When you choose to purchase and eat your fruit and vegetables seasonally, you will often find there are often days, weeks, even months of an abundance of more than one of them. One season, every friend and neighbour of ours received a pumpkin as a gift, from our little backyard patch and we still had stacks spare. Eating one thing cooked the same way can give you flavour fatigue, it’s a thing, I’m sure. I think it also possibly extends to texture fatigue. Who wants pumpkin soup every day for a month?! Not when you can roast it, put chunks into curries, thinly slice and grill it, change the cuisine profile and be use a knife and fork once in a while… Variety is after all, the spice of life – spices both savoury and sweet compliment pumpkin tremendously by the way.
Excess and abundance is often when creativity is born. How many ways can you skin a carrot? Carrot skin chips are quite delicious too, a little olive oil and salt, on a single layer, in at 80-100° degrees for about 60 minutes – great for roasts or an alternative to croutons! I’m distracted now… Let’s think about a week of cooking for the family, housemates, yourself or your partner.
Maybe you blanched a whole stack of snow peas and asparagus to go along with your salmon steaks; it’d be easy to quickly put some on ice to keep them crispy and vibrant. Did you buy whole celery? Leaves and tips straight into a soup base. Tougher bottom section can be slowly braised and the gorgeous middle bits can become snacking sticks. You purchased seven eggplants but the recipe you’re making only requires four… oh the dilemma! Why not roast all of them together and put some aside for this delicious dip?
All of these items are already in your fridge. Ready and waiting for that unexpected visitor who didn’t have lunch but can’t stay for dinner. Less than 2 minutes later you’re serving up a roasted eggplant dip with three different green veggies sticks for scooping and dipping. A few veggies never spoiled anyone’s dinner or diet. But they certainly allowed you the freedom to sit down, have a chat, share a snack whilst keeping it healthy and utilising what may have been a sad bunch of limp, fridge drawer, veggies that required a swift free throw into the bin at the end of the week.
No visitors, no problem, dip for dinner – done!