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Tag: potatoes

food food food

food I have
Produce
6 potatoes
1 head of garlic (roasted) + plenty raw
1 huge butternut squash (possibly ripening, possibly rotting – it was cracked when first harvested)
1 orange and 1 apple
3 nectarines
1 tomato
hot peppers galore
bag full of small bok choi (when I find a more accurate term, I’ll change this)
small amount of chinese broccoli
spring mix lettuce
3 grapefruits
3 cucumbers
1 calabash?
carrots
lemons & limes
partial leeks
roasted vegetables: 2 zucchini, 1 yellow squash, 2 red peppers

Protein
pork and cow bean chili
roughly 2 oz of thinly sliced beef
1 lb tofu (sealed package) (half marinated for spicy tofu, half marinated for Martha Stewart recipe)

Making meals
Tuesday, September 9 *done*
Gai Lan with beef (and leeks)

Wednesday, September 10
have company
fry up potatoes, onions, garlic, hot peppers, and tomato in curry powder. (see if I can stop by indian grocer and pick up fenugreek to make it closer to this recipe
Freeze into lunch portions, and then dump some onto lettuce for a salad – with a cucumber!

* Start stock *done*

Thursday, September 11
Baby bok choi – in something. How about with my signature spicy tofu stir fry? (Therefore, I’ll have to remember to put the tofu to marinate before work – no problem) That should do about half of the greens

*strain stock *done*

freeze chili into lunches

Friday, September 12
Sauteed tofu and greens (And I am kind of sad that the Martha Stewart variation won out over the Gourmet version)

So, yeah, again with setting up the marinade before work

Saturday, September 13
finally!
So I’ll go exercise, and then I’ll go to the farmers’ market, and then I’ll come home with a whole bunch of fresh greens (but nothing else because everything else I can get elsewhere cheaper) (well, maybe some more of the adorable baby yellow squash, if they’re there)

Split open butternut squash and see whether it looks tasty. If so, roast it, scoop out the innards, and then set it to making soup. Oh, wait, that means I need stock.(*)

If calabash is still perky, make that roman recipe with it.

Buy yogurt. Make tzatziki.

Make a half measure of muhammara (I blame [redacted] for the temptation).

Buy pita and make a feast of roasted squash, muhammara, and tzatziki. (and calabash on the side)

3 salads in 36 hours!

I’ve been thinking about BLTs ever since I ran across this BLT on a food blog.

And while I did stop by the supermarket and feel up the avocados, none of them were ripe enough to use tonight.

BLT inspired.

hot bit (part 1)
made bacon (I only had one slice thawed, so that’s all of the bacon. Just set it off to drain on paper towels for a bit)

cold bits
spring mix
2 scallions
1/4 – 1/2 yellow onion, sliced very thinly
2 small tomatoes (from my mother’s garden), quartered and sliced thinly
1.5 ounces of chevre

hot bit (part 2)
2 ounces leftover chicken breast, sliced (I ended up heating this under the broiler since I was also roasting veggies, but it could be cooked in residual bacon fat, if some were drained and wiped out)

Dressing
Grey Poupon
balsamic vinegar
1 tsp Manischewitz
1/4 tsp soy sauce

~*~

So there was bacon in that salad. And there are breakfast burritos. And so I was thinking, “Hey – there could be a breakfast salad.”

Breakfast Salad

hot bit (part 1)
boil 1 potato and 1 egg

hot bit (part 2)
make bacon (1.5 slices)

cold bit
spring mix
finely sliced onion
finely sliced tomato
finely sliced hot pepper

hot bit (unification)
slice potato & toss with 1 tsp olive oil and some salt
slice hard boiled egg
crumble bacon over top right before eating

dressing
leftover from the BLT salad

verdict – both the potato and the egg was a bit much. Either one could have been left off with no ill effect. But, hey, I’ve never made a breakfast salad before. 🙂

~*~

I’d been cobbling together odds and ends of my mismatched collection of condiments, and I spied my jar of blueberry jelly – as yet unmolested in my salad making adventures. So I started planning a blueberry salad. Now this one is weird, but trust me, it was tasty. I wasn’t even starving when I ate it, and it was still tasty.

Blueberry Salas

I started with the
dressing
3 Tablespoons of blueberry preserves
1/4 cup of white balsamic vinegar
juice of 1/2 a lime
1/4 tsp chinese mustard
3/4 tsp coriander chutney
1/2″ finely minced fresh ginger
a generous amount of ground cinnamon

and then I sliced
1 bosc pear into the dressing because I figured that blueberries wouldn’t provide enough body on their own, but I was worried about them softening/discoloring, so I let them sit in the vinegary dressing for a bit before adding them to the salad

cold bits
spring mix
1/2 cucumber, peeled and sliced in half lengthwise, and then into thin slices
1/4 onion, sliced thinly
1.5 ounces of chevre
about 1/2 a cup of blueberries

Add dressing

hot bit
dry toasted 1/3 cup of walnut pieces on the stove
Once they were all warm and toasty, I tossed them in a jar with some cinnamon
And then sprinkled most of them on the salad

All in all, it was every bit as awesome as I’d hoped.

Food list

So the goal is to use up all of my perishables by mid-day Thursday

What I have
Produce
1 plum
2 tomato
6ish new potatoes
portion of spring mix (salad greens)
collard greens
1 zucchini
broccoli stems

opened jar of salsa
1/2 jar pasta sauce
1 qt orange juice

Meat
thai roasted beef (enough for two salads)
chicken/duck stock (not used – boiled, though, so it should last another week)

Dairy
whole milk (just enough for 1 more bowl of cereal)
half pint heavy cream (unopened)

What I should do with it
Okay, so two salads are a given.

I think I should make soup, but it has just been too hot to consider it. And I don’t feel like a minestrone (bunch of vegetables just glommed together with a can of tomatoes and a starch)-type soup. Maybe something with beans. Or cream. Or something. I am not inspired.

So I’ve got potatoes to do away with. And a little bit of a diet (though I did make tasty mashed potatoes with full fat dairy products and collard greens (is it still colcannon if you add dairy products?) the other day with no problems in diet land.

Oh, and spaghetti sauce. Last time I made pasta, I threw in all kinds of veggies (including broccoli), so maybe I’ll save that as the Wednesday night dinner that cleans out the last of the fridge.

Meh.

Broccoli Rabe

There was lovely looking broccoli rabe at my produce truck this week, so I got a bunch. Now – a bunch is enough for two meals for me. Here’s the first meal planned out:

wash broccoli rabe and cut into 2-3 inch lengths. Blanch. Drain.

Saute in olive oil a whole bunch of garlic until it starts to brown. Add broccoli rabe.

In a flat pan, warm up a tortilla. Flip it over. Add some shredded sharp cheddar cheese, a tablespoon or two of the last of the carnitas I have in my fridge, and a spoonful or so of cooked broccoli rabe… some more cheese, fold over the tortilla – viola quesadilla.

And then over the weekend, I bought 5 pounds of potatoes for a dollar and acquired half a (cooked/smoked) ham from my mother.

Second meal:

Dice 2 potatoes (there were the size of a small fist each) and 8 baby carrots. Sautee in olive oil.

Roughly dice 1 medium onion. Throw that in, too.

Dice some ham… no idea how much… about as much by volume as there was potato, maybe less.

At this point, I seasoned the potatoes – salt, pepper, ground thyme, ground oregano, 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika, few dashes hot paprika.

Add ham. Keep cooking.

Rinsed the broccoli rabe, shook it dry, and then bundled it back up in its twist tie and just cut across into inch “strips” or so. Turned it into a nice chop.

Tossed that over top and let it steam a bit before stirring it in and cooking it with the rest.

Then I tasted it, and decided it would benefit from a pinch of ground cloves. And a little more salt.

I put up half into a container in the freezer for lunch, and the rest was very yummy.

Today, I went out and bought beets, so I think I’ll make the same dish again tonight (since I have a lot of potatoes and ham to get through, and soup might be coming next) only with beets instead of carrots and beet tops instead of the broccoli rabe.

Note on cloves: buying ground cloves is always a bit sad since the packet will quickly stink up (though in a nice way) the entire spice cabinet and then by the time you actually get around to needing the cloves all the flavor has seeped away. Therefore – I buy whole cloves and mostly just stick the whole things into stuff (roasts, or chucked into soups/stews/curries and fished out later). But when you really do want it ground and you aren’t making a whole spice mix where it’s worth the time to bring out (and clean) the mortar and pestle (mine’s heavy) – you can just pop off the little round bit at the top and crumble it by hand – and then put the stem back in the jar to be stuck into stuff later.

Food I need to cook tonight – or Why am I a lazyass?

Ziti with Roasted Eggplant and Ricotta Cheese
Uses up:

  • eggplant
  • 2 cans of tomatoes
  • ziti rotelle
  • ricotta

Mashed Potatoes
Uses up

  • potatoes
  • any miscellaneous dairy products
  • some chicken stock

Pesto Chicken
I just have a leg marinating in pesto that I need to cook so I can have random chicken pits in sandwiches or salads (or real food) throughout the week.

food that will still need to be dealt with
Produce
red bell peppers
cucumbers
zucchini

plums
nectarines
strawberries

meat
a huge honking pork roast (leftovers)
chicken stock
a cooked chicken leg