dribs and drabs, bits and bobs
Dinner, but from whatever random crap you've got.
My corona #lifehack has been cooking tiny amounts of everything. I now cook half a block of tofu, and freeze the other half. We don’t own a microwave (we should, but seriously, where the hell would it go?) which is a real reflection of how we have structured our entire life up to this point, so leftovers are a thing of the past.
We chose our current apartment based on a very complex set of criteria, centering around how long it took me to get to work, how long it took Noah to get to work, how long it took me to get back from night school, how close it was to grocery stores, whether the building had a history of 311 complaints, and the size of the kitchen.
Nowhere in our calculations was “is there room for two desks?” or “can I live in just this apartment for months on end, never leaving, without wanting to scream?”
The answer to the first question is a fairly emphatic no, although that did not stop me from attempting to find a murphy desk, and a chair that won’t take up all of our floor space. The answer to the second is: not really, but I am just now realizing that there is nowhere I can be for months on end without feeling miserable, so I can’t really blame that on the apartment.
Prioritizing how long it took us to get to our friends, or my work, or how close we were to the subway, or the specialty foods store where I buy fresh spices and bulk nuts, well, none of that really matters anymore. So we have our apartment, which has become our entire world.
I want to touch dirt. I want to grow something. But planting wasn’t a focus either when we moved here, and the grocery store nearby has the best fresh herbs I’ve ever seen in a store, but unfortunately you have to wait an hour to get in, and that’s not even the longest grocery line in the neighborhood.
So I visit my friends in Animal Crossing, and I look at screens until I feel my eyes start to shrivel in my head, because nothing else helps me feel connected to anyone other than Noah and our cat, and they’re both great, but I’ve spent years trying to teach myself to be a good friend, and how to maintain and sustain human connections, and now it’s all vanishing.
quarentine cooking:
I’m so tired all the time now. I never sleep, and I never wake up, at least that’s how it feels (my therapist has suggested that this is a major depressive episode which like, yeah, checks out.)
Recently I made for dinner some twice stuffed potatoes, because we had four russet potatoes, and a half a bunch of kale, and some lactose free sour cream, and this seemed like the obvious solution. Everything that I cook these days comes about this way. “Oh, we have some… slightly soft potatoes? We have an… amount of kale?” We have to use it, because if I waste even a single vegetable these days I regret it by the end of the week, when all I have left is whatever is shelf-stable.
Ingredients:
4 russet potatoes (medium? idk what size is a potato?)
Greens (I used kale, you don’t have to, but spinach would probably suck. Broccoli, blanched and finely chopped would probably be good.)
Sour cream (if you have it, idk maybe yogurt would work? Or extra butter?)
Cheese (I use aged white cheddar, because that’s my favorite All Purpose Cheese, and a bit of aged jack, because we had it)
Bacon, 3 pieces, diced and then peeled apart (totally optional, but I found it good)
Scallions (I used four)
Garlic (2 cloves, or chase your bliss)
Turn oven to 425. Wash your potatoes, pick the eyes off with your nails, but don’t peel the potatoes. Dry them, prick them with a fork, stick them into the oven. Set a timer for 50 minutes so you don’t forget about them in the oven. (Mine cooked for 60 minutes.)
Dice and peel your bacon, if you’re using it. Put it into a cold pan, cook on low heat until crispy. Drain. If you don’t peel the pieces apart before frying they will meld into super-lardons, which is not ideal.
(This is the amount of kale I used, it was the right amount, I think, but whatever amount you use is also right, if you like it.)
Wash and cut kale. Sautee with some olive oil, add salt and pepper. Cook until it’s tender enough for you. Transfer to cutting board, chop finely.
In the same sautee pan, add more olive oil, cook scallions and garlic over low heat until tender. Add more pepper. I also added two tablespoons of butter, because it was on the table, so why not. Turn off the heat, add the chopped kale, combine well.
Grate your assorted cheeses. My timer went off. I don’t think the potatoes were done. I put them in for ten more minutes. Have I mentioned before how one of my culinary white whales is cooking potatoes all the way through? I always undercook potatoes, so my mashed potatoes always have little hard lumps in them. This time I looked up what temperature potatoes are done at (210) and when the timer went off at 60 minutes they were just above 210, and they felt soft. They were done.
Once the potatoes are done, cut in half with a serrated knife. Scoop out the potato innards.
Mix potato innards with cheese (leave some for the top), sour cream, and butter until you like the texture and flavor. Then add the kale and bacon. Mix it. Scoop BACK into the potatoes, put some cheese on top, and bake again, I think I did that for 17-20 minutes.
They were also totally palatable for lunch the next day, I put some foil over the top, put them back on the (dirty) sheet pan, and put them in the oven at 350 until I was tired of waiting. They weren’t HOT, or even warm, but they weren’t cold, and that was good enough, because cold potatoes are garbage.
A second corona cooking recipe, going with the bits and bobs theme, this one, much more pathetic than the previous:
Half a box of orzo
1 cup chicken broth
2 strips of bacon
several handfuls of frozen cut green beans
3/4 cup (maybe) grated parmersean
rosemary/thyme (garlic would be good probably but we’re super out)
When we were thinking about dinner recently we were like “pasta, obvs” and then realize that we only had tiny and huge pasta, no normal sized pasta, because, you know, why would we have rotini? We had giant shells and orzo. This may happen to you, and if it does, this is a fine thing to make for dinner! It wasn’t great, but it was satisfying, and it even contained a vegetable, which makes it a real win.
Anyway, we struggled through the conceptualizing, and made uhhh “risotto.” Here’s how we did it, in case you have similar stuff around, and don’t know what to make for dinner.
Cut up bacon into small bits, cook.
Parboil orzo in salty water, cook for 4 minutes.
In the pasta pan, bring chicken stock and whatever aromatics you have up to a simmer. Add the pasta back in. Add the cut beans. Cook, stirring, until the liquid is absorbed. Stir in the bacon, as well as the bacon fat. Add grated parm, until it is cheesy enough for you. Grind in pepper (lots, this will give it a vaguely carbonara-y vibe)
Eat, adding more cheese, and be satisfied that you have made and consumed dinner, which is a big fucking deal these days.
Anyway, can you tell that the week I wrote this we only really had bacon in the house?