Old Cabbage
I really dislike wasting food, and yet it’s so easy to forget about that half onion in the vegetable drawer, or the leftovers that were shoved to the back of the refrigerator. So I’ve been trying harder to plan better for using up unfinished produce or leftovers. When I see there’s a large amount of leftovers from a dinner, and more than I can eat for lunch the next day, and I know the princesses don’t usually like leftovers and Joe never remembers to bring the leftovers I tell him are available for lunch, then I’ll freeze single serve portions for my future lunches. That way I don’t have to bore myself with the same old meal for three days (you know a mother can be a martyr for only so long) As a bonus I won’t have to see them in the thermos on the return trip of the lunchbox from school after I’ve forced them on the princesses for lunch anyway. They become especially ugly after sitting in a thermos all day. And the girls become especially hungry and grumpy.
So I had a leftover half of cabbage from the minestrone soup I made last week. And as I was planning this week’s menu, I looked for a way to use it up. I guess it was my lucky day because I quickly found this very easy recipe for shrimp and cabbage stir fry in the September “Food Network Magazine”. Turns out it was a much better way to use it than watching it turn brown and mushy in the vegetable drawer.
Minestrone
It’s the season for new cookbooks. There are several publicists that have me on their lists to send new cookbooks for possible review. It seems like a new book arrives every day, so we’ve been eating from a very eclectic selection of recipes. One interesting book I received a few weeks ago is called The Great American Cookbook. It’s a reissue of a 1960 book called How America Eats and it showcases recipes from all over the U.S. It’s kind of fun to see what was a “regional” recipe back then, and is now a very commonplace dish. It can be kind of overwhelming when all of these books hit at once, so I asked Louisa to select a recipe for us to try out from this book so I wouldn’t have to choose.
Notice, I asked Louisa to select a recipe, not cook one since our summer cooking lessons are just a fond memory. Sigh. I do miss those days of sitting out on a lawn chair with a cocktail in hand, hollering into the kitchen to find out whether my slave, er, I mean daughter, was any closer to getting dinner on the table. “Hey you, Wench, when am I going to get my grub?” It’s amazing they put up with that kind of behavior from their mother. And it’s doubly amazing that they didn’t poison me.
So, you would think with slave days behind her, Louisa would be happy to be asked only to decide what I should cook for her. By the look on her face you would have thought the days of servitude had returned. Finally, with a begrudging flip through the book, she selected minestrone, a dish I’ve never been crazy about. I don’t know why, maybe it’s because there’s so much vegetable chopping required, Or it could be that when I was younger I just didn’t like the assortment of vegetables that showed up on my spoon. But I wasn’t going to say no after my slave, er daughter, did what I asked. I did go out of my way to point out that there were both peas and kidney beans in the dish, ingredients that didn’t rank high on her favorite food list. But Louisa told me it was fine. Okay, fine.
This recipe turned out to be better than I remembered, in fact it was a very good recipe, although the chopping was as much as I remembered. I also baked a loaf of Mr. Bread to go with it since Joe now demands that I bake him a loaf every week. It was a good thing I did because Mr. Bread served as the backbone of Louisa’s dinner, not the side accompaniment. It turns out she doesn’t like peas and kidney beans, just as I thought.
Turkey Minus the Pilgrims
Turkey, mashed potatoes, vegetables, must be Thanksgiving? No. Labor Day. It was all Joe’s idea, and it was a pretty good one at that. He was in the mood to smoke something for dinner on Labor Day instead of making a traditional barbecue with hamburgers, sausage or hot dogs. And being the lovely, charming spouse that I always try to be, I agreed to his suggestion of turkey breast.
Many people I know cook turkey throughout the year, as a lighter, leaner dinner option. Not me. If I’m having meat, I’m not going to worry about the fat content, just give me a smaller portion. And turkey is forever and ever emblazoned in my brain as a Thanksgiving meat, so I rarely think to cook it. But this smoked turkey made me realize the error of my ways. Since it isn’t the season for this bird, I was only able to find a full turkey – and I’m NOT dealing with that mess outside of the official holiday – or a half turkey breast, which was good enough. The smoking added a tasty underlying flavor to the meat that made it much more interesting than a turkey cutlet which I’ve tried on rare occasions when the recipe in my magazine sounded interesting, but was usually regrettable and forgettable.
Obviously those were mashed potatoes on the side, and the greens were bok choy salad, one of my favorite non-dairy sources of calcium, and one of Louisa’s least favorite. Someday you’ll thank me for this kid when you can mix up your meals with interesting vegetables. As now I may mix up my meals with another protein thanks to Joe.