Hooo boy. I went to the supermarket today, in the midafternoon to avoid people, and everyone was masked, and I ended up with a basket including tinned tomatoes, pasta, loo roll and eggs, plus a powerful sense of nostalgia. They were all on my list, btw - I am having a pre-Christmas bout of basic catering frugality, having already overdone the raisins for the year and it's a good time to buy heavy stuff as there's not much else in my basket. But wow, for the stockpiling memories. Though tbf, the shelves were pretty full, so it's not that nostalgic. And now there's tinsel.
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| Most festive pandemic phase ever. Since the last one. |
Man, I'm making a lot of soup at the moment. Partly frugality, partly comfort, partly lack of inspiration. Even the stuff that isn't technically soup feels soupy. I'm also cooking ahead a lot, even though my evening plans are clearing out marvellously (woe woe woe) and I definitely do have time to cook onions now. I'm also feeling extremely post-booster, though recovering, so simple food is much on my mind.
I mean yay booster:
But also, could sleep until Tuesday.
There was pumpkin soup with cardamom (and also cumin, lots of seeds in this), pumpkin roasted before being added to spiced softened onion, and with coconut milk added. It was nice enough. Balance a bit off - I reduced most of the quantities but you can't really reduce a can of coconut, so it was a bit on the slippery side for texture.
Tonight, I'm on the pineapple and potato kari from Simply, which I think I've made here before. It's what you would expect anyway: softened spiced onions (fennel, mustard, cumin, cinnamon, turmeric this time), add a tin of tomatoes (last one in my cupboard, hence actual purchasing aforementioned), add the same volume of water, add small potatoes (in chunks unless they are minuscule) cook for 30-35 minutes. Then add some pineapple. Ideally, chargrill slices of a real pineapple. Less ideally, chunks of fresh pineapple un-grilled. Still less ideally, because your fresh pineapple is visibly fermenting when you get to it despite being just in date, just open a tin.
Ideally, get a tin with a ringpull. Or a functioning tin opener.
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| Suboptimal |
Reader, I wrangled the slices out. And then the sodding lid gave up at its various still-attached points, just after I'd extracted the last. Grrrrr.
Tomorrow and various subsequent lunches will be from A-Z of pasta - mushroom and potato broth with anelli, or rather with broken bits of pasta tbc. Tonight while the kari was cooking I was soaking porcini, sweating off ANOTHER BASTARD CHOPPED ONION, dicing potato and mushroom-
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| Viz |
Turns out I'm much better at finely dicing potato than mushroom. But I'm sure it will work out okay once the mushrooms collapse.
Add the potato and mushroom to the onion once it's soft, and cook till the mushroom starts to collapse. Add chopped porcini, their soaking water with the grit filtered out, simmer for 15 minutes or so and-
-wait till tomorrow. I'll add pasta, probably some more water, and cook till the pasta is done. It looks quite large already, so I may be cautious with the extra pasta. We'll see.
How are we doing? I'm okayish, but I feel very much like I'm going through the motions of being okay while having basically switched off from life. Because *shrug*. We've been here before, and I am not enjoying the hamster wheel feeling at all. Unconfined Walks help. So do cocktails. So does work, frankly. I'm a little trepiditious about having a chunk of time off, given the not-inconsiderable possibility I'll have to do it not only alone but in isolation. Does Weezy deliver on Christmas day, does anyone know? Bleurgh.
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