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[calimac]

Am I still recuperating from Mythcon and hoping to finish a con report later? I am.

In the meantime we still need to eat. Lunch and dinner food service at Mythcon having consisted largely of A Dozen Ways of Reheating the Same Leftover Chicken, we got a little tired of chicken and I called a moratorium on it for our dinner-making, which I've kept up for 9 days now.

The problem arose of what to do after we were invited to a potluck on Sunday and I volunteered to bring the fruit salad. I had this leftover melon and pineapple, more than I'd want for breakfasts in the time it was still good, and what to do with them? I tried searching online for dinner recipes that included melon, with very little success. A suggestion to put steamed veggies in a hollowed-out melon to impart its flavor was only practical after I finished eating the honeydew, and the results weren't very impressive. An Indian melon curry, recipe found online, seemed beyond my capacity to make from scratch, but there are large Indian groceries here that carry lots of curry mixes, so I went to one of them to look. No luck, and when the clerk offered to help, it turned out that he was handicapped by not being sure what a melon was; he seemed to think it was akin to a kidney bean. I didn't want to risk using some other mix; Indian curries seem to be quite specific.

Then there was the pineapple. What uses pineapple? Sweet and sour! We don't eat pork here, and chicken was out as previously mentioned; how about shrimp? I wound up using this recipe, though I cut out the bell peppers and cherries and substituted other veggies instead, and maltodextrin for sugar (my normal substitute) and organic, no-sugar-added tomato paste for ketchup (for what is ketchup anyway but tomatoes with added sugar and vinegar, both of which are in the recipe already?). This was one of those recipes that was a lot more time and trouble to prepare than to cook, but the results were tasty; a thick sauce, but not goopy or oversweet like many sweet & sours.

Now I have half a can of tomato paste left. Historically, this will sit in the fridge until it turns green. I want to avoid that. What else uses tomato paste? Meat loaf glaze. Off to find a recipe for meat loaf with ground turkey.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I've never quite liked tomato paste, but I frequently use tomato sauce. When I make meatloaf, though, I mix it in rather than putting it over the top, which for some reason I can't even pretend to explain feels unnatural and a bit creepy to me. But meatloaf seems like a good way to expend leftover tomato product.

I actually have about three to five meatloaf variations that I make in rotation: Dijon mustard and yogurt, tomato and Anaheim chilis and cumin, Italian herbs, mushroom and green onion. . . .

(And I almost always make them with ground turkey, and with oatmeal as the grain.)

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Now I have half a can of tomato paste left. Historically, this will sit in the fridge until it turns green.

Little Fuzzy Vegetables

Lyric Copyright © 1999 Mark A. Mandel, All Rights Reserved
ttto "Little Fuzzy Animals" by Frank Hayes
Lyrics posted with permission from the author

In the back of your refrigerator something lies in wait
In a Tupperware container that's been sealed since '68.
So remember what your mother said when you were only two:
She said little fuzzy vegetables are bad for you.
  She said little fuzzy vegetables,
  Little furry vegetables,
  Little fuzzy vegetables are bad for you.

Now this rule has its exceptions, like most truths that parents teach:
Though it's vegetable and fuzzy, you can dare to eat a peach.
But extending the exception can be dangerous to do
Because green and fuzzy meat is also bad for you!
  Yes, green and fuzzy me-e-eat,
  Green and furry me-e-eat,
  Green and fuzzy meat is also bad for you.

There are even more exceptions, as the Fates sometimes arrange,
And there's one that in particular you may consider strange:
In case of wound or fever you may find it to be true
That a little fuzzy bread can be good for you!
  Yes, a little fuzzy bre-e-ead,
  A little furry bre-e-ead,
  A little fuzzy bread can be good for you!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

What spices did the melon curry recipe suggest using?

Fwiw, tomato paste freezes well.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Cumin, ginger, coriander, tumeric, green chili, and chili flakes - the problem was not so much the recipe as that I didn't want to load my pantry down with so many specialized spices I might not otherwise use.

The practical advisability of freezing the tomato paste has to be measured in negative numbers. If I can't think of anything else to do with it in the fridge, how much less likely in the freezer, and when I rediscover it there, years later, assuming I can remember what it is at all, I'll have to wonder how long it's safe to freeze for.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Sounds a bit like the combo in a rogan josh paste.

I have to admit that tomato paste never lasts that long in this household which may have to do with my italian ancestry! We can get it in resealable tubes (like toothpaste tubes) here. :o)

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I see our culinary styles are a bit different. I use cumin, ginger, coriander, and turmeric all the time, and in fact I regularly have to buy more ginger and grind more cumin seeds as I go through them. I only know green chili as the fresh peppers (I use Anaheim chilis, but that's because I'm a capsaicin wimp), and I don't recognize chili flakes, but I have ancho, California, and chipotle chili powders in my cupboard. Most of them seem pretty general purpose to me.

What sort of spices do you use all the time?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Garlic. A jar of fresh-crushed garlic from Trader Joe's is my cooking companion.

I also regularly wield various herb mixes: combinations of oregano, thyme, basil, sage, etc.

I do a lot of sauteeing and poaching with simmer sauces, so no additional spices are necessary.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Ah. I buy heads of garlic, break off cloves, and slice them up; I imagine the effect is comparable. Or if I want just a hint I use garlic powder. I have a number of herbs on my shelves—basil, marjoram, oregano, parsely, rosemay, sage, thyme, and garfunkel—but I don't seem to use them quite as often as the spices.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I hate dealing with garlic cloves. This stuff keeps fresh in the fridge - it's not dried.

B doesn't like spicy, so that is a limit on spices. I keep some cajun and grilling spice mixes for when I'm making something for myself. I rarely make chili, and when I do I use mix packets that come in single servings, so it's both pre-mixed and fresh

The first time I heard that song, I thought it was two herbs and two people - parsley, sage, Rosemary, and Tom.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Forgive me as someone from over the pond- Garfunkel is not a herb name I recognise (apart from as a well known singer's name :o). Do you happen to know if it has alternative names?

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

It was a little joke: One of Simon and Garfunkel's LPs had the title Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (it's the refrain of the traditional ballad "Scarborough Fair," which is a version of the fairy tale of the Three Tasks), so I was pretending that "parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, simon, and garfunkel" was a list of herbs. I thought "garfunkel" was funnier than "simon." I figured that kalimac and I are enough of an age so he would get the reference. . . .

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Ah gotcha ! Thanks.

There are often differences in naming fruits, veggies and herbs either side of the Atlantic

I'm of a similar age, I suspect, so put it down to being half asleep. :o)