Free for Haul Friday, Volume #331

Christine, I’m glad Blue Apron is working for you! I actually think it’s an awesome idea. You are right that managing the leftovers is key when buying/cooking for two.

Tonight my son is making pasta with the tomato pesto he made week before last, and serving it with 3/4 of a bunch of asparagus — he used the first 1/4 in a stir-fry earlier in the week — and tapioca pudding that I made this morning (a double batch, enough to last us three days). Last night he made pizza (generating enough dough for two pizzas, so enough dough for another pizza is now in the freezer; and using some of the spicy tomato sauce he made last Saturday to go with a locally made frozen stromboli that we like to pop in the oven on lazy nights) and a Caesar salad, and we finished the last of the chocolate chip cookies he made earlier in the week. Friday I served round two of a vegetarian bean and rice casserole (flavored with poblano and chipotle peppers, sweet onion, garlic, and cumin, topped with melted Muenster or Monterey Jack cheese) that I made last Sunday, and we’ll have the last of it tomorrow night. On Friday I served it with a salad (using up the rest of the cucumber and mushrooms in the frig) and the chocolate chip cookies, so tomorrow I’ll see which green veg looks best in the market and cook that to go with it, and serve the tapioca pudding for dessert. Thursday I made a tuna and white bean salad with red onion and capers, served it over a big salad of mixed lettuce, tomato, cucumber, mushroom, and red onion, and we had a fresh half-baguette from the co-op on the side. (I had leftover tuna and white bean salad for lunch Friday and today). Wednesday I made rigatoni with the tomato sauce that my son made last Saturday; I added more sauteed veg to the sauce (needed to use up some mushrooms before they went bad) and served it with broccoli raab in garlic and oil (chocolate chip cookies for dessert). Tuesday my son made a shrimp and veg stir fry (using the last of the spicy peanut sauce he made a couple of weeks ago) to have over rice that was leftover from the day before (when we had baked salmon and a giant salad with it) and we finished off the brownies he’d made a few days earlier. So that’s a little over a weeks’ worth of menus at our place, some generating leftovers, some using leftovers, some doing both. I don’t eat meat, but we do have fish or egg dishes one to three times a week.

On my nights to cook later this week I think I’ll make baked ricotta with rosemary, and beans & greens sauteed in garlic & olive oil (using a container of navy beans I’ve got in the freezer), both served over toasted Italian bread one night; and a frittata (mayb spinach and parmesan, or zucchini and feta) and a salad the next night to serve with the bread while it’s still fresh (at least fresh enough to make good toast) the next night. Or, if there’s enough bread left over to make bread pudding, I might make baked fish with mashed potato and a cooked green veg and/or a salad. By Tuesday or Wednesday it’ll be time for one of us to make a new dessert. By next weekend it will be time for me to generate some new leftovers, so I may make vegetarian baked beans, cornbread, and cole slaw (I make a buttermilk dressing for the cole slaw to use up the buttermilk leftover from the corn bread recipe, which inconveniently calls for 2-1/2 cups of buttermilk). That gives us two complete dinners plus enough baked beans left over for at least third dinner with different sides, or for several lunches; plus I’ll cook extra beans in the crockpot and freeze them before combining the rest of the beans with the other ingredients for the vegetarian baked bean recipe. If I’m busy and don’t want to do all that cooking, I’ll ask my son to make a big batch of homemade macaroni and cheese.

Having two cooks in the house makes it so much easier! I am a much happier cook since my so is old enough to take on half the job. And he really hates wasting food, so he helps me stay on top of planning for using stuff up and not just thinking about what I feel like cooking.

My son is especially good at making sauces that get used over and over again (to be fair, several of them are recipes he’s taken over from me), whereas I’m more likely to spend time washing and chopping lots of ingredients to make a casserole or soup. And we’re lucky to be able to buy smaller amounts of some things at our food co-op. It’s great to be able to buy a half baguette instead of a whole one! If I need just a few dried apricots for a recipe, but they’ve packaged them in half-pound quantities, I can ask them to re-package just a few for me. I need 5-1/2 cups of whole milk for a double batch of tapioca pudding, so I can buy a quart plus a pint instead of a half gallon, and end up with a half cup left over instead of two and a half cups left over. If I need a half teaspoon of dried tarragon, I can buy a half teaspoon of it out of the bulk spices. The turnover on the bulk dried grains, beans, nuts, fruit, and herbs and spices is good enough that they’re fresh when you buy them and you can buy just what you need and not have whole jars of rarely-used spices sitting around for years going stale. I wish every neighborhood had a store like it!