Can this food be saved?: refrigerator rescue!
photo by naathas
I went through the fridge today and finally dealt with a weird assortment of things that had been lying there neglected for some time, including:
- a 1L container of partly-cooked pumpkin (about 1 week old)
- about 2 cups of buttermilk (waaaaay past its best-by date–but buttermilk can stay good for weeks. Just make sure it hasn’t permanently separated)
- 1/2 cup of half and half (expiring today)
- 2 links of garlic farmer sausage (1.5 weeks old–I’d bought it fresh at the farmers’ market, so I wasn’t worried about it)
- rather limp-at-the-end green onion (1.5 weeks old)
- some beets, complete with starting-to-wilt greens (1.5 weeks old)
First I took the pumpkin (we had roasted it and used half for soup last week before running out of ambition–a whole pumpkin can be rather overfacing all at once!) and cooked it for about another 10 minutes in the microwave because it was still rather hard. Then I puréed it, getting about 3 cups worth. The purée, along with the buttermilk, was just what I needed for these fabulous and fibre-rich pumpkin chocolate chip muffins (I stuck the other two portions of pumpkin in the freezer for future use):
A most virtuous pumpkin chocolate chip muffin
Dry ingredients (combine in a large bowl)
- 1-1/4 cups whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup wheat bran
- 3/4 cup ground flaxseed
- 2Tb wheat germ
- 1Tb cinnamon
- 1Tb baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 cup chocolate chips (I used Cocoa Camino’s fair trade organic chocolate chips for the first time, which were delicious and completely worth the extra 80 cents)
Wet ingredients (combine in a medium bowl)
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 cup pumpkin purée
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup All Bran Buds cereal
Add the wet ingredients to the dry, stirring until just mixed. Bake at 400F for 20-25 minutes. Keep a close eye on them–I have found 400F to be a little hot for them in my oven and had good results at 375F today for 20 minutes only. You don’t want them to get dried out. My original recipe says that it makes 12, but I today got 12 large ones as well as a full pan of mini-muffins (based on 12, they are 210 calories each, with 6 grams of fat and 8 grams of fibre). I took the mini-muffins out at the 15-minute mark.
Afternoon snack out of the way, I used up the rest of the (shall we say mature?) ingredients in a hearty soup for supper. I combined two different recipes (here and here) to approximate a favourite restaurant dish of mine:
At-home Summa Borscht (because you can’t go to Taunte Maria’s every day)
- 3 cups of 1/2-inch cubed potatoes
- about 4 cups of water (if you had a ham stock or a bone to throw in, that would work well)
- 2 links farmer sausage, casings removed
- 1/2 cup green onion, chopped
- dill to taste (1/4 cup of fresh dill is best, but I used the last of the dried stuff from the garden because that was what I had on hand)
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 cup half-and-half
- 1 cup chopped beet greens
- salt to taste
Put the potatoes in a large saucepan with the water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the potatoes are tender. While they are cooking, cook the farmer sausage in a frying pan (break it up with a spoon, but keep it fairly chunky). When the potatoes are ready, stir in the sausage, the green onions, dill, beet greens, and buttermilk. Bring it back to a simmer (until the beet greens are tender–you don’t want them to turn to sludge). Season to taste–depending on the saltiness of the sausage, you may not need to add any salt at all. Stir in the half and half before serving with some lovely bread & butter (and don’t forget the dill pickles!).
Cleaning out the fridge=good food. Go see what you can rescue before it’s too late!
