(mostly) not grocery shopping

So, we all know I exaggerate. Like when I say "I'm never grocery shopping again!" I mean "I'm shopping less for a while"

Well, the while goes on! And I'm making some decent progress round here! Because I know you've all been up nights wondering about the state of my freezer, let's dish.

First let me say I amended policy of "no shopping" to "Can buy things like cheese and milk that can't be made from other things around the house, and also can buy 1 magical ingredient for any dish for which I have everything else here" and also "can always buy onions and garlic"

So...as I began to make my way through the contents of the freezer (umm, "a friend" told me that you can unfreeze previously frozen wine given to you by your angry landlord and frozen because what else would you do with 2 giant bottles when you're home alone for the summer and drink it and it still tastes ok. Turns out to be true, and freezer cleaning ramped up because of it. Although I was a little embarrassed and glad to be home alone the first time I did it, by the second glass of heated wine with mulling spices, I was over it. I am from the gettaw!)

Anyway, as I was saying before I got wine-sicled off point, I found a hunk of short ribs kicking back in the freezer. Short ribs = expensive shitty meat to me. HN orders them at restaurants and my dad gave me this sweet book and put an asterisk next to the short ribs recipes so I thought one time way back I would make it for HN and company. Company canceled so I was left with the extra pack. The dish came out gross, because short ribs are pretty gross, so I just never made it again and blocked out the fact that I had bought a second package.

Cut to me watching Top Chef the other night and they were talking about umami taste and I was all "Must learn umami. Now" and here don't I grub around the freezer to see if I have anything in there that tastes like earth. No can do, but I did come up with the bag of short ribs and visions of pho start dancing in my head. So I take said nasty short ribs, throw them in a big pot with herbs and spices and plan tomorrow to go to the supermarket for secret ingredient MUSHROOMS! The soup was ridiculously delicious, and umami is now my bitch. Thank you google!! However, I didn't end up using the short rib meat in the soup, because even after 3 hours of boiling that shit was still nasty.

So I get all "FUCK THIS, now it's personal" on the short ribs and decide that hell to the no do they get tossed because now it's just the principle of the thing. Tough meat, I think on it and I decide acid is the answer, so going back to the freezer, I grab a quart sized bag of "blended spicy garden tomatoes" and throw them in my 3Qt dutch oven, with a jar of my prized new mexico green chiles (down to 14 jars left and getting nervous), some black beans, a pepper, some onion and a whole lotta garlic. And some cumin. For whatever reason, when HN and I moved in together we both brought oregano and cumin stashes to get us through the Apocalypse. Therefore, cumin and oregano now go with lots of what I make, by hook or by crook. I do some braising/meat calculations and decide that 300 degrees for 4 hours would tenderize even the dog so I let that all happen. Result? RESULT! Tasty shizz, kind of like a ghetto beef chili Verde only not quite, but the stewiness and texture were on point and taste was not so bad either. I toss some in a bowl, cover with cheese and broil. IT IS GOOD, but it could be better and there's still a bunch of crap in my fridge that I don't need so I allow for one more ingredient (it's a different day, it doesn't count!) and go get some tortillas. I fry those up lightly, pack em full of meat mix, cover with sauce made from things in the fridge I wish HN would stop bringing home (tostitos salsa? umm, perhaps you forget we have roughly 1000 jars of homemade and AWESOME salsa around here!) and some cheese, et voila! Were I so inclined to spend 3 fucking days preparing wretched cuts of meat, I would make short rib enchiladas or burritos any day. As it is, I'll just bask in the fact that I won over the meat and never buy that shit again.

So that's the battle of the short ribs, and though like I said I wouldn't use the cut of meat again, they did make a damn tasty soup base. i believe this is more a bone in thing than a good meat thing though, so next time I have a day to kill and a self granted freedom to buy more than one ingredient, I might do a full on pho day. Seems like it ought to be a "for company" thing too, but it doesn't need to be decided now.

The rest of the project goes well too. Not so much variety in recipes this week, because I'm eating leftovers blah blah blah, but I do at least look at the cabinets and freezer and know I am making progress.
Barley stocks are down to "around normal" as opposed to "are we having the whole city over for some barley?" level. Frozen wine has been "handled", frozen tomatoes USED UP, ONE JAR OF CUMIN EXHAUSTED! (2 jars of oregano from HN that expired in 2005 thrown out while he wasn't looking) and stores continue to fall.

I did have to break my grocery shopping rule yesterday, because HN has the swine flu so I was able to justify buying chicken to make some matzo ball soup. (and it was SO GOOD! I reduced the stock by like 1/3 because I was locked out of the kitchen because the floor was wet and so the stock boiled away more than I meant it to, but it was just this lovely, thick COMFORT soup) I also bought egg noodles, thinking if the matzo was too heavy he might like those better, and also because I bought extra chicken pieces I have options left. And I bought a pound of ground beef, as a single ingredient for the future.

So, having bought

• 1 pack chicken breasts, bone in
• 1 pack chicken thighs (you need dark meat for soup)
• 1 package egg noodles
• 1 pound ground beef

And having left in the fridge that I want to use:

• some mushrooms
• a half jar of tomato sauce we made over the summer (but only opened last week when I made pizza)
  
• some Parmesan cheese
• arborio rice
• some half and half
• squash (frozen)
  

I plan to make (or have made)

• Matzo ball soup
• single serving of beef stroganoff (HN dislikes mushrooms, good riddance)
• meat sauce from the rest of the beef, served over egg noodles
  
• squash risotto with sage from the yard before it all dies
• egg noodles with chicken and garlic butter/wine sauce (there is always chicken meat leftover when I make soup)
  
• mexican chicken soup (which is just plain chicken soup with black beans and a jar of our way over vinegar salsa from the summer dumped in, and is also AWESOME)

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with my progress. Aside from getting around to using what I bought and paid for ages ago, and no longer being taunted by seeing it there when I open the fridge, I'm "getting outside my box" (hey now!) and adding some interesting things to the list of things I make. Things like pho which I've wondered about forever now are less mysterious having made at least a start on the broth, the toasted barley discovery which is sure to prove to be lifechanging, and the knowledge that I can probably get through that whole jar of couscous if I make it 3 more times to go with something all contribute to me just feeling this cooking challenge. It's also interesting to actually plan a menu which is something I'd heard of people doing but had never done. It's a good exercise in how to make things - as in what's the best order in which to cook things to maximize the leftovers possibilities to be something else. After eating something 3 times I really have a hard time keeping on, so planning on how to morph stuff is very exciting.

Off to hit the showers now. Today we look at one place down in the city (fingers crossed!) and then the house near here with the woodstove. I am truly torn, because the house with the woodstove is just cool, and I know we would love it but I am thinking I want to go back to the city to live. There's just a ton of things I miss, like being able to walk to any store, walk to the farmers market, walk to the book thing, etc etc etc. I also really miss my pre-bedtime walks with Star. There's no sidewalks here and no roads it's safe to walk on at night so that has all but stopped and I think my sleeping has suffered as a result.

We will have to trade in on the peace, quiet and darkness of country life, and for sure we're going to lose the element of fire which I've quite enjoyed but I think in the end the city is the answer. And now that it's been decided that we're moving, I'm excited about it. I spent gross, cold, rainy yesterday inside making soup and DOUCHING the douche of all douches the kitchen, back bathroom and the back 2 carpeted rooms. The corners and crevices have been cleared of ALL dust bunnies and resident spiders, carpet has been spot cleaned with my new toy, and the pile of things for goodwill grows. Today, we look at apts then I come home and tackle cabinets, fridge, and the sunroom, where all manner of bad things have been building up since we stopped using it due to the cold. I love collapsing exhausted at the end of the day and seeing that I have made progress.

Onward and upward....