These days I have been spending most of my time packing. The movers come Saturday, ready or not, and I would much rather be ready when that truck pulls up.
Our dining room has turned into the staging area for packing.
I can go at it for some time, but eventually I need a break. When that happens I find myself in the kitchen rooting through the fridge, freezer, and pantry to see what I can create.
I haven’t been to the market since before Father’s Day, and so far I haven’t had much trouble coming up with something to make with what I find hanging out in my kitchen.
The other day I made chopped chicken liver (my husband’s favorite snack on a cracker).
In looking through the freezer I discovered a small amount of chicken livers. With lots of onions sauteed in a little rendered chicken fat hiding out also in the freezer, and some hard boiled eggs, lots of kosher salt and pepper I made a pretty fantastic spur of the moment chopped liver.
Along with a big fat pickle what more can you ask for?
The truth is I really liked the ratio of more eggs and onion to less chicken livers. It was really yummy!
Next up was the Blueberry Pie you see in the photo above. While retrieving the chicken livers from the freezer I noticed 2 discs of pie dough in plastic wrap hidden under some other items.
Here’s the story…Last Thanksgiving I had seen a recipe for an apple and pear pie with a walnut crust that looked great. I immediately decided to make it as one of our Thanksgiving desserts, so without hesitation I made the dough.
While the rounds of dough were chilling I looked over the rest of the recipe a little more closely only to realize that it was pretty time consuming…precooking the apples and pears, refreezing the pastry filled dough before baking, and on and on…
While this might be fine at any other time, this was the day before Thanksgiving and with all that I had to do I decided to scratch that and freeze the dough for another day when I would have time to make that pie.
Well, that day never came, and honestly I forgot the pastry was still in there until I just discovered it. So I pulled it out and thought what do I have that I could fill it with….and there was a container of fresh blueberries, not enough for a whole pie.
However, I’ve had a huge bag of frozen wild blueberries in my freezer in the garage which I have been trying to work my way through so I combined the fresh berries with the frozen and tossed them with some cornstarch, sugar, lemon juice, and a little salt for a blueberry filling.
When it came to rolling out the pie crust I realized two things. First, I had used up all of my flour recently and didn’t replenish it since we are moving. And second, I had packed all 3 of my rolling pins!
I searched the pantry and came up with a small bag of rice flour which worked fine for dusting the buttery pastry to roll it out. And an unopened bottle of wine stood in for the rolling pin.
I cut the other disc of dough into strips for a lattice crust… kind of rustic, right? I was in a hurry!
and about 45 minutes later…
After a piece of pie and a glass of milk I was relaxed, full, and ready to continue packing!
The next day for my break I found myself making Barbeque out of some extra ground chuck left over from making burgers the night before.
I simply sauteed it with onions and peppers and added my special home made Sweet and Sour BBQ Sauce, and served it on a potato roll.
And tonight we dined on a vegetable soup I threw together with some chicken stock, roasted tomatoes, veggies, barley, and farfalle pasta.
After dinner I packed most of my cookware, leaving out just a few pieces so cooking the next couple of days should be even more challenging!