Lunch 02 - 12 May 2011

How to salvage left-overs

What do you do, when you end up with a lot of uneaten, untouched food. The one thing I learnt fairly early on is that the majority of the people on the retreat like what I refer to as baby food. Preferably totally overcooked to the point that most of it is so soft that it just about falls apart. And from being used to fast or convenience foods, I guess they mostly also prefer fairly oily food over steamed, boiled, or baked things. Generally, though, that is not how I would cook, and most certainly not how or what I would eat. It just seems somewhat pointless eating food which is cooked so long that most nutritional value has been eradicated. In addition, the softer the food the easier it may be to eat, and to a certain extend also to digest, however on the downside is that it is also digested very quickly, thus causing a fairly rapid, but equally short, rush of energy.

The longer it takes to digest the food, the more the entire system has to work, and the longer also the release of energy. Not just longer, but also much more equal, stable and sustained. That is apart from the fact that by mere virtue of the fact of having to firstly chew the food properly, you are giving the entire body a chance to prepare itself for the whole process, plus it is also an excellent meditational exercise, or mindfulness practise. Unfortunately due to the lives that most people have led they are so accustomed to just gulping down their food on the run, that not only have their bodies largely adapted to that, but they are also conditioned to have to have a quick fix meal more often, generally referred to as snacking. Commonly they have obviously also developed various digestive ailments, including but not limited to one or more of the likes of constipation, diarrhoea, irritable bowl syndrome, ulcers, heartburn, indigestion, bloating, cramping, lethargy, malnutrition, and others, like weight gain (actually accumulation of fat), and also the wrong type of fat, since the body does need a certain amount of fat for a variety of purposes. For now we shall only mention diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol.

Thus, when I have cooked a dish which the majority do not ‘like’, then I am stuck with the remains. I am sure I have mentioned the entire group consciousness concept before as well, where if one or two people express a dislike or dissatisfaction, the majority of the group will follow suit. I am not sure whether this happens consciously or intentionally, but I doubt it. More than likely it is part of the herd mentality, of not wanting to stand out, and also on a subconsciously level allowing them self to be influenced by the herd or majority. So if the first few people taking food express reservations, the majority of the rest will follow that example. The result is a dish full of properly cooked and fine tasting, but largely untouched, food.

Since I have an aversion of sorts to throw away any food, unless I absolutely really have to, I will always endeavour to somehow reuse the leftovers, which in winter is fairly easy. It all just goes into the soup or a stew the next or following day. But with it now being spring, or early summer, it becomes a bit more difficult. Not only are the people not so keen on soup any more, but we also do not have cold storage facilities, and while in winter I can just store it outside, or somewhere else similarly suitable, this is no longer possible. Thus I now have to be more inventive, in order to use up leftovers. On Wednesday I had made a Pyrex dish of butterbeans and haricot beans, with diced carrots, baked in orange juice with a little sunflower oil, and dusted with some cloves and cinnamon, and with salt added to taste. It subsequently emerged that is was not that popular, which may have been due to the oranges not being very tasty, in fact they were quite bland, or because there were too many other tasty things, and thus about half the dish was left over. A fair amount of food left over which largely is an excellent source of protein, already cooked, but not used – what to do?

I decided to firstly puree it, and add a few other things, like millet, polenta, caraway seeds, sunflower oil, tinned peas, and some spices to taste. Initially I had no idea where this was going, but it seemed like a good idea. Strange? I agree, but I have found with most of my cooking that I have little forethought as to what I am going to make, and I kind of busk it as I go along. Invariably inspiration and ideas come to me, at times quite odd or unusual ones I will admit, but ultimately obviously workable ones, as after more than six months everybody is still very much alive, and in fact looking quite healthy. Thus it suddenly struck me to try to either bake them into little rolls or balls/dumplings, or alternately to deep fry them. Now deep frying it not exactly one of my favourite forms of cooking food, but most people seem to love it, so I guess the occasional use of this method should not cause too much harm. But, as I discovered, it is a cooking method which also requires some knowledge and skill. Because my first bake attempts just sagged, heated up, and unless removed fairly quickly started to turn to flat charcoal. With the deep frying they just fell apart in the boiling oil. Now what?

That is when I realised I needed a ‘glue’ to keep the ingredients all together, and I suddenly had an image of chilli-bites I had once bought at the Oriental Plaza. From what I could recall they were a bit like little bread rolls, definitely consisting of very bread-like dough, thus indicating the need for whole-wheat flour. The only problem was that I was starting to run out of time, and everything has to be ready by 12h00 since they only have an hour in which to eat lunch. If I should be late with the food I would most certainly not make myself very popular, apart from that I endeavour to never inconvenience anybody else due to my own short-comings. So now a rather hasty process of adding flour, kneading, then taking a sample for each for baking and deep frying proceeded. And gradually I managed to concoct a mix which resulted in both quite well baking and deep-frying. That meant that I now had something to work with, and while getting the rest of the meal together I in-between rolled little dough balls, some of which went onto a baking sheet, and others into the boiling oil. As things worked out I managed to finish everything in time, though I obviously still did not know how well received it would be. Not only these little mixed dough balls, but also the rest of the meal, which now obviously did not get as much attention as it normally would have. The verdict is usually only in after the meal, which is broadly based on how much food is left over, how much is in the composting rubbish bin, and on occasion what comments the retreatants pass.  

After that particular meal there was nothing left over, nothing in the composting rubbish bin, and in addition much ravings and numerous compliments. It looks like I shall have to focus on, and experiment a bit more with, various forms of deep frying, as well as baking dough creations similar to dumplings, curry balls and chilli bites. Perhaps it is now time to start looking at actual recipes, to get some idea or guidance of what I should actually be doing, rather than just busking it.

!O-3|-W;-