Utilizing the mystery basket in my fridge
There are days when I am primed to cook a meal and I mean a MEAL, complete with hors d’oeurves, and a fabulous dessert. But those days are few and far between and getting a lot “betweener” as the days go by. It’s really not so much the prep work, but the fact that the meal, despite several courses, is gobbled down in a few minutes, and then I have to spend another hour cleaning up. Somehow the cleanup has lost its appeal.
OK, so I’m complaining, but that’s the way it is. I think that I’ve crossed the Rubicon of cooking (Rubicon is a nod to the Latin classes…four years of them that I took in high school.) I do think that, on occasion, I need to see if my brain is still functioning beyond the Swiffer, Dawn, dust and mop focus.
I learned to shop and cook for six people when I was a teenager. I never actually tried to alter that because it gave me the leftovers that became lunches or the odd after school meal for teenagers who came home starving. Back then, I just accepted that providing meals also meant a lot of clean up while others were doing more fun things.
So, when the kids left, I was still cooking for six. The freezer provided a way to recycle the extra food and, of course, there were lunches and the occasional guest for dinner, so it never became a problem. I was, also, still doing the cleanup and liking it less and less.
But lately that overage of food resulting from cooking for six has morphed into eating the same meal for three nights. I don’t mind, but someone else prefers more variety. I’m not mentioning any particular person, but that person lives in my house. Yes, I’ve frozen the leftovers in two portion packages, but after a while the freezer is bursting with these, along with the overage pieces of from a large pizza which two people could not possibly eat.
My goal for the last few weeks has been to use up what I have, not only in the freezer, but also that which is lingering in the refrigerator, the bits and pieces of fruit, bread and vegetables that didn’t make it into the freezer.
On Monday, I really didn’t want to cook. I stood in front of the refrigerator, a supplicant asking for mercy. Opening the door to items you might see in one of those mystery baskets on the TV show “Chopped,” I faced a challenge. One ear of corn, butter, a few slices of Heidleberg French bread, the remains of a bag of bacon bits and one avocado. Yes, there were carrots and half a head of cabbage in the crisper, but I ignored them.
This was our dinner. I toasted two slices of the bread and, while it was toasting, I put the three or four tablespoons of bacon bits into the microwave for 15 seconds to crisp them up and began to mash the avocado along with garlic and onion powder, salt and pepper. When the bacon bits had cooled a bit I added them to the mash along with a few sprinkles of dried parsley.
Wrapping the ear of corn in a wet paper towel, I nuked it for three minutes and spread the mash on the toasted bread.
I poured two glasses of Sangiovese Chianti. What could that harm. I put the toast on plates with a half ear each of the corn.
And surprise, surprise … It was a fabulous meal, one which my spouse rated as one of those, “You have to do this once a week” types. Easy, and only one bowl and fork to clean up.
Are there cookbooks for meals like this?
Then there are chicken salad sandwiches and egg salad sandwiches and grilled cheese sandwiches, all garnished with pickles out of a jar and potato chips out of the bag, served on paper plates … and, of course, there is “making reservations” which is rapidly becoming my favorite way to cook, and with those reservations comes … no clean up at all. It’s like being someone else.
