There’s more food coming into the house right now than is going out. Time for some creative cooking!

Clearing freezer space is pretty important for the next few months. We don’t – intentionally – have a freezer in the basement. Having the one freezer attached to the refrigerator keeps me focused on what I have and what needs to be used. It’s bad enough that I can pack that sucker to within an inch of its life. I can’t even imagine the type of frozen-food-packrat I’d be with another freezer. It’s a frightening thought, indeed.

This is better. It makes me think. Two of my mom’s continual adages to me were look it up and figure it out. Looking things up has gotten infinitely easier with the advent of the world wide web. And even easier easier with a handheld device capable of searching the world in nanoseconds.  I don’t use my phone for phone calls. I use it to look up things just like mom told me to do. It sure beats the World Book Encyclopedia!

Figuring things out was something I needed to learn at a very young age. Rumor has it I was a pretty impatient little tyke. I remember my Aunt Katherine – she was my great uncle Tommy’s mother, born in Boonton, New Jersey in 1882 – telling me “when a string is in a knot, patience will untie it.”  To this day, when I start getting impatient about figuring something out, that’s my cue to stop, sit back, and look anew. Aunt Katherine was the impetus for a couple of firsts for me… Hers was the first funeral I went to in 1956, and going to her funeral was the first time I flew in an airplane – from Bakersfield to Sacramento on United Airlines. The things we remember…

But back to figuring things out…

I planned a clean-out-the-refrigerator dinner just to give me room for things to come. It’s time for a good cleaning and cleaning is always easier when there’s less stuff to move around. Victor is great at utilizing leftovers and such for lunches, snacks, and his mom’s dinners on the nights I work late, so after tonight, it’s looking properly barren.

I pulled a bag of shrimp out of the freezer and emptied the vegetable bin of a partial head of cauliflower, a large watermelon radish, green and yellow zucchinis, the fresh purple beans, onions, garlic, and artichoke hearts I had opened yesterday and then then changed my mind about using. And asiago cheese. And lots of fresh herbs from the garden. And white wine.

It really was a quick throw-together dinner – I cooked the veggies on top of the stove and when they were about 2/3 done, I stuck the pan under the broiler to give them some color. I added the shrimp, set it back in for a few minutes, and then stirred in the herbs and the cheese.

Perfection.

And while all that was going on, I made a loaf of bread.

The bread should have been more of a rounded loaf, but I got carried away doing a website and forgot about it outside in Mother Nature’s Proofing Box. It really rose huge. I slid it into the oven and it collapsed – but came back as a thin wide loaf. It is really excellent!

It’s a take on the Pistachio Bread I made a while ago.

So… Veggies cleared out, refrigerator cleaned, freezer getting emptied for fruits of the garden, fresh bread and another storm hitting right now. That means more green tomatoes down, tomorrow…

Maybe time for a Green Tomato Pie.