About Food, Family, Love, and Healing
A word about leftovers- I am not talking about reheating something in the microwave. I usually reheat leftovers in the oven. Most leftovers perk up if you moisten them with a bit of chicken broth and reheat them covered in a 350 degree oven about 30 minutes. When we were first married my husband did not like leftovers. When he realized his choices were leftovers, cook for himself or starve, he came around nicely!
For those of you new to my blog, I issued myself a challenge 27 days ago to use up all the ingredients in my freezer. I was in a habit of not bothering to thaw something, and then stopping on my way home from work to buy something to prepare for dinner. This combined with a tendency to freeze things so I would have them when I wanted to make a dish, resulted in a freezer that was beyond full, totally disorganized and downright dangerous when the occasional frozen parcel would fall out of the freezer.
For those of you familiar with the blog, you may have noticed there was a 2 week gap in my chronicling of the challenge. Recently I had a trip for business and one for pleasure, and I got a little behind in chronicling my progress. Never fear! I am still working tirelessly to use up all the ingredients in the freezer.
This has been an interesting process. I am using an approach called just-in time inventory (based on Toyota Lean principles). The idea is to only stock what you need and not have an excess of inventory. Needless to say my approach to grocery shopping was the antithesis of just-in-time principles. Because I love to cook and read cookbooks constantly, I would see an ingredient I had read about in a recipe and purchase it, but never get around to making the recipe.
This has taken great will power and constantly telling myself : “walk away from the ingredient, Eileen! Are you actually going to use it this week? If not put it back”. It has resulted in significant savings at the grocery store, and improvising in the kitchen to make dinner with what I have on hand. You may also notice that I have been relying on a fair number of purchased sauces. The reason for this is I am also trying to use up canned and bottled goods I have in the pantry.
I am grateful to my handful of friends who are reading the blog. It holds me accountable in my quest to deplete inventory in my pantry and freezer. Obviously, many of the posts are not real time, but I am keeping a dinner diary and trying to post day by day of the challenge, until I have an empty freezer. Except for ice cream!
I estimate I have another 60 days to go. The picture below shows my freezer at day 27- unfortunately I did not take a before picture (it would have been too embarassing!). However, I think this photo probably gives you an idea of the magnitude of the problem, or should we say the inventory? Or both?
Freezer- Day 27
This was my father’s favorite cake. I would make it for him whenever my parents came to visit. This cake holds special memories for me in a number of ways. The recipe came from a cookbook called the Southern Heritage Cakes Cookbook. I found the cookbook when we were cleaning out my grandmother’s apartment, after she was placed in a Nursing home. I claimed the cookbook as well as her Bundt pan, both of which I use to this day.
My Grandmother’s Bundt pan
My Grandmother’s cookbook
The last time my parents came to visit us from Philadelphia was about 10 weeks before my father passed. I made two of his favorites: stuffed cabbage and this apple cake. We have a cross stitch that hangs on a wall in our kitchen which says “my cooking is seasoned with love”. I believe when you cook for people you love, the food tastes that much better. It has that extra something special. I am glad I got to show that love to my Dad in the last meal I ever made for him.
| Prep Time | 45 minutes |
| Cook Time | 1½ hours |
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Ingredients
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Recipe attributed to The Southern Heritage Cakes Cookbook by Southern Heritage © 1983
Food used: 1 package frozen mixed vegetables, 1/2 pound Italian turkey sausage, 1/2 package frozen chopped spinach, large baking potato, 1/4 head cabbage
Today I made Minestrone soup, without a trip to the grocery store. The ingredients were all things I had in the house. The frozen veggies work fine here but if you have fresh that would be even better.
Minestrone soup is a rich vegetable soup with beans and small pasta to give it backbone. Of course, to make it qualify as a meal for my husband I must add some sausage . This recipe starts out vegetarian, and if you want to add sausage for your meat lovers feel free to do so. It can also be made with chicken broth. I used frozen vegetables because I am on my challenge to use up all the food in the house but you could use fresh green beans, spinach, corn, tomatoes, etc. You could also add other veggies you have laying around in your refrigerator. It’s all good.
When preparing vegetarian meals that call for vegetable stock, the best ingredient would be home made stock. That is not a commodity I often have on hand. However, I find vegetable base is far superior to canned or boxed vegetable stocks. I have used Penzey’s vegetable base and Better than bouillon with good results.
| Prep Time | 45 min |
| Cook Time | 1 hour |
| Passive Time | 1 hour |
| Servings |
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Ingredients
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When preparing vegetarian meals that call for vegetable stock, home made stock is best. That is not a commodity I often have on hand. However, I find vegetable base to be far superior to canned or boxed vegetable stocks. I have used Penzey’s vegetable base and Better than bouillon with good results. These products can be pricey up front but they will make about 38 cups of stock.
I have not tried the recipe yet but here is a link to a recipe for home made vegetable base. I found it in Cooks Illustrated magazine, my all time favorite foodie magazine. If you sign up for their free trial you can check out this recipe.
Food used: package Italian turkey sausage, frozen homemade meatballs, 1 jar Bertolli organic Olive oil, basil and garlic spaghetti sauce, 1 package DeLallo gnocchi
Today I made a quick dinner with Italian turkey sausages, and meatballs that I had in the freezer. To cook the sausages, poke each sausage several times with a knife tip so they do not explode. Place in a sauce pan with 1 tbsp. olive oil and about 1 inch of water. Bring to a boil and let the water cook off. Turn the sausages over so they cook evenly. Once the water has cooked off the sausages will start to brown in the olive oil. Once they are nicely browned, deglaze the pan with some water or red wine. Add the jar of spaghetti sauce and the frozen meatballs and let simmer for 20 minutes.
I served the sauce over gnocchi and made our favorite tomato salad.
food used: 1 package country style pork ribs, 1 bottle Guy Fieri Sriracha style Barbecue sauce, 1/2 package dry chinese noodles, 1 bottle Asian peanut sauce, 1 package frozen Asian vegetable mix
Today I made boneless country style pork ribs in the slow cooker with a bottled Sriracha Barbecue sauce (I used Guy Fieri’s brand). Just throw the ribs in the slow cooker, pour the barbecue sauce over and cook on low for about 9 hours. The ribs were very tender and had a nice kick from the sriracha.
On the side I made some Asian peanut noodles with a bottled peanut sauce. House of Tsang Bangkok Padang Peanut Sauce is my favorite. I added some frozen veggies (broccoli, snap peas, and water chestnuts) to the noodles. To prep the veggies, microwave them as indicated on the package. Next, sautée them in some canola oil to brown them a little. Then toss the noodles, veggies and sauce together and let simmer for about 5 minutes. Top the noodles with some chopped peanuts and serve.
I know today’s meal does not seem very gourmet, but you must remember I am trying to use up all the food in the freezer and pantry so I can press the reset button and buy only what I need for each week. Also, although I love to cook, I am not above shortcuts on occasion. Having worked full-time as a physician and full-time plus as a mother of three, I learned to rely on well- made bottled sauces to get dinner on the table fast during the week. Weekends are the time to get more fancy with meal preparation.
This is the first day we have had beef since we returned from South America. We were a little nervous that our meals in South America had ruined our taste for home grown beef. The beef in South America was so incredibly tasty. I presume the quality of the beef is so good because the cattle are grass fed, and allowed to roam freely.
Never fear! Our strip steaks were good. We sprinkled them with some steak seasoning and cooked them in the broiler. A simple side of Italian green beans and zucchini in a tomato sauce and a nice salad completed the meal.
I will admit I have a tendency to overbuy at the grocery store. As a consequence, my daughter Kristen coined the phrase: the rule of one. To avoid wasting food or eating the same leftovers repeatedly, she followed the rule of one when she was in college. She would buy 1 zucchini, or 1 tomato, or 1 potato. You get the idea.
This past Sunday Kristen was baking zucchini bread at our house. For some reason she completely ignored the rule of one. She bought not one, but six zucchinis! The recipe, of course, only called for one. So I was left with 5 zucchinis to use. One of the recipes I made was Buffalo Zucchini “Wings”. 4 zucchinis down, 1 zucchini left. Hmmm. Maybe I will make some zucchini bread.
