Cookin' Up the Harvest a.k.a. Wednesday Food Porn

I'm not what you'd call a "foodie," even though I love food and both the eating and cooking thereof. I'm not into fancy or exotic, though I do enjoy them on occasion.  What I am into is the fine art of being a household chef: You see, to me, the true measure of a good cook is the ability to work with the foods available to create healthy meals the whole family will actually eat and, hopefully, do so with gusto.I pride myself in my ability to keep the family in nutritious home-made soup stock made purely from vegetable and meat scraps we would have otherwise thrown away or my ability to whip up meals of whatever vegetables just happen to need to be eaten ASAP.  These meals may not look pretty...they may not have the delicate balance of flavor and texture you'd find in a fancy restaurant...and, yes, they may be the same four or five veggies made several different ways with little variety in the dishes other than the spices...but they'll feed the whole family for the next several days and, by golly, our taste buds will love us when we're done!

Today was one of those days where I looked in the fridge and realized most of our fresh vegetables were about to go bad, we had a plethora of stock-making odds and ends filling our freezer, and we had just enough space in the fridge to fit a few Tupperware containers of meals...  Those were my cue: it was time to have a bit of creative fun in the kitchen today!

Beans, Beans, Good For Your… Wallet

While one ideal of economy is to plan all of your meals and only buy the exact amounts you will need for each dish, my grocery shopping style often results in random extras of items found on sale.  My husband and I, having been vegetarians for 14 years before adding meat back into our diet, still can't help ourselves when we see cans of beans on sale and often find ourselves buying a can of each type. As a result, beans always seem to remain in our pantry when the rest of the food is almost gone.   

Back in the 30's and 40's, the frugal wisdom of the time was to always buy your beans dry.  Unfortunately, this is one of those instances where the wisdom of our grandmothers no longer works because the world has changed.  While a cost comparison does show that dried beans are a few cents cheaper than canned, the cost difference at the market averages out to only 2-3 cents per ounce.  When you factor in the time that dried beans need to be cooked on the stove and the increased cost of the gas and electricity used to heat that stove, there is really no difference between canned and dried beans in terms of price.  Not to mention that time is money…so, really, the canned beans are the cheaper alternative as long as you buy generic brands on sale.

Why all this talk about beans? Well, it could be just because they are a cheap and healthy food item that is a staple in the diet of any family struggling to make ends meet... but there is more!  This is a story of a night where I made myself proud and my family's bellies full:

I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner with the few scraps we had left in our pantry and fridge.  It was almost time to visit the grocery store, but I was determined to put this task off and use what we had on hand… Surely I could throw something together!  I went to our pantry and saw that we were all out of veggies, but we still had our ridiculous stash of canned beans.  I looked through our fridge and noticed some turnip greens from the day before that had not gone over well with the little one and was unlikely to get eaten in its current state.  We also had a very tiny - as my husband had said when I finished my bagel the other day, "…barely enough to even bother saving" (Ha!) - amount of cream cheese left in its wrapper, some parmesan sprinkles, and a block of cheddar. 

I started pulling out the random items I had found in the fridge and added to this three cans of beans: black, kidney, and lima.  I started some rice (another staple that always seems to still be standing when the rest of the food is gone) in our rice steamer and began creating a makeshift casserole:

On the bottom layer, I mixed the black and kidney beans (making sure to save the liquids from the cans for stock).  I covered them with some fresh cilantro leaves my mother-in-law had given me recently and some of my favorite spices (cumin, thyme, and  garlic powder).  I then added a layer of shredded cheddar.  The next layer was created by melting the cream cheese in the microwave just long enough to make it soft for mixing.  This I mixed with the turnip greens and lima beans to make the third layer, which I covered in more fresh cilantro and spices.  Finally, I covered it all in another layer of cheddar with a thin layer of parmesan on top and baked it at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. 

The end result was the most delish beans and rice any of us had ever tasted.  My husband said it tasted kind of like the pizza he'd been craving all week and my daughter, who is four and by the nature of her age a picky eater, gobbled it all up with nary a complaint!  With a family of three, we ended up with about half the casserole left over.  Tomorrow, we're going to be having it over baked potatoes.  Yum!

Save it All and Make Stock!

I love fresh vegetables! Unless you have your own garden, though, fresh isn't always cheap nowadays.  Personally, I like to visit our local Korean grocery store and plan meals around the veggies they have on sale.  Even still, though, I would prepare my vegetables in the modern manner of chopping off the ends and peeling straight into the trash can.  One night, I was preparing a particularly veggie-heavy meal and was shocked to see how much food I had wasted by throwing these scraps in the trash.  I thought about composting, but I don't have a garden so compost was not going to result in more food on my table.  Since it was winter and I was on a soup-making kick, I then thought, "Hey, why not save all these vitamins and minerals and put them in some soup?"

And so began the filling of my freezer with funny things:

• Every time I cut veggies now, I save everything (the stalks of fresh herbs, the ends of tomatoes, celery leaves, carrot and potato peels, mushroom stems, etc.) except the truly rotten parts and throw them in a bag in the freezer.
• Any time I open a canned or jarred vegetable - and I'm not just talking green beans here...I do this with everything from beans to olives and artichoke hearts - I don't drain it over the sink.  Naw, that'd just be a waste of nutrition! So I drain them into a lidded container (I use the same one and just add to it until it's full) that I throw into the freezer for later.
• Bone-in meats are typically cheaper than meat without the bone, so we often will purchase these and cut the meat off the bone ourselves.  This not only saves us money at the store but adds to my stock for stock! Every time we have meat with bones, I save the bones in a lidded container or seal-able bag that gets thrown into the freezer as soon as the meal is done.

I was surprised at how quickly my freezer filled up with vegetable ends, funny looking frozen liquids, and the bones of various meats.  Once I had enough, I was ready to make my first batch of stock!

The process of making stock is ridiculously easy:

1. Throw all of the frozen veggie ends into a large pot.  If I have them, I also like to add a cut up onion or two and some smashed garlic for extra flavor.
2. Break the smaller frozen bones in half and throw all the bones (and, presumably, the meat pieces stuck to them) into the pot.  Note: To get the most out of the bones, you can saw the thicker bones in half as well.  Breaking the bones helps expose the marrow to the water, allowing more flavor and nutrition to soak into your broth.  
3. Warm up your container of frozen liquids by running it under hot water - do this just enough to unfreeze the liquids from the sides (otherwise, you won't be able to get it out of the container) - and empty it into the pot.
4. Add at least enough tap water to completely cover all the veggies and bones.  As long as you have enough water to cover your ingredients, you can add as much water as you want at this stage.  Just be aware that the more water you add, the weaker your broth will be (storage-saving tip: you can always make a more concentrated stock and dilute it when you reheat it).
5. Bring it all to a boil then immediately reduce the heat, cover, and let it simmer for HOURS!  Personally, I like to start the stock in the morning and let it simmer all day long.  Towards the early evening, to save on fuel, I'll turn off the stove, but leave the soup cooking in its own heat for at least an hour or so.  Note: If you don't have time to cook it this way, you can just throw it all into a crock pot and set it on low so that it cooks while you're at work for the day.
6. Once the stock has been cooked, strain out all of the solids - now there is nothing left to do with these but compost.  At this stage, I'll also try to sift through the mush and pull out all of the bits of meat that fell off the bones while cooking.  This meat I'll save for adding to soups.
7. Once you have your stock, you're ready to use it to make soups, stews, gravies, flavored rice, and so many other things!  But how do you store this huge pot of stock you just made so it won't go bad before you have a chance to use it all up?

Aromatic, Rich, and Oh So Yummy!

• Pour some into ice cube trays and freeze it.  This will give you small amounts of stock that can be used to make gravy or add flavor to rice or vegetables.
• Pour most into several medium-size lidded containers to be frozen for soups and stews.
• Keep only as much as you plan to use within the next week in a lidded container in your fridge.

My first batch of stock, a combination of potato and carrot peels, mushroom bits, leek leaves, cilantro and parsley stalks, tomato ends, bits and pieces of several types of squash, fish and chicken bones, bacon drippings, and the liquids from canned olives, artichoke hearts, and canned chicken, turned out wonderfully!  The house filled with the aroma of the herbs as the broth cooked over the day and I learned that you have to wait until the strained solids cool before you start sifting for meat!  All in all it was a fun and easy process that created a broth my whole family raved about with plenty left over in the freezer for my next soup!