Got to Take a Rain Check on Pain

Bully for You, Chilly or Me

Or in this case, bolognese for me and Chili for P.  The great gift of soup and stew leftovers is that they only taste better the next day and all you have to do is reheat and put on fresh toppings.  

After the creamy goodness of the chili yesterday, I needed to take a left turn to pasta town.  Instead of finishing the pasta in the sauce, I needed the Midwestern memory feel of buttered noodles undressed to mix in as I desired with each bite of the meaty, mushroom sauce.  Memory comfort food can be a ticket out of a bad feeling day, the winter blahs, or general malaise. 

Gimme Gimme, (More)

I think the Pandemic has brought on some Pandemonium in regards to cooking and eating.   Meals are less structured.  Like this, a hodgepodge of leftovers.  Chicken stew, salad, pizza snacks and later, assorted fruit.   Sometimes you just have to eat what you have, including leftovers and not make a production out of things but its reflective of the chaos of the world right now as well.  In some ways, this meal makes perfect sense, for the time, although to look at it, it seems like something Britney Spears would serve.  

This is a meal that says, I'm a little bit crazy right now, I'm a lot hungry, I do like to have fun...but by the way, I'm out of my effing mind or bored, I can't tell. 

If the Sun Refused to Shine

As I'm feeling better,  I'm wondering if I have become the Corona version of that gnarly looking cat in Pet Sematary.  I have jacked-up issues, times when my legs and knees don't work or feel like they could just fall off like zombie parts.  There is a sensation that I just came back from the dead.  No matter how much primping, I still look disheveled. Think, Phyllis Diller on a bender.  I hope it's not obvious. But more importantly, I hope it's not permanent.  

I forget, is anything permanent?  No, was the verdict the last time I checked but I don't think my love for some things will ever change, like spaghetti.  I've never not loved spaghetti.   This time I served it with my leftover chicken cacciatore.   I'm not supposed to eat white flour products because they can give me horrible headaches but when they don't, there's not many foods that have made me so happy for so long.  But then again, I'm not right.    

Reviving your surplus is perfect for when you feel like a character out of a Stephen King book. 

 

Alright Stop! Collaborate and Listen

Sister's Ice Storm in Colorado

This was a mash up of a stir fry and chicken fried rice.  Making a meal some days becomes like a little puzzle.

A small amount of leftover rice and one egg was just enough to accent the vegetables, making this a very light but satisfying meal.

World Serves It's Own Needs, Listen to Your Heart Bleed

Some of yesterday's baked burgers were chopped up and used for my Stuffed Green Peppers, along with fresh tomatoes, Monterey Jack, Cheddar Cheese, and bread crumbs, baked and served over a bed of rice. 

In a stir fry or most other dishes, I love my green peppers crisp and vibrant, but for baked stuffed peppers I love the roasted flavor and softer texture.  So I salt, pepper and olive oiled the halves and par-baked them for a few minutes before putting in the filling.  

If I've learned anything in the Pandemic, it's that the best thing you can do right now as a cook is use all of your leftovers and never waste good food if you can help it.  And you can usually help it, it just takes effort. The challenge is to do it in the most creative ways.  And the bigger challenge is to care about making dinner when it feels like the world is ending.  

 

It's Yesterday Once More

I optimized a pound of beef by making a sheet pan of small baked burgers mixed with black beans, carrots, celery, peppers and onions for lettuce wraps.  The side dish was the leftover chickpeas and spinach from yesterday's sheet pan dinner.

I'm in Pieces, Bits and Pieces

Coronavirus Cooking Tips

Save all of those bits and pieces!  Especially now that you're cooking every day.  You'll have so many opportunities to use all your foods scraps in future dishes. For example as I did today with this brunch.  I had just a small amount of guacamole left over from last night's burgers, but just enough to spread on two avocado toasts.   I also souped up a can of Amy's Organic Chicken Noodle with a small portion of leftover cooked greens that wasn't enough for much on it's own but provided a real bonus here.  I saved a 1/4 piece of chicken breast and shredded it in, along with some extra stock and soy sauce, to bring this broth to life.  Starting with a canned product can be a helpful starter if you have some energy to care, but not that much.  This is the type of meal for you!

Dinner with another time saver idea to bake off the extra breast in the package for a chicken salad the next day. I seasoned and stuffed the breasts with basil, mozzarella and tomatoes.  Super juicy and tender, this is a nice clean taste if you're not quite sure yet about food coming off the coronavirus nausea train.  Braised purple cabbage wedge that can be baked on same sheet pan alongside, just start 20 minutes before the chicken.  

Get Out of My Life, And Let Me Sleep At Night

My husband doesn't eat leftovers for reasons I can't comprehend.  This is one of those things that I can never accept and be at peace with.  You think you are connected with someone, understand what's important, you know they know the definition and value of good food.  Yet, there is leftover roasted chicken and sliced pork loin, with Polenta and mushrooms in the refrigerator and he doesn't touch it.  He was here, he was hungry.  Surely he looked in the refrigerator at some point.  Well just like the gratuitous waiting time for eating that last slice of pizza, I gave a day grace period and then I took all the meat to work for a fabulous late night dinner.   I had to eat it.  I couldn't think of much else just knowing it was in there waiting to be eaten.

Mona the cat is my people.  She knows how to relax and enjoy the sunshine.  She really lives in the moment.  Well, she loves to sleep, be warm and seems to be at peace.  

May Your Days Be Merry and Bright

I made a very small turkey this year so there was not a huge amount of leftovers. I had the idea to do a carnitas-type tostada with well-seasoned, crisped strands of turkey.  Then using the leftover kale from the ginormous bag I bought plus the seeds of the pomegranate felt kind of genius. It's so dang festive and the colors are on point for the holidays.

The citrus guacamole was the base, meaning no beans so they were terrifically light. The seeds made them look lit.

I baked the shells in the oven using no oil so they were nice and crisp with no added fat.

Adding cheese is a sign of disrespect in many cases if you want to go authentic but who am I fooling? I can't even speak Spanglish.  I'm here to make the food fun and cheery.

Lord Knows When the Cold Wind Blows It'll Turn Your Head Around

Pouring rain.  Take out spicy shrimp noodles from National Thai.  These are so good just seeing them again my tongue can bring to mind the exact taste and texture. It's something I don't know how to create on my own. They're hot but tart and the flat noodles absorb so much flavor somehow from that chili basil sauce. 

I'm writing this several months later in December.  This was mid-July a gorgeous summer rain shower and all the windows wide open. Nature's Prozac. It's good to remember these days when it's so much easier to live and the city and nature are showing you their best sides.

There was ripe watermelon and summer corn.  Leftover potato salad and fried chicken.  What perfect meals.  Foodies know that when you eat down home tasting food, no matter how delicious you always crave some kind of take-out spicy for the next meal. 

This winter I am determined to keep this care-free, cheerful feeling going even in it's darkest hours. 

Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone

I watched one episode with Chef Gabrielle Hamilton on Mind of a Chef and I immediately wanted to write her a letter and tell her how much I appreciated and related to her way of looking at food and leftovers and recycling scraps and sauces.  All of that.  I have felt that way since childhood. Both my mother and my father instilled the value of these little gems.  Coming out of the depression era certainly influenced them but also their mutual love and respect for food.  I was schooled on tiny pieces of meat that hide behind the bone, or parts of vegetables that have concentrated, built in flavors that can be a cook's secret private party.  Even further, I can hear my mom say don't throwaway that tiny bit of hot sauce, we can use it for breakfast or a snack.  The downside of keeping everything is that we had a refrigerator with science experiments going on from yesteryore.  And not one of us was a good cleaner. You just had to be careful and check because there is definitely an expiration date to food.

Prune, the restaurant on 1st Ave on the Lower East Side

I love that a seasoned New York Chef, restaurateur, writer would have many of the same food thought leanings as a home cook.  I too, like so many folks have been young and hungry and needed to make something to eat.  I think the difference with us early foodies is that we wanted the meal to satisfy more than a need to eat.  We probably craved some love, some hugs, some assurance that life wasn't all hardships. We somehow connected to food in a deeply romantic way early on.  I missed my mom, although she wasn't gone she was just working.  She was cooking so dang hard at the restaurant that I feel like I didn't see her much from the age of nine to maybe around 17 when I wasn't as enamored by her presence. Although actually she was always super interesting to me.  I studied her, I watched her.  I noticed her changes.  I needed to pull away but I wasn't near ready at that time.  I was an insecure little freakazoid child that was scared of her own shadow.

Peeking inside Prune because I'm still a freak

But I was also taught food was a way to express and create. Maybe I had the idea to put my feelings into a little snack plate.  I do that now.  I did that this morning.

I saved the last few bites of my excellent pork steak made by P last night for Easter.  It was so special for so many reasons and definitely celebrated and appreciated.  So these small slices charred with a leftover tomato wedge from our salad, some sweet onion and a little cilantro over a poached egg was everything.

All mixed together and eaten with a spoon.   I get a little teary and emotional with food.  Like music it can extract all of these feelings both new and old.  My mother made these 3 minute eggs that became such a delicacy if you got them just right.  Served simply in a small cup with salt and pepper. Each family member liked theirs slightly different which could be the difference of 30 seconds to a minute.  I could not handle any clear uncooked snot in mine.  The whites needed to be just translucent and ever so soft.  But unlike this morning, absolutely no solid, everything had to be creamy and cloudlike.

I hold these little secret experiments with P where I'll serve him a sacred treat without words and watch to see if he picks up any of the magic.  This morning he did.