Today was not a day of many Spoons. Those of you with limited spoons know what I’m talking about. So here was my quick food prep for today. It sounds like a lot, but it honestly did not require much energy, with the exception of the dinner sauteing, which almost did me in.
- I sauteed green cabbage with some pre-chopped onions for tonight’s dinner and I put the extra into the freezer for another day. Green cabbage has a Nutrivore score of 2034 if you’re a Ballantyne fan (!!) and an Andi score of 434, if you’re a Fuhrman fan.
- I had the foresight to soak a 4-year-old package of small red beans last night so that I could cook them in the Instant Pot today. It took 30 minutes on high pressure with natural release to get them to a delicious, creamy state. You’d never know they were four years past the best-by date. I got them off Freecycle about a year ago from a lady who must have hoarded beans around the time COVID first hit. Once she realized that there wasn’t about to be a bean shortage, she offered them to me. I think I got about ten packages of expired dried COVID-beans from her, and I’m still working my way through them.
- I prepped some beets. Wrapped them in a wet paper towel and put them in the microwave in a glass bowl. I cooked them on high for four minutes and then let them cool. The skins rub right off. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them yet, but I’ll leave them in the fridge for a few days to see if I can come up with something. Beets have a Nutrivore score of around 2000, so they’ll be good for something!
- Made dinner of cabbage, pre-prepped potatoes, pre-prepped cut onions, and yeah, I put a veggie dog sliced in there for myself and a hot dog for my kid. Sauteed it in the pan. It wasn’t the healthiest meal, but it did have some nutrient dense foods. Kiddo and I both liked it. It would appear one of the kittens liked it, because she was in the cast-iron skillet, licking it with gusto and scraping out pieces of potato. She’s currently eating the tinsel out of the Christmas tree, so I guess she doesn’t really have much of a discerning palate
- Made the crockpot dinner for tomorrow, and it took less than five minutes to assemble, thanks to the stuff I had ready to go. I used a jar of marinara sauce mixed with some chili powder, some of the small red beans I’d made this morning in the Instant Pot, some pre-chopped bell peppers I had in the freezer, and some frozen corn. I put some pre-cooked all beef meatballs to chop up and add to the chili for Kiddo, tomorrow, and I got myself two Gardein “meat”balls.
In related news, if you chop lots of onions on a good day, you can freeze them raw for use in sauteing later when you no longer feel like chopping onions. Onions are good for you and add flavor to any vegetable dishes. I just freeze them loose-packed in glass mason jars because if I freeze them in plastic, the whole freezer smells like onions, and everything tastes like onions, too.
I know that there are stores with already-chopped-for-you frozen onions, but my local Walmart never seems to have them. Sigh…
Skunk and Mouse Cottage 