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Category: Food

I think I bought too many vegetables

It has been cold, and I have been getting home kinda late, so I haven’t been doing as much cooking lately… but I was finally home for a weekend and went to the produce stand… and now I am not sure I will get around to cooking all my food before it goes bad.

So here’s the thing — I am listing a bunch of ingredients, and you and I will think of fun way to put them together.

Ingredients
Vegetables/Green matter:
Cauliflower (1 head)
Broccoli (1 stalk)
Red bell peppers (2)
Potatoes (3 lbs)
Cilantro (1 bunch)
Romaine Lettuce (the inside half of 1 head)
Roma tomatoes (20?)

Unfrozen Meat:
Turkey andouille (1 1/2 left)

Frozen Meat:
“rabbit”
random beef (ground and in steaks)

And I have a good selection of legumes.

Ideas
Dish 1: Aloo Gobi — nope. This was a new dish for me, but now I’ve made it several times and it is no longer as exciting… might still make is as a good use for lots of potatoes and cauliflower.

Dish 2: Red beans & Rice w/ andouille — maybe. I cringe a little because my momma always made red beans and rice with a piece of pork or some ham hock… but it’s a possibility.

Dish 3: Creole Chicken or Shrimp — I’d have to buy the meat product, but it would use up all those lovely tomatoes in one go.

On my stove right now I have a pot of chili cooking. That was to use up a collection of miscellaneous beef leftovers. I used the same mix I have always used (and strongly recommend because all the spices come in individual packets instead of all mixed together)… but it seemed like a lot of salt as it went in… apparently I have stopped cooking with as much salt as I used to. This is odd. So I have already used two potatoes to soak up the saltiness — yesterday’s dinner was potatoes boiled in chili. 🙂

In other food news — I have only one bagel left in my freezer — Woe!

ETA:Okay, the “rabbit” is strange and exciting, but it’s frozen and will keep. What about the pretty, sexy veggies?

Winter is coming – Rabbit explorations

I have realised that all the food I have been saving for winter (legumes, breakfast cereals, and some frozen meat)… well, it’s time to start planning menus.

In the frozen meat world, I probably have 2 rabbits. When the supermarket across the street closed, I saw a chinese couple buying cheap frozen meat… and, indeed, there was a lot left even after all the other meat had been snagged… because there is no label on this meat positively identifying the animal of origin. And there’s a stamp saying it’s from China. So I bought two. Because I’ll try anything. Then I had a friend, who is a chef, give his opinion on the meat, and his best guess was rabbit. I have found three rabbit recipes, but I only have two rabbits. Any idea which recipe I should choose? Do you have an amazing rabbit recipe?

In the legume world, I have lentils (red and brown), split peas, pinto beans, kidney beans, and a few others. I’ll need to get my mother’s amazing recipe for red beans and rice. No clue really what to do with the pinto beans other than random chili concoctions.

And breakfast cereals — I found cream of rice! I am very excited. It should be smooth and sweet and delicate.

Lamb roast

I have lamb. A wee little roast that is perfect for one person.

So tonight I shall:

  • Run home from work and put the lamb on a broiler pan.
  • Cut into meat and insert garlic cloves.
  • Lay rosemary on top.
  • Lay fatback on top crossing the rosemary (because the roast has had the natural fat trimmed off).
  • Roast it in the oven at 300 degrees for 40 minutes per lb or so.

Then tomorrow, I shall:

  • Cut off all the good meat leftovers from the roast (and the lamb leftovers I stole from my parents) and turn it into curry.
  • Then the rest (bones, etc.) gets turned into lamb stock.

ETA: So here is the lamb follow up

I’ve been having a stale kind of smell in my house the past couple days and had been unable to place it… well, it was the lamb. But I had plans for that lamb! So I trimmed off the most questionable bits and covered the meat with salt. About 15 minutes later, when the salt was a bit damp around the edges, I rinsed off the salt and patted the lamb dry… still smelled a little questionable, but much better… so I trimmed a couple more small bits… and prepared as planned. Only… with a slightly longer cooking time, and I did not take it out of the oven until it’s juices ran completely clear. As of now, I am not poisoned at all… and it was very tasty. Leftovers are in the fridge for curry.

ETAA: Here’s an explanation of why I have started posting about food

I grew up in a 50s kind of household — meat and potatoes. Our definition of vegetable was the box from green giant that you pop in the microwave for five minutes and stir halfway through… in fact, these days my father will only eat the sugar snap peas from there because the other vegetables are too… healthy.

So I have moved out on my own. I can now eat anything I want. Some things I can figure out with books, but my cookbook budget it limited. I also use allrecipes.com fairly frequently — they have an advanced search feature where you can search by ingredients. I have found the answers to some questions that have been bothering me for a while: for instance, the difference between a parsnip and a parsley root and what both their relationships are to parsley. But some answers I have not found yet: like what exactly is that vegetable, at my produce truck, that looks like a long seedless cucumber (only with a slightly lighter-colored skin) but has this fuzzy mass inside instead. So this is me exploring.

What don’t I know? I know basic ways to make vegetables, but I am looking for more exciting ones. I don’t know authentic approaches to ethnic cuisines. I don’t know (and am intimidated about learning) how to cook fish, bake, or even make most desserts. I’ll figure it out.