not as the magic low-fat moisture enhancer, oh no! My recipe uses applesauce as a tart substitute for buttermilk, to make the baking soda go BOOM and create fluffiness

I have an awesome set of friends.

This *is* my pious face

So I snuck out for lunch and ate at a restaurant so that I wouldn’t have to discuss whether I was or wasn’t eating with the other people in the staff lounge. While I was there, not only did I write a bunch more, but I also had three cups of tea.

Now I really want more tea – but people will see me.

Yes, it is very silly and I am kind of enjoying that aspect.

As for heartwarming traditions – My family was never very good at the whole fasting thing, so every year for Yom Kippur we would remove ourselves from the temptation. We’d all pile into the family car and go for a long drive north (and sometimes west toward the mountains) so that we could catch the best of the autumn foliage. We’d go by back roads, and occasionally we’d accidentally end up in another state, and then we’d turn around and head home in time to stop (almost always a little early before dark) at whatever restaurant looked new and interesting.

Why have a calendar, when you have food?

It’s the end of the season, and I have an abundance of food.

food I have
Not frozen meat
8 or so assorted pieces of Kentucky Fried Chicken
leftover filet mignon (with sauteed peppers and mushrooms on the side)
bacon (this usually is just assumed, but I thought I’d throw it on the list today)

Frozen Meat *means should be used soonish
ground beef
hamburger patties
meatballs
taco seasoned ground beef
london broil marinated for stir fry*
chicken breast
diced roast pork* (only 1 meal’s worth)
chicken backs for stock

sorely tempting meat on sale this week
ground beef $1.69/lb
skinless boneless chicken breast $1.99/lb

bread
tortillas
I have a bread machine!!!
1/2 pound of bread leftover from a loaf

Produce
10 peaches of dubious virtue (these are the least ripe ones from the $5 of peach seconds I got at the farmers’ market and put up and sugared and put in the back of the fridge to ferment. Now my container is full, and I need to think up something different for these last few)
10 pounds of potatoes
5 bell peppers
2 zucchinis
3 long skinny eggplants
carrots
jalepeno peppers
2 apples
garlic (whole and peeled)

Dairy
sour cream
cheddar cheese
2% milk
heavy cream
and end of a blue cheese that should be finished soonish
cream cheese

OMG food!
I looked through all my cookbooks for stuff for peaches and potatoes (separately)

One of my favorite cookbooks, Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen, had a recipe for a frittata that not only included potatoes, but also bell peppers and day old bread! Score. I had that last night, but I put all the stuff on the list, anyway, just so I could brag about finding the perfect recipe. I wonder how well the potato frittata will reheat? I’ll find out eventually, I guess.

Cooking With the Seasons had an exceptionally tasty-looking peach dessert, but I’ll need people over to try that. Hint. Hint.
ETA: I lied. The recipe is in Winterthur’s Cullinary Collection, which also has an interesting recipe for a pie with dates and sesame seeds that I might like to have help trying to create some moot.

Otherwise, it looks like I’ll make a coriander and peach chutney/salsa thing and find a good meat to put it with… my choice would be lamb, but it’s looking like chicken is the available option.

I have separated the chicken into meat, crunchy bits, and refuse. I can’t quite bring myself to toss the crunchy bits. They are so tasty – there must be a way to use them without the hideous gluttony of a meal of chicken skin. Crumb topping for casserole?

I’d been planning to put the filet mignon with peppers and mushrooms either in tortillas or over rice all mexican-y with maybe the zucchini and perhaps a can of beans. I think the starch shall, instead, be diced potatoes. Lots of diced potatoes. And I could probably grill down at least one additional bell pepper. I might be able to put away five or six lunches from that dinner.

Ummmm… eggplant. That could go with potatoes in a curry. With jarred tomatoes (from [redacted]’s mother!). And… ummm… lots of jalepenos. Yeah.

So what else is urgent? I should have a bell pepper left, unless it self destructs before I get to it. More potatoes. Some pork for a small dish. Beef for a stir fry. Wherewithal to make hella tasty mashed potatoes to feed a large army. Bother – peaches still, I can’t imagine the chicken using up more than half what I have. Oh, and cooked chicken. Right.

So I need salad greens. I think a chicken, peach, grilled onion salad with stilton would be kinda tasty. Maybe some toasted almonds in that. But way too early to buy the greens yet.

roasted pork with potatoes and carrots and gravy. *yawn* Boring, but it’ll still be tasty.

And then I thaw the meat for stir fry again and make it right quick. Probably by this time I will need to buy more bell peppers. There can be potatoes in stir fry. Totally.

Ooh, and the Better Homes and Gardens has a recipe for bread machine potato bread that starts from a real potato.

Yeah. That should feed me into next month. And I think I’lll still need brilliant ideas to eat everything.

And I have a hankering to make lots of bread… only no room to eat it.

ARGH! I forgot about the three pounds of dates I bought to stuff for an SCA event and never got around to doing anything with… and the container of feta cheese and the bag of walnuts. Is anyone throwing a party any time soon who wants to join me in making a tasty little finger desserts?

Meanwhile, I am feeling both antisocial and lonely… and not quite sure what to do with that.