Oatmeal oatmeal oatmeal

I've been eating amazing amounts of oatmeal lately. I think I had this one very early in the morning before running at top speed to catch the bus for my doctor's appointment.

I don't really do the fancy oatmeal that's been going around for the past few years. These are rolled oats cooked on the stovetop, with water to cover, a pinch of salt, and maybe a little butter. For those of you who may only be familiar with instant oatmeal, the stovetop version takes about five minutes. All you do is boil. That's it. Then your oatmeal is cooked and you can eat it.

While these oats were cooking, I broke up a handful of pecans and quickly toasted them in a little frying pan. Then I chopped up some dried apricots. Voila!

Have with black tea, as long as you're not also running swiftly out the door. Then the tea will be too hot and you'll end up leaving it on the counter, especially if you own no travel mugs. That's ok; oats work pretty well by themselves.

Not tacos: the vegan burrito bowl

For some reason, flour tortillas have totally vanished from all the local grocery stores this week, and I just did not want the very easily available corn tortillas. Boo! No tacos! No burritos! No quesadillas!

Instead, I cooked a cup of brown rice and a pan of refried beans, and then piled them in a bowl with half a chopped avocado, a handful of parsley (as there is currently no cilantro in the house either), and a dousing of hot sauce. Reasonable taco substitute achieved!

Chicken corn chowder of great excellence

So I finally got enough distance from the meat overload of several months ago to cook with our freezer chicken and its broth. Our refrigerator is actually pretty bare right now, since I cleaned it out and neglected to go shopping afterward. The freezer raid was therefore at least a marginal necessity.

Things we had:
- chicken
- corn
- potatoes (not in freezer)

It was clearly time for some serious chowder.

This is a standard soup, and so it is very easy and fairly fast. And what's cheaper than using the broth you coaxed from the carcass of a roasted chicken and froze months ago?

Chicken corn awesome chowder (or I guess soup as I didn't actually use milk or cream. FINE.)

olive oil/butter
onion
a hot pepper
potatoes
broth (veg Or chicken; what do you have?)
cooked chicken
corn
paprika, mustard powder (or dijon mustard), salt, pepper
garnish: cilantro/parsley, labneh/sour cream/other dairy/etc.

Do what you'd normally do for soup: chop up an onion and hot pepper of your choosing, and soften them in olive oil, butter, or a combination. I believe the pepper I used was of the long red cayenne persuasion, but most hot peppers should work fine. If you have access to some poblanos, by all means roast them, flake off their skins, chop them up, and add them; roasted poblano and chicken LOVE each other.

If you want to add things like garlic, carrots, or celery, go right ahead. It's all good. Let them soften while you scrub and dice some good boiling potatoes.

When things are soft and fragrant, add the potatoes, plus a good few shakes of paprika and a little mustard powder. Herbs in the marjoram/oregano family might be good here too. Toss everything together and cook for a few minutes more, stirring intermittently; this will give the potatoes a chance to absorb some of the excellent onion-pepper oil and to develop a bit of crust.

After about five minutes, add in several cups of broth, a couple handfuls of chopped cooked chicken, and another couple handfuls of frozen corn. I used chicken broth, since I had a big chunk of it in the freezer, but veg broth is also good here; see the big broth FAQ to produce some. I wouldn't use any stronger meat broths, such as beef or lamb, as those would totally overwhelm the finished soup. Other vegetable broths (mushroom, potato, corncob?) should be fine.

Anyway. Salt the soup, bring it to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer, covered, for at least ten or fifteen more minutes. Then take off the lid and check the soup texture; if it's too watery, boil off some liquid; if it's too thick, add some water or some extra broth.

When the soup is your preferred texture, add pepper, taste for seasoning, and serve.

I had my first bowl of this with a lot of chopped cilantro and some sriracha sauce, and it was excellent.

Later, I decided that I wanted a bowl that went along with a more stringent version of the "chowder" title, and contained dairy. I added a bit of milk, but the finished product was just not creamy enough for me. Hmm. Ok, what's in the fridge? Half a block of cream cheese. Great! So I chunked off a slice of cheese, dumped it in the pot of soup, and heated it just enough to melt.

The resulting chowder was so rich that it really needed all the chopped parsley in the house. I think I was full for the entire duration of the day. Oh man. It was awesome.

Don't go to the bagel shop.

You can just toast a couple pieces of bread, cover them with cream cheese, sprinkle on some red onion, green pepper, parsley, and black pepper, and cut up an apple on the side. You have all of those things in your refrigerator already. You don't need a bagel. It's all good.

Busy busy busy

You guys, I'm so exhausted. I'm just going to have to give you some pictures, ok?

The CA winter farmer's market is dramatically different than the NY version. I can seriously still buy peppers. I can buy them YEAR-ROUND. Wow. I can buy lots of clementines and various other citrus fruit, too, but winter is actually citrus season, so that at least makes sense. Also note the half gallon of apple cider. It's hard to find, as we are ostensibly not in a big apple-growing state, but it's there.

TACOS!! Can you believe that the filling used to be potato leek soup? Yes. One night I made a big batch of said soup, then discovered that neither John or I wanted to eat it. So I put the whole pot into the fridge overnight. The next day I stuck a big spoonful of cold thickened soup into a frying pan, boiled off the remaining liquid, added an egg, parsley, and some sriracha sauce, scrambled it all together, and put the finished business into tortillas, which I then ate. And that's why you should never throw away any decent food if you can help it. (The rest of the soup is now hiding in the freezer for future lazy dinner.)

Can't stand the thought of looking at the stove for even one more minute? Try GRAPEFRUIT. Easy! Fast! Also available at the winter farmer's market, at least if you live in a citrus-growing area! TRY IT TODAY!