I’m not sure what to do with food this coming week! This week has been a free for all! I had no meal plan and made noodle soup with enoki and daikon and carrot, burgers and tater tots, bag salads frittatas and breakfast burritos, and used a big gallon bag of beef chili from my freezer.
It’s supposed to snow this weekend so I think I will place an order today. I did a lot this week and have therapy tonight and I’m worried I won’t be able to go after that so this seems like the best bet. I should probably do a meal plan too since I have therapy and might be a bit out of it after/not in a creative cooking place. I will order either from the co-op (good meat, good coffee, bad everything else), Hmart (good meat, good produce, bad coffee), or Costco (ok meat, good coffee, bad produce). Haha, it’s a real goldilocks over here. I think I’ll check with dh on house supplies. If he needs a lot of things (cleaning, litter, etc.) then maybe Costco is the best option.
I also like Better than Bouillon so YMMV, but Penzeys also has soup stock bases in a jar. It is an acceptable alternative to Better than Bouillon to me, but I couldn’t say how they differ or are the same. Also, I am vegetarian, so only have bought the vegetable ones.
Ok, I ended up placing an order at the co-op since I needed meat but not a ton of veggies. I spent $88 (with tip $98). I’m pleased with the total considering it’s delivery and co-op, instacart is such a blessing. I remember when the only delivery grocery service was peapod! I think I was able to keep costs down by avoiding all the snacks and organic stuff and making sure I looked very carefully at the pricing (they love to do tricky things at our co-op, and then you get sneak attacked with insane prices at the register).
ETA: Ok, got the groceries. Shopper did a great job and found almost everything! The entire order was in only two bags :-o it blows my mind that some people shop co-op for everything! This much money gets me like 4-5 bags normally. The bahn mi rolls I bought turned out to be miniatures, they’re like 3 inches long each, lol. So they will not last through the week for lunch, probably will only last 2-3 days or something, lol, so I guess I will do bahn mi “bowls” (whatever that means) when I run out of bread. Pork is very small too but I have ground beef I can mix it with for dumplings. Even the bag of coffee is tiny, haha! It’s like a store of miniatures! I’m ok with it though because I kept under $100 for the total shop, so even though it was a really bad deal per item it’s ok because it fit my bottom line, and thankfully I have a full freezer and pantry so I can bulk it out.
I made that air fryer biscuit tin recipe! I’m pretty surprised at how doughnut-like they are! They taste a bit of biscuit but the texture is surprisingly good. I did a glaze instead of cinnamon sugar but I bet that would be good too!
I have dried mint in the spice cupboard. I never use it. I’m thinking making a yogurt sauce with the dried mint, sumac, zatar and dukkah. maybe add some crushed fennel seeds?
Any reason that it shouldn’t work?
Anything you’d add to it? Or another idea for using up old dried mint?
That sounds good to me! If you toss in some lemon and it’ll be a great salad dressing. I’d nix the fennel bc I think it will overpower it but ymmv (tastes and all). I normally use a lot of fresh mint in salads and tabbouleh but I don’t think dried mint would have the same effect.
This sounds good. You can also use mint instead of dill in tzatziki, which I sometimes do if I have mint on hand but not dill. Fresh is “better” but if you use a heavy dose of dried it is fine because it is going into a liquid and so will rehydrate.
Oh good, you should totally try it- it’s so good! I don’t use a recipe for baked beans but I do something similar each time. These beans (black and pinto) were already cooked in stock with ham hock (I cook a lot at once and freeze them) so I basically let them thaw a bit and then tossed them in my sauce which was tomato paste (used the reminder left from the jollof rice) and water. Then when they were fully thawed in the sauce and it was reducing a bit I added in paprika, molasses, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, green hot sauce, dijon mustard, and gumbo file to thicken it (I might have added a bit of sugar too but I can’t remember)! Then I let it cook down a bit until it was nice and thick.
I need a suggestion. I made some baguettes yesterday and the salt did not disperse correctly, so there are bizarre salty surprises in random bites. Does anyone have any ideas?
Normally I’d make French toast out of sub par bread, but that seems like it wouldn’t work here. Thought bread crumbs for meatloaf, but it’s a lot of bread and how much meatloaf cannot make?
If you figure out something that will work well, but don’t want to (or can’t) use it all, bread freezes quite well for several months… just remember it is in there the next time you come around to the same use (like breadcrumbs or croutons).
I had about a half serving of lentils leftover from my lunches last week, a few slices of stale butt ends of sourdough. So I defrosted a spinach puck, mixed in some grated gruyere, a few drops of balsamic, and made some lentil-spinach-gruyere toasties with a bunch of black pepper on top. Surprisingly good.
Probably would have been improved by heating the lentils with the spinach and some onion first, and then mixing in the gruyere (maybe with chopped walnuts?), but very good as a shortcut.
