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| In my house, these are leftovers |
Back to the regular routine means back to the usual round of chores, errands, and meal planning; unfortunately one of the effects of grief that I discovered four years ago is its dull but demanding presence in daily life. I finally defined it to myself and others like trying to do everything while wearing a 60-pound backpack: I could still do everything I needed to do, but with a lot less energy and enthusiasm than usual.
I hadn’t thought about that analogy in a while, but I’ve thought about it a lot over the past two weeks. It’s one of the things that hits you when the ceremonial part is over.
One of the things it dampens my enthusiasm for is food: I don’t have as much appetite, or incentive to cook. So it helps to find ways to inspire some creativity. One of my meal planning habits is to include a MacGyver meal in the weekly schedule - this is usually Thursday night, to use up whatever’s in the fridge before the Saturday farmers’ market run. During quarantine I’ve also revived Wild Card Wednesday, which sometimes is already booked with a new dish I want to try, and other times...not so much.
Last week - not so much. When DP and Miss B asked what was for dinner Wednesday night (which normally happens no later than lunchtime), I said, “I don’t know” - not a response they hear often, and which they both find slightly unnerving - as do I, to be honest. We are nothing if not a routine-oriented household.
There was plenty of food in the fridge, including the leftovers of a roast chicken, potato, and veg dinner I’d made earlier in the week - usually a good springboard to concoct something new. So when I sat down to eat lunch, I took Love Your Leftovers with me to page through for ideas.
Jackpot! Not only did that prompt me to remember that I could turn the leftover potatoes into gnocchi for that night’s dinner; a later section also included ideas for using up leftover beer - which I interpreted to include the three bottles of beer that have been taking up space in my fridge since a beer-loving friend stayed here last summer. The next night, I cracked one of them open, and used it in two different recipes selected for the purpose. The first was a chicken fricassee featuring leftover roast chicken and sauteed green beans, and the second was a soda bread to soak up all the fricassee sauce. It made a tasty and frugal dinner, but the best part for me was that it gave me something to feel enthusiastic about beforehand, and satisfaction afterwards - for being a creative and thrifty cook as much as for the food itself. My mother would have approved, although I doubt she ever had leftover beer in her fridge.
Chicken fricassee
I did not follow the written recipe at all - just took the idea and adapted it to what I had on hand. Here’s what I did:
Heated some fat on a medium flame in a large cast-iron skillet - about 2 tablespoons of olive oil, butter, bacon fat, or some combination thereof
Chopped half a red onion and threw in to saute
Chopped about a cup of baby bella mushrooms and ditto, along with some salt, pepper, and garlic
Let this saute on a moderate heat for about 7-10 minutes, until the mushrooms were looking cooked, while I cleaned about 1lb/450g of cooked chicken off the carcass and chopped about 2 cups of cooked green beans into bite-sized pieces, then set aside
Deglazed the pan with half a bottle of beer (IPA I think) and let it bubble for 2-3 minutes
Added some combination of sour cream, stock, and lemon juice and stirred together; adjusted amounts and seasonings until I had a thick, bubbling tasty sauce
Threw in the chopped chicken and green beans and stirred them into the mix to heat through for about 5 minutes
Served in bowls with hunks of warm soda bread alongside
This served 3, with a lunch portion left over.