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rebeccmeisterI had several kinds of cheese in the fridge that needed to be used up, so I cooked up a bunch of pasta shells and made two trays of stuffed shells Saturday night. I did put a bit of kale in there, mostly for garnish, so between that and the marinara, it's healthy, right?
...don't answer that.
I also had a somewhat random assortment of vegetables in the fridge, so for today I decided to make a Thai curry. While I was at the grocery co-op I discovered they have some type of curry paste that comes in cans that is 1/3 the cost of that Thai Kitchen stuff in the tiny glass jars, so I figured, why not give it a try? So far the yellow curry seems all right, although given the volumes I always seem to want to make whenever I'm cooking curry, I should probably just generally plan on getting two tins of each kind. I'm also going to keep an eye out for the Mae Ploy curry paste the next time I'm at a conventional grocery store.
I figured out that pancakes are a good way to work my way through the current stockpile of poppy seeds. There are still some poppy seeds, but the stockpile is now greatly diminished. Once it's used up I am hoping we can just obtain a modest replacement amount from the bulk section at the co-op. As I type that I'm remembering the story of when my friend K sent my friend J to the grocery store to buy bulk cumin. J came back with the entire bulk container jar of cumin seeds. They did eventually use up all of the cumin, but for a while there they were more than happy to give cumin seeds to anyone who would use them.
Speaking of bulk foods - a couple weeks ago I noticed that the co-op sells brown rice syrup in bulk. I couldn't quite remember why that was of interest to me, but I got some. I'm now thinking it had to do with a previous attempt to make some Fruit and Nut bars, which wound up coming out too sticky.
This time I resolved to try my hand at a granola bar recipe. What I really appreciate about this recipe is its outline of the basic principles involved. That meant I could just play around with the ingredients instead of trying to stick exactly to the recipe on the first try, which would have required waiting to get some crispy rice cereal.
As I was making it, the thought did occur to me, "Wow, this feels very much like making granola!" I put in dried sour cherries, hazelnuts, coconut shreds, and sunflower seeds, omitted the crispy rice cereal, and I did add the peanut butter as well. Unfortunately I got slightly too greedy with the ingredients, so things fragmented into granola during the slicing.
But then I came to realize a distinction between these granola bars and the granola that I make: I typically add some oil to my sweetener. But I now see that for handling the granola bars, any fats are just applied to the exterior of the bars as a nonstick agent.
Given that making granola bars isn't all that different from making granola, I will probably try again sometime soon. I'm glad to have an idea for a snack food that I can gnaw on that isn't super sweet when I get hangry in the late afternoon.
...don't answer that.
I also had a somewhat random assortment of vegetables in the fridge, so for today I decided to make a Thai curry. While I was at the grocery co-op I discovered they have some type of curry paste that comes in cans that is 1/3 the cost of that Thai Kitchen stuff in the tiny glass jars, so I figured, why not give it a try? So far the yellow curry seems all right, although given the volumes I always seem to want to make whenever I'm cooking curry, I should probably just generally plan on getting two tins of each kind. I'm also going to keep an eye out for the Mae Ploy curry paste the next time I'm at a conventional grocery store.
I figured out that pancakes are a good way to work my way through the current stockpile of poppy seeds. There are still some poppy seeds, but the stockpile is now greatly diminished. Once it's used up I am hoping we can just obtain a modest replacement amount from the bulk section at the co-op. As I type that I'm remembering the story of when my friend K sent my friend J to the grocery store to buy bulk cumin. J came back with the entire bulk container jar of cumin seeds. They did eventually use up all of the cumin, but for a while there they were more than happy to give cumin seeds to anyone who would use them.
Speaking of bulk foods - a couple weeks ago I noticed that the co-op sells brown rice syrup in bulk. I couldn't quite remember why that was of interest to me, but I got some. I'm now thinking it had to do with a previous attempt to make some Fruit and Nut bars, which wound up coming out too sticky.
This time I resolved to try my hand at a granola bar recipe. What I really appreciate about this recipe is its outline of the basic principles involved. That meant I could just play around with the ingredients instead of trying to stick exactly to the recipe on the first try, which would have required waiting to get some crispy rice cereal.
As I was making it, the thought did occur to me, "Wow, this feels very much like making granola!" I put in dried sour cherries, hazelnuts, coconut shreds, and sunflower seeds, omitted the crispy rice cereal, and I did add the peanut butter as well. Unfortunately I got slightly too greedy with the ingredients, so things fragmented into granola during the slicing.
But then I came to realize a distinction between these granola bars and the granola that I make: I typically add some oil to my sweetener. But I now see that for handling the granola bars, any fats are just applied to the exterior of the bars as a nonstick agent.
Given that making granola bars isn't all that different from making granola, I will probably try again sometime soon. I'm glad to have an idea for a snack food that I can gnaw on that isn't super sweet when I get hangry in the late afternoon.
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Date: 2022-12-05 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-05 02:26 pm (UTC)