WIAW – 89 Clear the Fridge!

The CSA is almost over for the year – one more pickup. We’re getting fewer items, but many of the individual ones are bulky – huge cabbages, winter squash, large beets and turnips, dense bunches of curly kale… And we have keeping vegetables now – we’ll eat them through December, and I’m freezing much of it for later in the winter.

But all this means that the refrigerator is even more crowded than it was in the height of summer – and we needed space for another pickup yesterday! So Tuesday was a clean the fridge, eat the odds and ends, clear out all the little Tupperware and Rubbermaid bowls sort of a day – and it shows.

Well, it didn’t affect breakfast. I ate my new porridge mixture – I am happy with that – and drank a protein shake. My current mix for it is kefir, a splash of cider, some cinnamon or some pumpkin pie spice, and a scoop of protein powder. And a cup of coffee with milk.

Lunch, though… The end of a loaf of bread (I need to bake tomorrow) and some leftover dal used as a spread. You don’t think of using beans as a spread? But that’s what hummus is… And chick peas aren’t the only ones that work. I used to make some interesting bean spreads, but slid out of it. Now that I’m feeling better, though, and cooking more again (and have bread again for sandwiches) I want to start playing with the idea more. This was just leftovers, though, not something made for the purpose – and still quite good.

I also had leftover red cabbage, with a little chicken added – left over from the night before. That was still a bit light, though, so I also had a rice cake with cheese (about half an hour later – oops) to supplement what I had eaten when I realized it was all almost but not quite quite enough… (I’d thought I had a bit more chicken left than I did…)

Then dinner. I pulled some drumsticks out of the freezer, and simmered them with a chiffonade of sage. (Chiffonade. Doesn’t that sound elegant? Much fancier than shreds – but that’s all it means – I shredded fresh leaves of sage.) Then, when the chicken was cooked I removed it and put one serving of cooked rice and one serving of cooked sweet potato together in the cooking liquid (which was now a light broth with the sage) to heat up. And I heated the last of the roasted beets. (Hey! That was four – count them, four! – containers out of the fridge!) There were three drumsticks, so I did go back for some more…

And we had a little tossed salad I forgot to photograph – we’re lucky I remembered to serve it. Now that we don’t have salad for lunch I’m trying to remember to serve it with dinner – we got a surprising amount of lettuce, the last week or two… And I do want to have some sort of soup to start, or salad to finish our meals – it’s a great way to add more interest and variety (and vegetables) to our food. I never did it just for myself, and I haven’t really felt well enough to do it consistently, but that’s the way people used to eat, and it’s good practice. Smaller amounts of each of a variety of things, instead of just one bigger serving. You end up with the same amount of food, but with a greater range of flavors (and nutrients.) It does, though, take a little more attention from the cook, which is the reason that we as a culture have mostly stopped eating that way… So we’ll see how I do with this idea.

Meanwhile – I’d made enough room for the cabbage, kale, butternut squash, Brussels sprouts, root vegetables, etc. that Rich had just picked up…

Jenn’s party is over at Laura’s… Come see what everyone else is eating!