When I was growing up, everyone in my family took turns at making dinner. My mom actually had me -- the artistic one, apparently-- design a KP chart*, so we knew who was cooking dinner, who was washing dishes, and who was vacuuming and sweeping each day. (Okay, we "only" vacuumed and swept the house 3 days per week, one day per daughter, but the KP chart said which one of us did it which day).
It was sort of an ongoing joke that my mom's meals consisted of leftovers. In fact, she'd pull a chair up in front of the fridge and pull out pyrex container after corningware container. She'd reheat those containers in the oven or the microwave, and that would be our meal for the evening. My sisters and I grumbled a lot about the fact that we and our dad had to cook, but my mom got to reheat.
But the scavengers have a place in the ecosystem, too. And every once in a while, when I clean out my own refrigerator, I'm glad for the chance to have a "grandmother meal", which makes the most of former meals before they go bad, and also allows me to see what fresh foods still exist in between the bowls and and plates and pots of stuff.
Problem is, my refrigerator is usually in the state where there's "no food, only ingredients". My love of canning jars and all that goes in them means that we tend to accumulate lots of jars of something-or-other waiting to be made into dinner somehow. Just last Friday, in fact, we'd reached a stage where I knew I had a head of kale in there somewhere, but I couldn't see it for all the mis-matched jars of olives, diced carrots, sliced turnips, and other potentially yummy vegetables that had yet to find their way into a meal. Not to mention, we had lots of partially filled jars of sauces cluttering up the refrigerator door. Some people can't see the forest for the trees, but I couldn't see the kale for the pickles.
Even after we canned all those jars up, I had a few more bags of apples left for eating. Fortunately, I'd cleared out space in the fridge for the remaining apples; they go right next to the kale.
*KP is an army abbreviation for "Kitchen Police",
or in my mom's lingo, a Girl Scout abbreviation
for "Kitchen Patrol". My mom was organized and strict!
It was sort of an ongoing joke that my mom's meals consisted of leftovers. In fact, she'd pull a chair up in front of the fridge and pull out pyrex container after corningware container. She'd reheat those containers in the oven or the microwave, and that would be our meal for the evening. My sisters and I grumbled a lot about the fact that we and our dad had to cook, but my mom got to reheat.
But the scavengers have a place in the ecosystem, too. And every once in a while, when I clean out my own refrigerator, I'm glad for the chance to have a "grandmother meal", which makes the most of former meals before they go bad, and also allows me to see what fresh foods still exist in between the bowls and and plates and pots of stuff.
Problem is, my refrigerator is usually in the state where there's "no food, only ingredients". My love of canning jars and all that goes in them means that we tend to accumulate lots of jars of something-or-other waiting to be made into dinner somehow. Just last Friday, in fact, we'd reached a stage where I knew I had a head of kale in there somewhere, but I couldn't see it for all the mis-matched jars of olives, diced carrots, sliced turnips, and other potentially yummy vegetables that had yet to find their way into a meal. Not to mention, we had lots of partially filled jars of sauces cluttering up the refrigerator door. Some people can't see the forest for the trees, but I couldn't see the kale for the pickles.
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| Where, oh where, is the kale? |
So I pulled a Miser Mom version of my Mama. I emptied the shelves of the refrigerator onto the kitchen counter, and I concocted a recipe made of . . . well, of ingredients. I gathered all the root vegetables and tossed them into a hot cast-iron skillet with oil, garlic, and salt. I consolidated as much as I could of four bottles of barbecue sauce into one bottle. The remaining three bottles, I added a bit of water to, shook for all I was worth, and tossed the liquid in with the root vegetables (thereby simultaneously rinsing those bottles before recycling them). I added a jar of sliced mizuna stems and a bunch of arugula. I added pretty much everything I thought my husband or son wouldn't want to cook with, and I returned to the fridge the few remaining jars or bowls of things my guys might actually use -- the tomatoes and (yes) the kale.
I love it that the recipe was accidentally awesome. I made it just for me because I figured no one else would like it. But when my husband and son got home later that evening, they snarfed it all down and there was none left for me to take to school for lunch the next day. Huzzah for serendipitous recipes!
But I also continue to appreciate the magic of canning, so that I can store the bulk of my food on non-refrigerated shelves. On shelves, I can see all of my stored food easily. Finding food in the basement is so much easier than finding it in the fridge or the freezer. So here's a shout-out to my daughter and her best friend, who came over later in the week (long after the danger of being served Hot Barbecue Root Vegetable Medley), and who helped me cut up apples and can 24 quarts and a dozen smaller jars of applesauce.
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| Twirly apples are one of the most enjoyable things about spending 4 hours canning applesauce. |
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