Toot! Toot!

Last night I realized that I had to deal with the overwhelming amount of food filling up my fridge, all of which required preparation.

So, I looked through a cookbook to get some inspiration, marked a few interesting pages, wrote a list of what I'd like to make today, and somehow woke up at 6:30am, which was obviously a sign that I should get to it.

Actually, I started last night. I cut up the watermelon taking up most of the top shelf and whittled it down to two containers. I also made strawberry rhubarb sauce, for Grandma. It's her favorite, and she asks about it every year. We went out for dinner last night, and stopped by the store where I work to pick up some breadsticks and cookies for her to snack on at home. While we were there, I saw some beautiful strawberries and offered to make the sauce for her; my rhubarb has been flourishing in the garden this year.

The experimental dish last night was a deconstructed vegetarian stuffed cabbage casserole. I found a recipe for meat and rice cabbage casserole in the 1952 American Jewish Cookbook I'd found a basis for the strawberry rhubarb sauce recipe. Grandma gave me that cookbook at least 15 years ago, maybe 20. Its pages are yellowed and there are unsettling amounts of jello molds recommended; I treasure it.

I had 3/4 of a small cabbage in the fridge. I lined the bottom of a round casserole dish with cabbage leaves. In a bowl, I combined cooked lentils, raw brown rice, currants, cumin, tomato powder (you could use tomato paste), chopped onion and parsley and white pepper. The lentil mixture topped the cabbage leaves, then I put shredded cabbage over that, and spread tomato sauce over it all. I then poured water into the dish until it was nearly level with the top, and squeezed 1.5 lemons over it. I baked it until the water was mostly absorbed, put it in the fridge overnight (since I had to go to bed), poured a little tamari sauce over it in the morning, and baked it for another hour or so.

Let's just say...it's amazing.

This morning, I also inspected a HUGE bag of kale from my CSA, pulling off a goodly number of caterpillars in various stages of eating and cocooning, and pureeing it with cashew cheez, nutritional yeast, ground flax seeds, cumin, and probably a few other goodies, spread it onto wax paper and  dehydrated it for kale crackers.

I had to make room in the dehydrator, so I put the lemon balm, peppermint and oregano I'd dried there earlier in the week into separate jars for tea and seasoning.

The chai has been simmering on the stove all morning an is filling the house with spicy goodness.

I napped and read while the casserole (and some cubed tofu) were baking. Now to figure out what I'm going to do with the stinging nettle, lambs quarters, garlic scapes, two heads of lettuce and bunch of radishes will become.

Whatever it will be, it will be delicious...or compost!