The Pig and I

Not a bad waste week for me this time. I lost: 1 cookie (can you believe it? That's twice now I've wasted cookies!)

P and I made a startling and sad discovery recently. We Americans are not the only ones who don't make very good yogurt. We were out doing the grocery shopping, and on the list was the weekly supply of yogurt. Typically we buy Fage , mostly the one with the honey. P doesn't see the point in buying a large tub of yogurt and adding his own honey, because as he likes to tell it, "they use the honey that goes with their yogurt, in the right ratio, and it's already done for you." I think any honey really would be just fine, but that's just me. I digress. This time, they didn't have the honey flavour (that was mostly disappointing for me), but they did have the cherry (which was not disappointing to P, but which I didn't care about) so we got some of that. Also, there was a slot for some Icelandic yogurts. I got the grapefruit flavour and P got the vanilla. He's the main yogurt eater in our house. I usually get half the number of yogurts for myself that ...

I've had a quince hanging out in my fridge while I figured out what to do with it. I already made my annual portion of quince paste, and really, with only one quince to work with there's no real point in making another (tiny) portion of paste. Ultimately, I ended up deciding that the quince would go well with chicken. Normally I'm not a fan of savoury foods that have a sweet component to them (being more of an acid lover, myself), but the quince isn't blindingly sweet so I thought it'd work out. Fortunately, it did. Hope you enjoy! 1 large bone-in chicken breast 1 quince, peeled, cored and cut into chunks 3 carrots, cut into chunks 1 small white onion, cut into chunks 1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes (do not drain the liquid) 2 cups celery, cut into chunks 1 cup diced broccoli stem (optional) 2 dried limes salt and pepper to taste water 2 teaspoons rubbed sage Remove fat, skin and bones from chicken breast. Put fat and skin in a skillet (skin should be fa...

My waste for this week wasn't too bad. Here's what I lost: 1/4 pound cooked farfalle

No waste this week! Thankfully, I balanced out the huge amount from last week!

I make hamantashen each year for Purim but this year I was just a week behind on pretty much everything, so I didn't get them made in time (okay, I made the dough, but I didn't get them baked until yesterday). Since I was making them late, I decided to use the dough to make thumb print cookies instead. I can't remember where I got the actual recipe from, though I believe it was from aish.com (and if anyone recognises this recipe, please let me know where it's from so I can amend this post with a real link to the original). Anyway, the dough is really sticky and soft so even when chilled, it's horribly difficult to roll out and get the corners to stick during baking (which turns them into weird flat things that I didn't want to show you). It occurred to me after the first batch that thumb prints would work better with this dough. And they did. Hope you enjoy! Dough: 1/2 cup butter/margarine 2/3 cup sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla (I use significantly more than tha...

This week was REALLY bad for me in terms of waste. This will teach me to put off eating things that I know will take 5 seconds to put in my belly. Somewhere in my head, I kept thinking, "I can just eat that tomorrow," except that tomorrow never came. Until, of course, tomorrow meant throwing it away. Hopefully next week I can balance it out w/ a no waste week. This week, I lost: 1/2 cup bean sprouts w/ lime juice on them 1/2 cup cherry oatmeal 1 large slice quiche 1 serving sweet and sour (I never intended to eat this because I HATE sweet and sour, but I did think P would)

Sometimes we get Vietnamese take-out, and I always get the chicken pho. I'm not sure when I moved away from the loveliness of beef tendon (though P kindly lets me eat some of his tendon when he gets beef pho), but for some reason it happened. Perhaps out of laziness regarding making my own chicken soup? Perhaps just for a lighter meal? I have no idea. What I do know, however, is that I am consistently given more bean sprouts than I could possibly fit in my soup bowl (even given that the pho is always two meals for me). This, however, is a good thing in my eyes. When it happens, I always save one of the many lime wedges they give me as well, and this makes for a wonderful salad later. When I crave it and haven't recently eaten Vietnamese I just buy bean sprouts and it works out just as well. I take this little salad all over with me (which is to say, I take it to school and to work. I don't go anywhere else), and all the people who've thought it seemed strange but tried ...