Rubbishy Cookery

  A good friend recently had a dinner party and served a delicious true tagine which inspired this experiment with leftover ingredients in the fridge and pantry. Allons-y! Ingredients: This was made on the fly with ingredients added as I went, so I don’t have my usual class photo of ingredients, but instead, a list: - leftover canned chickpeas - leftover canned tomatoes  - a peeled and cubed sweet potato  - a peeled and chopped carrot  - 4-5 finely chopped garlic - a chopped onion  - chopped dried apricots  - chopped prunes - many spices: salt, ground cumin, ground coriander, ground cinnamon, turmeric, saffron, smoked paprika  - olive oil Directions: Heat up a few gluts of olive oil in a soup pot and start frying the chopped onion: Add the chopped garlic, stirring often, until golden, and maybe a little browned: Add the chopped sweet potato: And chopped carrot: Keep stirring so nothing sticks or burns! Add all those lovely spices: Stir a minute or two ...

  I just had a crazy inspiration and thought that this would be a good idea. Let’s see if I’m right! Ingredients: I mean, with these ingredients and a Vitamix, how could it be bad? Directions: I just tossed the peeled shallot, a bunch of frozen corn kernels (directly from the bag while still frozen), a generous teaspoon of miso paste, and covered it with milk (using 2% now): I turned the Vitamix on and let ‘er rip. It didn’t have enough liquid and turned into corn slushie. So I added enough water to get it blending properly and let ‘er rip for six (6!) minutes: and poured it into a bowl, steaming warm (not hot but that’s fine): And… it’s o-kay. Not great. Not up to my usual Rubbishy Cookery standards. It’s definitely edible but it’s too thin and too dull. I will try, try again and addendum this post. I’m thinking a cooked potato would help… Stay tuned!

This week has been soup week chez nous, thanks to some minor but pesky dental misadventures with Mr. Rubbishy, and we all wish him a speedy recovery! In the meantime, the challenge has been to create new and healthful soups daily, and stretch my creative rubbishy cookery. I have embraced the challenge! Unfortunately, I’ve been so busy focusing on the matters at hand that I didn’t even think about this blog, until after I’d already cooked and we’d eaten this dish, which was unexpectedly easy and fabulous. A perfect recipe for the blog—but no photos! What to do? Get out the old art supplies and, in the spirit of the original Moosewood cookbook series, do some rubbishy drawings! Ingredients: In case my drawing and handwriting isn’t exactly the hyperrealism style of artistry you may have expected from this blog, the ingredients are: - 1-2 Tablespoons butter  - 1 onion chopped  - 2 carrots diced - 2 potatoes peeled and diced - 2 fresh bay leaves - 1-2 teaspoons dried thyme  - ...

  Wow—today is not only the 50th rubbishy post, but also the Winter Solstice, and where I live, the first winter storm (a nor’ easter, no less!) of the year! Let’s get cosy and make a warm pot of Tuscan soup! Ingredients: What you’ll notice in the photo above is the great deal on ground turkey—enjoy today, 50% off! What a deal! What you may not notice in the photo above is that the fresh kale was harvested from my backyard garden just hours before the storm started.  Imagine—a December harvest of kale! And half price ground turkey! I feel hashtag blessed. Directions: Start by mixing ingredients for the turkey meatballs: ground turkey, a generous handful or two of quick cook rolled oats, 1-2 tablespoons-ish each of garlic powder, onion powder, dried thyme, dried basil, not pictured but assumed S&P, and a really good amount of finely grated Parmesan cheese. Mix it all up with your hands and add more oats if necessary to get a good texture, i.e., one in which to form meatball...