Hello and welcome back! I’m glad you’re visiting The Stone Soup Cook today!
This week, in keeping with a Lenten theme of living simply, I am focusing on using up my “found food,” or food that I have on hand that I either prepared for use and froze or canned, or food I already have on hand.
I went walking with a friend this morning and I admitted to having an “inner squirrel.” She looked puzzled until I explained that my inner squirrel “squirrels” away food in the summer and fall at the height of fresh yumminess in the form of sauces, chutneys or the like, intending to use it up in the winter, and then forgets that I have it, until the following winter rolls around. A VERY bad habit. I’m happy to say that it’s happening less often than it used to now that I have a new refrigerator that is smaller, where I can see everything. Also gone, are the pandemic days of yore of storing food in the auxiliary freezer, which was nothing less than an event horizon that every couple of years gave way to the black hole of the landfill. Limiting the amount I can create and store is a resolution I intend to keep!
Today, I am featuring “found” spaghetti using ingredients I found in the freezer and pantry. I usually use ground beef and Italian sausage to make my spaghetti and meatballs. What I had in the freezer was ground beef, a half a pound of ground pork and about 3 oz of pancetta:
I had an onion, some garlic and the tomatoes I canned with my friend Em back at the beginning of September. I found a package of spaghetti in my pantry and just like that, I had “found” spaghetti!
I looked in my crisper drawer and found four fennel bulbs–sigh. Fortunately, they were mostly still viable and, better yet, sumo citrus are in season, so I put together this fennel and sumo salad and dressed it with my basic vinaigrette:
And, yum!
Tomorrow, I’ll be featuring minestrone soup, using broth I’ll make with the chicken I roasted earlier in the week and pesto from my freezer.
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
