Help me with meal planning please!
I live with my father; we're both vegetarian. We're leaving for India in early April, and I've started thinking about winding down the house. I should have thought of it earlier! We have a lot of food, and I'm worried we won't finish before we go. The house will be empty for a month, and after that, though my dad is coming back, he doesn't cook an awful lot, so I don't want to assume he'll finish things (I'm not back until June). Right now, we have 1 lb of baby carrots, 2 lbs of strawberries, 12 oz of blueberries, 1 lb of spinach, nectarines, plums, MANY Serrano chillies, MANY small red potatoes, and a LOT of curry leaves. I have a hugely stressful job, so I generally only cook on weekends, usually (South) Indian food with some other stuff, like chili and pasta and stir fries, thrown in. Help me use up all my food please!
16 Comments
If you want an Indian take on it - if you have tamarind chutney on hand, thin it out with water, add some olive oil and adjust the seasonings (salt/cumin/amchur(mango powder)/red chili powder/chaat masala) if it becomes mellow and make it in a vinaigrette. You can also blitz it in a mini blender/food processor to make the dressing if its easier.
For the salad, mix together spinach, red onions, carrots, cucumbers, any color bell peppers and add/subtracts the veggies that you like. Dress the salad with the tamarind vinaigrette to your liking. For a nice crunch: fry or microwave some papadums and break into medium sized pieces to add on top of the salad.
Hope you like this and the spinach rice if you end up trying it!
Otherwise, to me you sound on track! I at least would easily eat that amount of raw fruit with another person in a week and the spinach, carrots, and potatoes could be dealt with in one weekend meal.
For the potatoes and carrots, curry leaves you can probably make a few batches of sabzi that he can then eat with Idlis/dosas or put into a pita pocket or wrap up in a tortilla to eat as an Indian sandwich. I do that for lunch sometimes.
1 lb Spinach - I would imagine you can finish that off before you leave for your trip - eat it in salad or make another sabzi. Or you can make indian spinach rice
- Cook basmati rice in your preferred method
- Puree the raw spinach leaves in a blender with a little bit of water into a bright green paste. It shouldn't be too dense but it shouldn't be too watery either
- Dice up carrots/peppers/corn/any other veggies you like
- In a large pan, temper cumin seeds+curry leaves+cut veggies+turmeric powder for a few mins, they should retain their bite
- Add in the spinach puree and cook it for a few minutes, some water will release which is okay, but try to cook only SOME of it off. You want the puree to retain its green colour.
- Add in the rice to the veggie puree mixture, Add Salt to taste + add in some red chili powder depending on how spicy you'd like it (I usually also like to diced jalapeno peppers). Garnish with cilantro and squeeze fresh lime at time of eating (this makes a huge difference!)
- You'll have a bright, green rice dish with veggies that's colourful and healthy!
Serrano chilies - you can grind into green chutneys and freeze which your dad can then defrost upon return. My mom does this when we have a surplus or she makes for me to keep in my NYC apt.
Curry leaves can be frozen as MMH suggested - I would wrap up in paper towels, then in ziplock bags to return its freshness. Again my mom does this as well.
I'm not good with fruit but others have provided some good recommendations...!
I think I'm starting to formulate a plan - maybe I make a huge batch of jeera aloo and then another batch of carrot, potato, and peas sazi, and the potatoes will be done. The rest of the carrots I'm just going to eat raw, I think. For the spinach, palak paneer! I also have half a block of frozen paneer that I keep forgetting about - it's at least three months old now. But I've never had spinach rice. I'll maybe give it a try. Thanks for the idea! :)
That said, none of the quantities listed are extravagently enormous. A pound of spinach is nothing.
That said, I suggest you consider the standard processes for excess produce: jams, jellies, preserves for those fruits. That's how those processes developed: too much stuff. Whether it is worth dealing with for these rather unnoteworthy quantities is up to you.
Cooked carrots and cooked potatoes will last in the freezer several months. Heck the berries can be frozen as well (fresh) and used in cooked dishes in the future.
This is a good time to reflect on your produce buying habits and consider changes in the future in the way you purchase fresh veggies and fruit because the total value of what you list isn't all that noteworthy and you are buying things are are completely out of season (at least for North America).
Best of luck.
As to the other advice about how to shop and live: you're obviously right that buying things in season is ideal. My father works in trucking and freight. Grocery stores are constantly turning away entire crates of the produce he delivers because they're not pretty enough. So everyone, from the drivers to the dockworkers to the office folk, gets their pick of what's left. I care deeply about food issues: food miles (in-season stuff is likely to have fewer miles), GMOs (there's nothing wrong with them!), fair trade practices, organics, monocultures, slash-and-burn agriculture, etc. But I'm not going to allow food to go to waste just because it's not in season. This food from my father's job is my way of helping limit food waste. Thank you for your help.
I also can't imagine cooking Indian food without chillies. Sometimes, with the conflicting prioirites in my life, some things win out that maybe wouldn't win out in other people's lives. And I'm sure it's the same for everyone else.