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Tag: winter squash

food list

food I have
Protein
chicken breast of dubious vintage
roast beef from weekend before last
chicken stock (needs to be boiled and put in a new container)
1/2 slice bacon (yes, there’s more in the freezer, but that’s what is thawed)

Produce
roasted garlic (1 1/2 heads)
roasted tomatoes (2/3 cup)
container with the seeds and juice from the tomatoes I roasted
roasted red peppers in their own juice (1-2 peppers’ worth)
fried leeks
fresh cilantro
1 whole coconut
muhammara
hot peppers (mostly green jalepenos)
1 small leek
bulb of fennel
3-4 leaves of kale
5 little yellow squashes and 1 medium
carrots
6 potatoes
1 delicata squash

Bread
Nope, I ate all the bread. Well, there ate tortillas and the bagels in the freezer, but those don’t spoil, so they don’t ever count.

Meals
Well, I was going to ask you all for recipes that would combine the winter squash and the fennel, but then I came across this recipe for delicata with spiced pecans and dried cranberries (I’ll need to acquire some cranberries for that plan.)… but don’t let that stop you from offering suggestions anyway. Especially for the fennel.

Thursday, October 2
pasta with the rest of the kale and the medium yellow pepper. Also turkey meatballs from the freezer. And some lemon juice. Huh – I didn’t notice lemons when I made this list, but there are usually some hiding out in my fridge… if not, I’ll find out how important they are to the recipe. Also nab some more of those jalepenos from my neighbors that had been on the bush long enough to turn red; those are awesome. Ooo… maybe I shall put roasted tomatoes in this.

Friday, October 3
Make hash from roast beef and potatoes. Also add fried leeks, roasted garlic, and two jalepeno peppers.

BUY LETTUCE – it’s on sale at my grocery until Friday. Can I just mention how much it bothers my that it is a physical impossibility to stock up on lettuce when it is on sale? I cry my bitter tears of woe.

Saturday, October 4
Harry Potter’s naked bum! Er, I mean, I’ll be eating out. At Red Lobster.

Sunday, October 5
breakfast: make more awesome cream cheese with roasted red peppers and roasted garlic. I am so glad this will be my last batch of the peppers because ever since I perfected the technique it has been very difficult not to just eat it ALL RIGHT NOW! Nom!

Food List

Food I have
Protein
chicken breast of dubious vintage
roast beef from weekend before last
chicken stock (needs to be boiled and put in a new container)
1/2 slice bacon (yes, there’s more in the freezer, but that’s what is thawed)

Produce
roasted garlic (1 1/2 heads)
roasted tomatoes (2/3 cup)
container with the seeds and juice from the tomatoes I roasted
roasted red peppers in their own juice (1-2 peppers’ worth)
fried leeks
fresh cilantro
1 whole coconut
muhammara
hot peppers (mostly green jalepenos)
1 small leek
bulb of fennel
3-4 leaves of kale
5 little yellow squashes and 1 medium
carrots
6 potatoes
1 delicata (I think) squash

Bread
Nope, I ate all the bread. Well, there ate tortillas and the bagels in the freezer, but those don’t spoil, so they don’t ever count.

Meals
Well, I was going to ask you all for recipes that would combine the winter squash and the fennel, but then I came across this recipe for delicata with spiced pecans and dried cranberries… but don’t let that stop you from offering suggestions anyway. Especially for the fennel.

Thursday, October 2
pasta with the rest of the kale and the medium yellow pepper. Also turkey meatballs from the freezer. And some lemon juice. Huh – I didn’t notice lemons when I made this list, but there are usually some hiding out in my fridge… if not, I’ll find out how important they are to the recipe. Also nab some more of those jalapenos from my neighbors that had been on the bush long enough to turn red; those are awesome. Ooo… maybe I shall put roasted tomatoes in this.

Friday, October 3
Make hash from roast been and potatoes. Also add fried leeks, roasted garlic, and two jalapeno peppers.

BUY LETTUCE – it’s on sale at my grocery until Friday. Can I just mention how much it bothers my that it is a physical impossibility to stock up on lettuce when it is on sale? I cry my bitter tears of woe.

Saturday, October 4
Harry Potter’s naked bum! Er, I mean, I’ll be eating out. At Red Lobster.

Sunday, October 5
breakfast: make more awesome cream cheese with roasted red peppers and roasted garlic. I am so glad this will be my last batch of the peppers because ever since I perfected the technique it has been very difficult not to just eat it ALL RIGHT NOW! Nom!

Delicata and spiced pecans and dried cranberries
I’ll need to acquire some cranberries for that plan.

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.

Spaghetti Squash and Chicken Wings

Adventures in Spaghetti Squash
Ever since I was in Weight Watchers (senior year of high school) and some cookbook or pamphlet tried to sell me on spaghetti squash as a healthy alternative to pasta, I have been fairly pissed at that whole cooking trope.

Sure, it may cook up into stringy bits that are morphologically like spaghetti, but that doesn’t mean it tastes the same or should function the same – it’s a squash! A little marinara sauce on top is just gross.

I’ve ranted on this point many times over the years, just not before to you.

But then today I somehow managed to cook spaghetti squash so that it tasted just like cheap ramen. Kid you not. No idea how. I just sliced it in half, removed the seeds, filled the hollow with homemade stock, and baked it for an hour or so (cut side up because it’s tidier that way and doesn’t get as sodden as cut side down in water).

End result? just like ramen. So I added a drizzle of sesame oil, some soy sauce, and a bit of pepper.

***

Chicken wings
All right, so they weren’t chicken wings – they were cornish hen wings. See, my parents don’t eat as much as they used to, so after my mother made a dinner where each of them had a wee cornish hen my father had eaten half of one breast and my mother had eaten most of one breast and one thigh. The rest went to me.

And while I boned the chicken, I wasn’t going to strip the meat off the wee little wings because that was too little return for the effort – so I just pulled them off whole.

So you’d think a cookbook that was all chicken all the time and nothing but chicken would have a recipe for wings. Not so much. But I found a likely recipe for random chicken bits. I ended up summarizing the pepper, cilantro, garlic, lime, whatever, paste for the marinade as a heaping teaspoon of the thai paste I had leftover in the fridge. After a couple hours, I cooked the marinated wings in a bit of oil and then right at the end drizzled oil and say sauce over them for the sauce.

Tasty!

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!)