It's been one of those weeks at casa Petersen. Major, major work project (mine) due last Friday. Multiple crises at work (Mr. P's) requiring long hours. Overlapping full course load at college, part-time-job-that-is-suddenly-full-time, and seasonal push to create and open a scary haunted house in two weeks (son of the Household). All of these combining to add intense pressure to the most frightening words any cook can hear....
"I'm starving! What's for dinner?"
It's easy, under these circumstances, to just say "Let's call out for pizza or Chinese." To run through the drive-through at McD's on the way home. Open a can of Campbell's soup, or nuke a frozen dinner. If all you need to do is refuel, that's okay, and I won't say you can't or shouldn't. We even do that on occasion.
For me, though, eating is about more than refueling. There have been so many good discussions in the past months concerning the nutritional problems with restaurant and fast food, with highly-processed food products (And don't you wonder why it's called a "food product?" Like it's made from food but really isn't food anymore?), that I won't go back over why I feel compelled to cook meals for my guys instead of doing the fast food thing even when I am stressed and exhausted.
On the other hand, the cupboard is pretty bare because I haven't been grocery shopping in a couple of weeks! Rummage through the fridge and the pantry and see what's there...
Hmm.... eggs. We always have eggs. Cheese. Assorted veggies -- if there is a dearth of fresh veggies, I can always come up with a can of corn or pinto beans from the pantry. Bingo, we have omelets!
I feel a trifle silly posting a recipe for an omelet, because it's simple to make and there are so many variations for fillings. (If anyone needs detailed directions, holler and I'll put them in the comments.) I would like to make one recommendation: get a really good nonstick sauté pan. If you can spare the $$$$, I'd seriously recommend that you look at ScanPan, Danish-made professional quality cookware with a titanium-ceramic nonstick coating. It's worth it. You can scramble eggs or make an omelet with absolutely no added fat. You can use metal utensils without fear of scratching the coating. The coating won't burn off at high temperatures and poison your pet birds. The only thing you can't do, in fact, is spray it with Pam cooking spray. Pam is the only thing that will damage the titanium coating. (Which leads me to wonder... what is it doing to my innards if I cook with it? But that's a subject for another day.)
So what else can we do with eggs and cheese and assorted veggies? If you have tortillas or pita or other flat bread and a little more time to come up with dinner, you could make a torte for something a bit different. Here's a Southwestern-flavored version that I really like:
Green Chile Torte
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 10-inch flour tortillas
2 cups shredded cheese
2 small cans green chiles
1 can pinto beans or refritos
- Preheat oven to 350°. Mix eggs, milk, and pepper in a measuring cup or bowl.
- Lightly grease a baking dish and place one tortilla on the bottom of the dish.
- Mix together the chile, beans, and 1½ cups cheese; spread 1/3 of the mixture over the tortilla.
- Repeat the layering process with the two remaining tortillas and chile-bean-cheese mixture.
- Pour egg mixture over tortillas. Top with the remaining ½ cup of cheese.
- Bake at 350° for 45 minutes. Remove from oven; let stand for 5 minutes. Cut into wedges and serve.
With a little imagination, you could gussy up this basic recipe in a number of ways: different vegetables, put some ham or crumbled bacon in there, try some different kinds of cheese. I just thought of this and obviously haven't tried it yet, but if I didn't have any tortillas or pita, I might cook up some linguine or capellini and layer the pasta between the vegetable layers instead of using flat bread. Ricotta cheese instead of cheddar or Monterey Jack? Tomato sauce and ground beef instead of chiles and beans? Ecce! Instant Sorta Lasagna!
What do you keep in your pantry? Let's put together a basic list of Things to Keep On Hand so that you can always pull together a meal at the last minute, even when you can't run by the grocery on the way home from work. Here's a partial list from me:
Pantry
* Pasta: You got pasta, you got dinner. I keep orzo, penne, and capellini. I also always have a stock of Manischewitz Fine Egg Noodles, because they cook in 4 minutes and make great chicken noodle soup. (Footnote: my grocery's been out of them for several weeks. Is there a High Holidays reason that they aren't being stocked right now?)
* Rice: Brown rice, wild rice, and a shame-faced box of Uncle Ben's Long Grain and Wild Rice hiding at the back of the shelf.
* Beans: Bags of dried beans are always on lists of pantry staples. I have a bunch of different types. I always forget to soak them the night before so they don't get cooked very often at my house -- but you could always use them to fill a throw pillow. Or as bookends.
* Canned vegetables: Diced tomatoes, green beans, corn, pinto beans, chickpeas, quartered artichoke hearts are always on the shelf. I usually have another kind of canned bean (black, navy, kidney) but the variety changes according to what's on sale and what I've eaten lately. Green chiles usually.
* Tuna: With tuna and pasta and a cheese sauce, you can have Classic Tuna Goop in 20 minutes, a surefire hit with kids.
Fridge
* Milk: If you don't normally drink enough milk to keep it on hand, look for Organic Valley brand powdered milk at a health food store. Keep a package of that to mix when you need milk for cooking.
* Cheese: I should live in Wisconsin for all the cheese I keep. Cheddar, both mild and extra sharp; sometimes I have smoked cheddar as well. Monterey Jack. Mozzarella. Provolone. Ricotta and cottage cheese. Goat cheese for spreading on crackers. Blue and feta cheeses for cooking. And for the guys.... (shudder)... Kraft American Cheez Food slices in the plastic wrappers. There's probably 10 pounds of cheese in my fridge tonight.
*Eggs: I'm really lucky that we have a source for local eggs from true free-range chickens. I keep a couple dozen, which I use mostly in cooking. We generally eat eggs-as-eggs only at Sunday morning breakfast. Or when I make omelets, of course.
* Assorted Fresh Veggies: Carrots. Bell peppers. Squash, both yellow crookneck and zucchini. Whatever happens to be in season at the time -- eggplant, spinach or other greens, radishes, beets, you name it. Potatoes -- I keep the little red ones and often have something like Yukon Gold or something unusual from the farmer's market.
* Lemons: I buy lemons five pounds at a time. I use a lot of lemon juice in my cooking. And if they get old and start to go wonky on me, I juice them all and freeze the juice in ice cube trays.
* Meat: Living with and cooking for two confirmed carnivores, I always have something meatish in the fridge. It might be a chuck roast, or a whole chicken, or a pound of good ground beef. I don't stock a lot of fresh meat, though; I've adopted the European habit of buying ingredients for tonight's dinner today to ensure freshness. (This is why I was stuck with omelets tonight. No grocery run lately!)
Staples
Under this category, I lump all the accessory stuff like olive oil, vinegar, and dried spices. I keep a large bottle of good extra-virgin olive oil, a small bottle of really good extra-virgin olive oil for salads, a couple of different kinds of vinegar, a couple of kinds of soy sauce, pepper sauces, Worcestershire, and I don't know what all is on the shelf without going to inventory. Basically, anything that can add some flavor but you only need a little of goes into this category.
With a reasonably stocked pantry and a little imagination, you can pull an amazing variety of culinary miracles out of your hat at a moment's notice.