Ground provisions

What's for dinner is always the question of the day (I really need to make a weekly menu). I cooked enough chicken over the snow days to last a lifetime so chicken was certainly not option.  I was thinking vegetarian but did not have a lot of things on hand - no quinoa, no lentils, and not a lot of fresh veggies.  I conducted a scavenger hunt and found kale, yams, beets, thyme, white potato, red potato, garlic, kidney beans, coconut milk, pigeon peas, and Tilda rice. What a combination; I was clueless about what to make.

I remembered someone I know from the Caribbean talking about ground provisions - root vegetables. Root vegetables often get bad carbohydrate press because they are essentially storage crops; however in addition to the starch and sugar, they're packed with fiber, sometimes protein, and are full of nutritional benefits. That's when I remembered that I had a pack of salt fish in the freezer. So I was set.  A couple of problems, how to combine the ingredients into a delicious meal...and sweet potatoes are not technically the appropriate yam for Caribbean food, but I had no other option.


Yesterday, my mom came over to make energy soup.  For some reason she was acting like she had never made soup in her life.  This is ludicrous because every time I turn around she's making chicken soup. I think she was intimidated because it was all vegetables, but she desperately wanted to make it to take to church for Bible study. We probably should have made extra soup, but we didn't and were quite hungry so I suggested we go to Lemon Grass for lunch.  She enjoyed her Pad Thai and commented that this was different than both Chinese and Filipino food.  Although I still had no plan, I picked up onions and scallions on the way back home - I don't think there's anything I cook without them.  


Feeling as if I have ran salt fish and pumpkin in the ground, I decided to make patties instead - I'm certain that this is not an innovation - there is some culture somewhere in the Caribbean that makes patties all the time.  I steamed the potatoes and boiled the salt fish (it had been soaking all day).  I have never been satisfied with my attempts at making rice and peas, actually I'm not a fan of rice of peas but sometimes they can be tasty, so I asked my mailman for pointers; he said I had all the right ingredients but maybe needed to get creative with the seasoning. I changed my technique by sauteeing everything prior to adding the liquids, peas, and rice and added a bit of jerk (allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc), the results - delicious even though I forgot to add the pigeon peas.  

The beets were roasting while we we at lunch...I peeled and diced them and mixed them in with the kale.  Our dinner was a palatable array of colors, textures, and tastes.


The answer to tonight's question - breakfast - omelets and pancakes.