Cooking to amuse myself

And to use up local veggies & other ingredients. Recently I feel like I’ve been keeping the fridge emptier, buying smaller amounts, not having too many leftovers, trying out recipes that I’m interested in, making food that pleases me, and Mark will eat. Like that cookbook I have, Small Victories. ‘Course, no CSA this year except the 4 weeks in June, but that’s another story.

Case in point: After we got back from Door County, Rach was here, for a work week. She actually had two nights here on her own before we got here. Pre-pandemic she used to come almost every month, maybe 10 times per year, but since pandemic it’s been more like three-four times a year. I think it’s been September, April, July, September. Anyways, the last couple of times on the first night I tried to make some big salad that we could eat the rest of the week, with varying degrees of success. This time I made a sheet pan supper, pork tenderloin, broccoli, little yellow potatoes, and a few sweet potatoes, in a honey mustard dressing/marinade. It was good, maybe a little sweet, and no pics. But it got almost all eaten and I turned the leftover potatoes and broccoli into a scrambler for Sunday brunch and I have plans for the last piece of pork. Read on.

Of course, it’s not all victories. Saturday we had this kind of “molded” chopped salad, La Scala salad. I left out the sun-dried tomatoes and salami and artichoke hearts and just used the lettuce I had, some chopped and some more leafy. With carrots and peppers chopped up in it. And mozzarella and feta for the cheeses, and Parmesan.  We tossed and molded each salad to order so we could add or leave out things – Rach and I had olives, Mark and I added cherry tomatoes. Again no pics, but here’s what the Internet says La Scala salad should look like, and ours looked quite similar.

I also processed the last of the tomatoes that had waited for me in the basement fridge while I was in Door County. I made spaghetti sauce and slow roasted tomatoes. I made some of the roasted tomatoes into crostini with pickled shallots to go with the salad. It was practice for a tomatoes class that I was supposed to be teaching next week. But the class had to cancel because only one person registered, and no one ate the crostini but me. Hmmm, coincidence? I mean Rach doesn’t eat tomatoes because they’re too acid, but I thought Mark might take one. He ate the leftover plain crostini instead, the ones without topping.

On Monday, Rach’s last night, I made a kind of cheaters risotto. Short grain brown rice, turkey broth (because I have like 5 quarts of turkey broth from the Passover turkey in the freezer. Well, 4 now <grin>), cremini mushrooms from the market, no onion because Rach doesn’t eat ‘em, but garlic and a little nutmeg and Parmesan and butter. It was really good. Cheaters because you bake the rice then add in the last cup of broth and the sautéed mushrooms at the end to give it that risotto consistency. I used this Cookie & Kate recipe but not quite as she said. Heated the olive oil in the Dutch oven, added the rice and garlic, then warmed the broth and added it and got it boiling again. Stuck it in the oven and it took just a tad over 30 mins. Sautéed the mushrooms and stirred them in with the broth and butter and about half the Parmesan, leaving the rest for people to add as they wished. I think I’m buying short rain brown rice more often – it was so plump & tender. Like Kate said though it’s kind of brown glop, so no pics.

Meanwhile Jasper’s been at the beach in California.

Wednesday Mark and I went to the Wednesday Farmers Market and then had coffee at Ancora. And breakfast after we got home.

I also made apple pie filling with the apples I had because I was going to get an apple CSA pick up in the afternoon. That disappointed me a bit – the delivery was a big bag of Liberty apples that I don’t like as much for eating, and like 3 Winecrisp, that I do like. The Libertys are good in apple crisp – guess that will come next. Or make more pie filling and freeze it. This jar is for Mark’s birthday pie that Jasper and I will make next Wednesday when we have the first granny daycare day in two weeks.

And I made this bean and tomato dish because we loved it last year. And it wasn’t quite as good. I put in a bit too much Gochujang. And instead of having fresh Tipi tomatoes to roast I used the slow roasted ones I’d made the other day for topping and some frozen diced in the sauce. After the dinner of rejected crostini, I composted the breads and goat cheese and shallots and saved the tomatoes so I had like six halves for the roasted part. The good thing about using the frozen diced was that I had this one container, a washed out peanut butter jar, in the freezer with like 2 pounds of tomatoes, in other words, too big, and I was wondering how I’d use it. I partially thawed that and took out just enough for the sauce, so now I have a container that’s more like a 14-15 oz. can, a more normal size. I made the yeasted cornbread rolls, too, and they were fluffier and less crusty.

The above was Wednesday dinner, Thursday was to be pork fried rice with the last hunk of the tenderloin and some bacon and mushrooms and broccoli leftover from the sheet pan dinner, risotto, and sheet pan respectively. But I needed to pack a lunch and I made myself a sandwich with the last slices of Rachael’s turkey deli meat (prepackaged organic, not sliced at the deli in light of listeria scare) on Nigella’s sandwich white, and it was so big I took half and left the other half for Mark and planned dinner around it. We had corn and pepper quesadillas – 3 tortillas lurking in the fridge, a dab of corn left from the rolls, the last spoonful of the homemade mild sweet salsa, and 4 mini orange peppers from one of those bags of mini multicolored peppers that Rach had delivered on her first night on her own. And broccoli and mushrooms and 2 more of the peppers with peanut sauce. And Mark had the half sandwich and chips and I finished the last of the corn filling with extra cheese on top.

Maybe we’ll have fried rice tomorrow for our pre-Madison-symphony dinner. Tonight we’re eating at Rootstock with John & Megan post Chicago symphony.

And I’m not gonna talk about politics or anything else, though I did go on Monday to cook with Terese for Democratic party workers, and I signed up to cook a lunch for a different office at the end of October.