02-28-13-stuff

 

Tonight’s dinner is brought to you by Clean Out The Refrigerator.

We’ve been having good luck paring down the freezer and refrigerator this week, but we’re now approaching the end – and that means the odds and ends of things. We still maintain the No Regrets rule. If we buy it, we eat it. It’s not about saving the earth or starving children in [fill-in-the-blank]. It’s about the fact that I’m just too damned cheap to throw away food.

It’s been going so well, that the cabinets were looking a bit sparse. This week I bought more black lentils, lentils du puy from Bob’s Red Mill, and some really excellent yellow grits from my friends down in Columbia, South Carolina. You’ve never had stone-ground grits as good as from Adluh Flour. They seriously are the real thing – and, to paraphrase Shakespeare, one man’s grits are another man’s polenta. Love ’em.

So tonight’s dinner was what we fondly refer to as stuff.

Victor asks “What’s for dinner?” My response is “Stuff.” Stuff is whatever. It’s something that doesn’t have a name – or if I gave it a name, it would be too unwieldy to use. Stuff works.

Tonight’s Stuff worked. It was a concoction of a chicken breast, a link of andouille sausage, a half-dozen brussels sprouts, a rapidly-wilting broccoli crown, a bell pepper, a few carrots, some celery, and some garlic.

I sauteed all of it in a bit of olive oil, and then added a cup of French lentils to the pot. Next went two cups of chicken broth, some French herbs, and a bit of salt and pepper. I covered it and let it simmer for 30 minutes.

The result was a mighty-tasty conglomeration of flavors that all worked really well together.

It’s one of those meals that will never be replicated exactly, but the concept will be there the next time there are things needing to be used up.

And around here, that’s fairly often.