Instead of letting produce go to waste, make a big pot of vegetable soup.
Apparently I have developed a reputation for zero waste cooking. So when a friend dropped off a bag full of broccoli that needed to be eaten yesterday, what could I do? Clean it, trim it and make soup, I decided. My anchor ingredient had been provided.
My Process
I figured onions and garlic would be a good start, so I chopped some up and got them cooking in a large stockpot with some olive oil. I was considering adding some carrots for more flavor, but then I decided they would muddle the color and I didn’t want brown broccoli soup, so I skipped them. On the other hand, I had an abundance of potatoes and they could add some body to the soup without harming it aesthetically. So I peeled and cubed a few potatoes and put them into the pot with the broccoli and enough water to cover them. I would have used some stock if I had something handy, so a parmesan rind from my treasure chest of freezer flavor gems joined the party for more flavor.
I planned to puree the soup after the vegetables were tender and add a touch of cream at the end. While it cooked, I looked in my spice cabinet and mused what else might enhance the flavor. Something verdant, but what? Mint? Why not? I have a big container of it, so I poured a generous amount into my palm and put that into the soup along with some salt. Simmered until the vegetables were soft enough to puree in the food processor, which required ladling many batches into the work bowl. If I had an immersion blender, this would have been the time to use it!
Finishing Up
I had a little cream that I whisked into the pureed soup at the end. After cooling and refrigerating in containers, I will put some in the freezer for later. I may dress it up with fresh herbs when serving or melt some cheese into it. Maybe I’ll spoon some yogurt on top. What ideas might you come up with?
Once again, my objective is not to provide a precise recipe to follow. My hope is that you continue to develop your intuition in the kitchen and create something delicious with whatever you have on hand and practice zero waste cooking. Below are the ingredients I used.
Ingredients:
broccoli
potatoes
onions
garlic
parmesan rind
salt
mint
cream
water, vegetable stock or chicken stock
In the mood for broccoli now, but looking for something more filling? Try my suggestion for Broccoli Beef.
Try this meaty bean for delicious, plant based simple meals.
How do you feel about lima beans? Growing up, my only experience with them was from a frozen package of assorted vegetables. I didn’t care for them very much because they were hard. So I was shocked when I enjoyed eating them at a friend’s house. She began with the dried variety and served them as part of a delicious Mediterranean meal. I then decided I liked lima beans after all. “Be sure to cook them long enough,” was her only advice. Since then I have enjoyed using them in simple meals.
Don’t be intimidated by cooking something new. Beans are about the most budget friendly whole food you can buy and they couldn’t be simpler to prepare.
The size of limas alone make them something special as far as legumes are concerned. Think of them as “meaty” beans while enjoying the health benefits of a plant based meal. Soak them in water overnight and plan to cook them for about 2 hours. Make a big batch to serve for a few meals and freeze some for future simple meals.
Simmer and Then Bake
First I made some chicken/vegetable stock to cook the beans in. It’s fine to use something from a carton. Canned tomatoes joined the party too. Which dried herbs would you like to use from your spice cabinet? I decided on:
bay leaves
sage
rosemary
thyme
Simmer for a couple of hours. Pictured above, I put some of the beans into a casserole dish, topped with feta and panko crumbs and baked in the oven for the final half hour. I served them on top of braised kale and with a dollop of cilantro pesto. Something fresh is always refreshing on top of a slow cooked dish like this. Cilantro is what I had, but any number of herbs would have been delicious.
Lunch the following day consisted of lima bean soup and cabbage salad.
The baked lima beans made one more appearance on a green salad and I put the soup in the freezer. You will be so happy to find the foundation of a prepared meal there in the future.
I am not vegan, but I enjoy eating a wide variety of plants. I recently read that eating 30 different plants per week increases the variety of healthy bacteria in your gut, resulting in improved immune function. Nuts and legumes count. How many different plants are you eating per week?
Curiously experimenting with fresh produce leads to delicious results while cooking without a recipe.
Here’s a mystery green. Can anyone tell me what it is? I’m still not sure, but it doesn’t matter if you practice intuitive cooking without a recipe.
Left over from the farmers market, several bunches of these were gifted to me by a friend. Neither of us recognized it, but I thought I had seen something similar in the Chinese vegetables section before. After doing some internet research, I thought it might be water spinach, but when I cut the ends, the stems weren’t hollow as described online. Hmm…smelling them didn’t yield a clue, so I tasted a raw leaf. It suggested to me something between a radish sprout and watercress. They would have worked well in a salad, but I decided to cook them. Cooking without a recipe, what do you think they would pair well with?
I had defrosted some sea scallops along with some shrimp stock for dinner. Imagining these greens would complement them, I put a pot of water on to boil for some pasta while I chopped some tomato, onion and garlic.
Tips On Cooking Scallops
After blotting my scallops with a paper towel, I coated them in grapeseed oil and sprinkled with salt before placing them one by one into a hot skillet. Turn them over one by one with tongs after a minute or so and cook on the other side for another minute. They should release easily from the pan if you have seared them properly. Don’t overcook or they will get tough. Put finished scallops on a preheated plate while you prepare the sauce.
A Simple Sauce
Splashing a little of the shrimp stock into the skillet to deglaze the pan, I incorporated the brown goodness left from the scallops before proceeding. Then I added some butter because such a low-fat meal deserves it, don’t you think?
Follow up with the onions and garlic. Yes, you can cook them at the same time. Why do recipes often tell you to cook the onion first? Because the pieces are bigger than minced garlic and if you want to cook the onions long enough to get some color on them, you risk scorching the garlic if you add it too early. In this case, I wasn’t looking for the onions to become golden. I just wanted to give them a head start before adding the rest of the stock to the skillet to simmer with some chopped tomatoes. Greens went in at the end to wilt. A little more fresh tomato on top to serve.
What did I do with the rest of those greens? Sautéed them with mushrooms and served with salmon and mahi mahi the next evening. The sauce is Greek yogurt and mayonnaise flavored with garlic, ginger, wasabi and soy sauce. I love leafy greens. All kinds…even if I don’t know their names. Thank you, Mystery Green.
What are your favorite greens? Which ones haven’t you tried?
Break the routine and think poutine with fries and a couple basic ingredients for an easy dinner you can make tonight.
One afternoon when I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired about making dinner, I stumbled upon a picture of poutine (rhymes with routine) on social media. I have never tasted it, but it looked delicious: French fries topped with gravy and cheese curds, whatever those are. The only curds I am familiar with are cottage cheese, but I don’t think that’s what they use in Canada, the home of this dish.
In any case, I had found my inspiration for the question of what to make for dinner tonight…easy! I had some ground beef and some lamb/chicken stock that I had prepared previously. So, I decided to make what would be a hybrid of chili cheese fries and poutine. Just call it delicious.
I didn’t have a lot of fresh stuff in the house, but I had in the freezer: frozen french fries and green beans. I decided to plate the browned ground beef underneath the baked fries and serve the gravy on the side for dipping because I don’t like soggy fries.
In some olive oil, I sauteed some chopped garlic and then added the frozen green beans and chopped tomato.
Thickened up my stock by simmering with a little cornstarch. Melted some cheese on top of my oven baked french fries and called it a day. Comfort food with very little cooking involved.
You can make a satisfying, simple meal in under 30 minutes.
Pondering what to do with some leftover roasted chicken, I decided that I wanted to use some mushrooms and a red bell pepper. What could I make with those anchor ingredients? I decided on cacciatore, an Italian hunter’s stew. It’s one of my favorite simple meals.
I really like the flavor that can be developed by simmering this dish long and slow. But I didn’t have hours and I was using chicken that was already cooked. So what could I add to deepen the flavor? An organic chicken liver that I had in the freezer was just the thing. Don’t worry. No one will know if you don’t tell them. Why? Because once thawed, I put it in the food processor to puree it.
After cooking some chopped onions and garlic in some olive oil, I added the pureed chicken liver to the pot to boost the umami quotient. Then the rest of the ingredients one at a time: mushrooms, red bell pepper, canned tomatoes. Seasoned with rosemary and thyme. A little wine never hurts. Simmer until vegetables are tender and the flavors start to come together. Taste with a clean spoon and adjust seasoning. Add cooked chicken to heat through.
In under 30 minutes you can have a satisfying meal with everyone asking for seconds. You could serve this with all kinds of things from polenta to rice, but pasta is my favorite. What’s yours? Buon appetito!
Ingredients:
chicken pieces
chicken liver
olive oil
onion
garlic
mushrooms
red bell pepper
canned tomatoes
wine
rosemary
thyme
Ready for more simple meals using a roasted chicken? Try a Jambalaya.
A well-stocked pantry and freezer are essential to creating simple meals anytime.
Looking into my refrigerator, I realized I needed to use up some okra. I had some leftover cooked rice and roasted chicken and decided to make jambalaya. Is okra required for this? No, and even without it, I will generally always have the necessary ingredients on hand: onions, celery, bell pepper, rice; and chicken, shrimp, sausage…or a combination of all 3. Yup, shrimp and andouille usually live in my freezer and you will often find leftover roast chicken in my refrigerator or freezer and it’s fantastic for simple meals like this one.
No sooner had I uttered the word “jambalaya”, Michael insisted that it begin with a roux…I had envisioned a more Creole style jambalaya with tomatoes, but what can I say to this adorable guy who had his heart set on a roux base…See how much variety there is with food? I believe there is rarely, if ever, only one way to do something. The possibilities are endless.
If you’re starting with uncooked rice, add it to the pot once you have the other ingredients in there and enough water to cook the rice. Cover and simmer until done.
My Method
So, for the roux, I whisked together over high heat about a tablespoon of grapeseed oil and a tablespoon of flour until dark brown. This only takes a couple of minutes. For more on cooking a fast roux, please read Gumbo Ya Ya.
Chopped onions, bell pepper, celery and okra then go into the pot to keep the roux from burning. I poured a little beef stock in after cooking the vegetables for a few minutes. I had defrosted what I thought was chicken stock, but without labeling it, I wasn’t sure until heating it up. Doesn’t really matter. Flavorful liquid to get a sauce going is all you need to know. Again, if you’re cooking rice from scratch, you need more liquid. Meanwhile I was boiling the shrimp shells and used the resulting shrimp stock to finish the dish.
Sausage and garlic go into the pot next along with some spices. I chose:
paprika
French thyme
red chili flakes
smoked paprika
oregano
basil
I would normally put cayenne into this, but I was out of it, so substituted with the chili flakes. Black pepper and some hot sauce can round out the heat factor.
Once the vegetables are tender, I added the cooked rice and chicken to heat through. Shrimp and stock go in at the end because shrimp only need a couple minutes covered over low heat to cook. They’re done when they turn pink.
What About Leftovers?
Reinvent them for lunch the next day, of course. Eat all the shrimp the first day because you don’t want them to turn rubbery by reheating. To round out the remainder, I added some canned tomatoes and canned clams with their liquor. Heat just long enough to heat through. Served with corn, no one thought of this lunch as leftovers. It was just as delicious as if it was the original meal made from scratch.
Have you embraced your leftovers yet? They’re an awesome time saver. Think of them as a foundation upon which you can build with whatever you have on hand that appeals to you. Work smarter, not harder! Have some fun making simple meals everyone will enjoy.
Hint: Here’s how to eat more vegetables when you don’t like them.
When I started this blog, a couple of readers left comments about preparing beets. One suggested using them in burgers. Got a meat eater in the house who hesitates to eat vegetables? Here’s an idea for sneaking some in.
I most often cook beets for use in a salad, so although Ava suggested beginning with raw beets, I decided to try her idea with some leftover beets that were chilled after slicing and boiling. They appeared to be about equal to the amount of beef I would be using, which was one pound.
Here’s How to Eat More Vegetables When You Don’t Like Them!
After chopping the beets in the food processor, I added an equal amount of ground beef to the work bowl along with some spices. I chose the following seasonings:
garlic powder
mustard powder
sage
turmeric
dash of Worcestershire sauce
After pulsing a few times to incorporate ingredients, I mixed in by hand some gratedjack cheese; the amount appearing like two dice.
Tasting the Burgers
I decided to make a tester by cooking a tablespoon of the mixture in a skillet. It’s not a bad idea when you’re mixing up a big batch of raw meat, especially if it includes ingredients you’re not used to combining. That way, you can taste and adjust the seasonings if needed before you commit to cooking the entire amount as is.
In this case I was very happy with the result and so I formed some patties and sprinkled some salt on each side before cooking in a hot skillet with grapeseed oil. Ava was right: 3 minutes on each side worked for me too.
After letting the burgers rest on paper towels for a couple of minutes, we put them on French rolls. I enjoyed mine just like that, while Michael put barbecue sauce, onions and pickles on his.
The beets added a pleasant texture and extra juiciness compared to a regular burger, plus we got extra veggies and fiber in there. That means they were very filling, so we ate less than we might have otherwise, and we had burgers left over for lunch the next day. Reheated, they were great served alongside a salad.
Eating More Vegetables When You Don’t Like Them Just Got More Exotic
The next time I tried this idea, I used ground venison and mixed it with an equal part roasted beet. I decided to season it Middle Eastern “kofta” style with:
garlic powder
minced onion
turmeric
cumin
cardamom
cinnamon
ginger
mint
Salt the patties and cook in a skillet for 3 minutes on each side. Served garlic yogurt on the side along with roasted cauliflower with balsamic vinegar reduction.
These burgers are so juicy…you may never go back to your typical burger again! I’ll bet you can even make a believer out of a non-beet lover. What about non-squash lovers? Have you tried my macaroni and cheese yet? It’s more squash than cheese, but they will never know! It’s A Great Way to Squash Their Prejudice. You can learn how to eat more vegetables when you don’t like them.
This fun, cozy dinner may become one of your favorite simple meals.
Ready for a fun, cozy dinner that will have you lingering around the table with loved ones? Try Shabu Shabu, a Japanese hot pot of vegetables and beef cooked at the table. All you have to do is wash and chop the vegetables of your choice and prepare the savory dipping sauces. Once everyone sits down, they dip their own meat into the simmering pot to cook their own. It’s one of my favorite simple meals.
I like carrots in there too, but they missed the photo opp as I had already put them into the pot to give them a head start on cooking…oops!
I offer 1/4-1/3 pound of beef per person. It must be top quality and sliced paper thin. Pictured below is wagyu ribeye purchased from a Japanese market.
The only special equipment needed is a hot plate at the dining table. Plug it in and fill a big pot with some stock. Traditionally you would start with some dried kelp, but I prefer to use beef stock flavored with some garlic and ginger. The dipping sauces are very flavorful, but why not add even more flavor to the pot?
Shabu Shabu Sauces
You can buy the sauces premade, but I prefer to make my own. The sauce on the left is for dipping your cooked vegetables. It is equal parts soy sauce and ponzu (citrus vinegar). I used lemon juice once when I was out of ponzu. It was great too. I enjoy the tartness of that ratio, but Michael prefers to add a little more soy sauce to his. The sauce on the right is called goma and it’s flavored with sesame. Dip your cooked meat in this one.
Ingredients for Beef Dipping Sauce (Goma):
1/4 cup tahini (sesame seed paste)
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/8 cup mirin (sweet rice wine)
1/8 cup olive oil
1/8 cup beef broth
1 clove of minced garlic
This is what I measured according to my taste for 4 people. I put it into a small food processor and let it sit for an hour before dinner. Your palate may prefer the addition of some miso or a little more of this or that. Experiment and see what suits you.
Cooking and Eating
Add vegetables to the pot a little at a time. Each person takes what they like as it cooks. Diners dip their own raw meat into the boiling pot and cook to their own liking. No more taking orders of rare to well done. Everyone is in charge of their own! What’s not to love about this meal? I love it so much that I neglected to take pictures of the meat that had been cooked and dipped in sauce…but you get the idea, right?
The beauty of taking a little bit of food at a time rather than loading up a plate all at once is that it makes one more aware of their satiety. You tend to check in with yourself to see if you’re still hungry or if you’re getting full. It also slows down consumption, leading to a pleasant dining experience. That’s what simple meals are all about, don’t you agree? I like to save some room at the end for cooking some yam noodles in the remaining broth.
You can certainly cook these noodles along with the vegetables, but they tend to disappear if overcooked, so it’s my preference to add them at the end…if anyone still has room to eat them!
Smart grocery shopping means less trips and better meals.
Do you want to go grocery shopping less often while continuing to eat fresh, healthy meals every day? You can if you have a system. I typically shop once every 2-3 weeks and use what I bought in a strategic manner. Smart grocery shopping leads to easily cooking without recipes.
How?
Before I go shopping, I take inventory of what I have remaining in my refrigerator, freezer and pantry so that I don’t needlessly buy more of something I won’t use right away.
Here’s an example of how my refrigerator might look before I go shopping. I have condiments in the door and a few onions and a few limes in the bottom drawer. A few random vegetables and fruits with long shelf life remain, such as squash, apples and part of a cabbage. The only fresh proteins left are some hard cheeses and eggs, so for me, that means it’s about time to shop. But I could still use what I have there for some time if I wasn’t able to go out because the freezer is still fairly full of proteins, vegetables and fruit. My pantry is also well stocked with rice, pasta, beans, oatmeal, nuts and a few canned goods.
What Do I Buy At the Market?
Fresh produce and proteins mostly. I load up my cart with one of each fresh vegetable offered…well, almost. I think about how much of each vegetable we can reasonably eat within a given period of time. Lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes will be consumed during the first week. Bell peppers, celery and collard greens can wait a bit longer. Carrots, beets and sweet potatoes can wait even longer. Take note of how fresh the produce was when you bought it and be sure to use it within a reasonable amount of time. You shouldn’t have to throw anything away.
Here’s what my refrigerator looked like after shopping.
How To Organize the Fridge
First I removed and set aside whatever I had remaining from before. Then I restock new items in a way that makes sense in order to help myself use things in the proper order. Produce that doesn’t have to be used immediately can go on the bottom shelf. Things I want to use sooner go in front and center. Fresh proteins go on the top shelf where it’s coldest in my refrigerator and arranged in a way that tells me what to use first. Fresh fish always gets priority.
What About the Freezer?
Fresh bread goes into the freezer along with anything else that I don’t think we will use in the immediate future. So in the first picture I had some grapes that we hadn’t consumed prior to purchasing new groceries. I plucked them off their stems and put into a plastic bag for the freezer. They can go into a morning smoothie along with some fresh veggies and raw nuts for breakfast.
What’s For Lunch?
What does lunch look like? Below is an example of lunch right after grocery shopping. I bought some cute microgreens that I knew needed to be consumed very quickly. So I combined them in a salad with some other new, very perishable produce and a couple of items that were remaining from before I went shopping. I had a part of a can of black beans in the refrigerator and some pieces of cooked chicken in the freezer that I didn’t really have room for after I went shopping. So I heated the beans and chicken in a skillet with some chopped onion, cumin, oregano, paprika, smoked paprika. Then I made a salad dressing with crushed garlic, salt, mandarin orange juice, salsa and olive oil. After tossing the vegetables in the dressing, I topped with the seasoned chicken and beans.
What’s For Dinner?
What would be on the dinner menu immediately after grocery shopping? If I had bought fresh seafood, that would have been the first thing to think about. In this case, Michael had requested hot dogs on hamburger buns…so, we did diverge from my usual, most practical approach. A package of unopened hot dogs can sit in the refrigerator for some time or be frozen, so I don’t consider them top priority to be eaten. However, because he requested hamburger buns, I decided we might as well eat them because those are big fluffy things that take up way too much valuable real estate in my freezer, which is where the uneaten buns were headed. So I decided hot dogs were a reasonable request. That being said, sliced whole grain bread, French bread, flatbread and tortillas get priority in my freezer. Smart grocery shopping also requires smart storage.
An opened bag of frozen French fries balanced out his plate. I had some leftover roasted cauliflower dressed in pickling spice. To each his own…to be fair, I had already snacked on some potato chips before dinner. Yes, I snack too…
What do you think of my approach? I find it liberating not to plan a weekly menu and follow recipes. Buying lots of fresh items while stocking the freezer and pantry with essentials means I can create something new every day depending on what I combine. Start with smart grocery shopping and get cooking without recipes confidently.
For more on vegetables and my strategy, please read Keep It Fresh next.
I can help you sneak more veggies into your meals to get your family to enjoy eating more of them even if they don’t like them.
Wishing your family would eat more veggies? Here’s how to eat more vegetables when you don’t like them: Season them well and start subtly sneaking more of them into your daily meals. Small changes repeated over time can have a huge impact.
I talk a lot about hard squash because besides being nutritious, it lasts a long time in the refrigerator. Along with cabbage and root vegetables, it’s a superhero.
Let’s take one: butternut squash. What do you do with it? The simplest way to begin is to peel it, cut it up into bite sized pieces and roast it in the oven on a cookie sheet. You can season it up with some warming spices and serve it in a soup or as a side dish. One butternut squash offers a lot of flesh, so I can usually use it in a few meals if I desire. So often, I leave most of it plain when roasting (aside from salt and maybe some garlic powder) and sneak it into a main dish.
Brown Rice With Squash, Bacon and Onion
Here’s one example. We don’t eat bacon often and when we do, it’s generally a little at a time. Kept in the freezer, it’s easy to cut off an inch or two to put into a dish like this. I watched Ina Garten make risotto with butternut squash once and I enjoy that simple, comforting meal. We don’t always have arborio rice around the house, though, so I substitute it with a more nutrient dense and fiber rich brown rice. I always have that in my pantry. Below are the ingredients.
chopped bacon
onions
cooked brown rice
roasted butternut squash
French thyme
parmesan cheese
Brown the bacon in a pot and then add the onions and seasonings of your choice before adding rice and chicken stock or other liquid. Or if you have rice that has already been cooked, add it to the pot and heat through. Add cooked butternut squash and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.
Macaroni and Cheese: A Sneakier Idea
If you think your family will balk at the chunks of squash pictured above, then try another approach. Do they like macaroni and cheese? Guess what! If they are used to yellow cheddar, you can puree the squash and sneak it into your mac and cheese. No joke. It’s delicious.
While boiling half a box of macaroni, I started the sauce in a skillet. I didn’t even have any milk on hand, so after cooking some chopped onions in a little butter, I added some oat milk and thickened with a little flour. Seasoned with salt, cayenne and French thyme. Mixed in about 3 cups of pureed squash and then a couple ounces of grated cheddar. I put that into a greased casserole dish and topped with a couple ounces more of cheddar before baking.
Compared to the amount of squash, I really used very little cheese here. But it was delicious, and no one missed it. I might even think of pureeing some white beans to add to the mix for some fiber. Yes, that works great in cream sauces! (Just don’t tell anyone what’s in it until after they try it.) Experiment with the proportions and seasonings and let me know what you think.
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