cellio | quarantine cooking

We're under a stay-at-home order (which, granted, isn't exactly the same as a quarantine), so much cooking is happening. I don't think any of my cooking is especially exciting, but since I enjoy seeing what others are doing and coworkers have asked for pictures of some of mine, I'll go ahead and share some. I'm also pretty happy with a soup I made tonight (recipe below).

Lunch for me is usually either a salad I make in the morning, a bagel (maybe with a hard-boiled egg), or yogurt with granola, all of which travel well. Since we're home I've been making quicker hot foods including grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup (out of a can), oatmeal, fried eggs, and french toast. There has also been salad.

Lunch one day was eggs scrambled with spinach that was reaching the end of its lifespan and the last of a hunk of cheddar cheese. Why yes, I do like crunchy bits in my eggs like you can see around the edge of the pan. We had scored some fresh bagels, two of which we'd had with lox the previous day and two more of which we had with the eggs.

Dinner one night last week was parmesan-crusted tilapia. The vegetable is actually cauliflower, not broccoli; the produce order form said "colorful cauliflower" and promised one of orange, purple, or green. (So it's secondary-color cauliflower.) I was hoping for one of the fun colors but got green.

Shabbat was pretty typical, not especially affected by the quarantine other than that the challah was frozen rolls, not a fresh loaf. The chicken with shwarma seasonings and roasted root vegetables were accompanied by the aforementioned challah, baked apples for dessert, and wine. (I took this picture right before candle-lighting.)

Tonight I made a hearty vegetable soup with more root veggies. (Can you tell I have a stockpile of root veggies?) We had it with the last of a loaf of hearty bread. I'll probably fire up the bread machine once more before Pesach, though we also still have some pita so we'll see.

I've been getting produce from Imperfect Foods, which delivers ugly produce (that stores won't sell) to my door. They've currently stopped taking new customers and have some shortages due to high demand -- not surprising. I had been getting a biweekly box and supplementing, as needed, at the grocery store, but I upped it to weekly for now. Also, I thought I was getting a couple romaine hearts and actually got two huge heads of romaine lettuce this week, so, um, more salad coming up. (We had a caesar salad with baked salmon for lunch today. I have several pounds of fish in my freezer.)

The soup, using a multi-cooker:

Dice two medium yellow onions and saute in the pot in olive oil. (Next time I would add an onion here.) After they start to wilt, add 4-5 cloves minced garlic (could be more) and four mini-peppers (I had three red and one orange), and also several shakes each of: dried red peppers, thyme, basil, and black pepper. (You could add salt here too.) Let all that saute for a while, stirring occasionally, while chopping the next round of stuff.
Slice three medium carrots and one parsnip, and dice one medium-to-large sweet potato and one large red beet. Add all that to the pot. Add one 28oz can of tomatoes, a quart of vegetable broth, and a splash of cider vinegar, and stir it all up.
Turn off the saute function and set up for pressure-cooking. Seal the pot and pressure-cook for 20 minutes on low. 20 minutes is long enough that you can then do the immediate release instead of waiting for natural release, which is what I did. If you're going to do natural release, I'd drop it down to 15 minutes.

Makes about 3 quarts. Freezes fine.

quarantine cooking

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