| Culinary therapy to go with my book therapy. |
 Culinary therapy to go with my book therapy.
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Sep. 13th, 2007 @ 11:46 pm 
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Okay, so we're broke, and I'm at home playing housewife until I get a job, which would be a lot more fun with a working car and enough money to buy whatever groceries I want. As it is, I have to make do with verrry basic stuff and a hell of a lot of creativity. That is to say, I have a ton of stuff on-hand here, but not necessarily stuff that's easy to use, when you can't go out and get whatever you need to make it with.
There are two culinary masterpieces of this week of which I am particularly proud. Well, maybe three. First, a deep dish Greek pizza - pizza crust in a cast iron skillet, brushed with an olive oil (staple), garlic (huge jar of garlic paste from Indian grocery that I bought in the fall), and spices (huge collection of those) emulsion. Add chopped spinach (back of the freezer) and diced tomatoes (back of the larder). Then mozzarella cheese (staple) and feta cheese (Central American market where it's cheap), and Kalamata olives (ditto). It was awesome!
The second culinary masterpiece was stunning in its simplicity, and came to me as I browsed my marinades and rubs cookbook to get an idea for ground beef, since we bought a 10 lb. tube of the stuff, and one needs to be creative with that much ground beef. I had some teriyaki stir fry sauce leftover in the fridge. I had a can of pineapple rings in the larder. So I kneaded the teriyaki sauce and some of the pineapple juice into the meat, made it into burgers, and grilled it on the Geo. Foreman. I served the burgers with a ring of pineapple on top. It was really really good.
And so tonight, masterpiece number 3. I discovered some dark chocolate baking chunks in the back of a cabinet that were old and had gone all dry and powdery. Yesterday, I had also discovered a package of those Crisco vegetable shortening sticks, which I think my mom gave me after my sister bought them and left them in the larder a long time. Anyhow, I've had these bad boys a long time. So, I'm mostly out of butter, and I only have 2 eggs, but I found a recipe in 1001 Cookies that was a shortening-based chocolate chip cookie recipe. I made it up, but put in 3/4 cup of the crumbly choc. chunks, and then about 3/4 of dried cranberries. The chunks didn't completely disintegrate as I mixed them in, but they did break apart a lot and some turned to powder. The effect was awesome.
This last recipe and my fave They Might Be Giants album (Flood) served to bolster my flagging spirits.
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Those hamburgers sound great! So does everything else, really.
Rice and couscous are my big food-stretchers--I can always find something in the pantry and/or freezer that will go on top of them. Or make it up.
poverty is the source of all awesome cultural innovation!
how's that for a sweeping generalization?
seriously though, i feel you. all of my cooking skillbilities come out of chronic situations like the ones you describe.
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| From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) firynze |
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| Date: |
September 14th, 2007 01:34 pm (UTC) |
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And yet again, I'm reminded that I REALLY need to get on with my plan to write a Starving Artists Cookbook...
(that pizza sounds great! I've done something similar with polenta before...)
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