Meals on PAUSE

It’s been a bit weird cooking the last few weeks. Digging deep into the pantry and freezer to use all those things you felt were worth keeping on hand. Turns out I’d done a decent job of stocking stuff that we use a lot.

Last week I roasted a turkey bought on sale at Thanksgiving. Did my typical Julia Child treatment of dismemberment with a touch of Cook’s Illustrated overnight fridge desiccation (doesn’t that sound lovely). However it helps to both season the meat and dry the outside so you get wonderfully crisp skin. Since it’s not Thanksgiving and I didn’t want traditional flavoring to get in the way, I mainly seasoned with marjoram. Then the fun began, because there is nothing so flexible as leftover turkey.

We had turkey, mashed potato, corn frozen from the garden, and the best gravy I’ve ever made. Then it morphed into pot pie, nachos with black beans and shredded cabbage, turkey snacks with cheddar and crudités, General Tso with lots of rice, and I still managed to freeze some for future use. Unfortunately I’m also now out of celery, rice, and potatoes.

I’m starting to run low on some basics but have a long way to go before we’re eating Ramen noodles with no add-ins. A treat today was homemade strawberry ice cream with double chocolate cookies to make ice cream sandwiches (and there goes the rest of my heavy cream). That’s also the last of the frozen strawberries and who knows if I’ll get to go picking this year. I sure hope restrictions don’t last through June.

My freezer is nearly a foot lower than normal and I’m starting to really regret passing on that quarter cow last year. On the plus side I’ve got plenty of room for baking: english muffins, sourdough boules, bagels, cookie dough, etc.

For those reading this who aren’t in NY state, PAUSE is what our governor has called our Stay At Home order. Whatever it’s called we’re doing our part to stop the spread. Hope you are as well. And I hope you’re managing to eat well while doing it.