Food Creativity

By: Stephanie on 3:18 PM

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It's no secret Johnny and I love baking and cooking. We try to find recipes that use ingredients that are widely available (after all, living in rural Oklahoma doesn't really put us in a position to find exotic foodstuffs like tofu or shiitake mushrooms) and can be used in multiple recipes (look for our new section "Indian Everything: I Need To Use This Garam Masala" soon!). Occasionally, we end up with extra something-or-other and have to find a way to use it before it goes bad. (I guess we could throw this food away, but I just imagine myself throwing dollar bills in the trash and silently weep over all the shoes I could have bought. I think Johnny weeps over all the Subaru Bajas he could buy or something.) 

Perfect example: buttermilk. A fairly innocuous ingredient, buttermilk is common in everything from mashed potatoes to muffins. Here's the problem: recipes usually call for a cup or two and buttermilk seems to be sold only in half-gallon increments. I mean, we could just plan of week of buttermilk-incorporating recipes, but I am not into gaining 23098 pounds because I needed to use this stuff and ate only fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits, onion rings, and ranch dressing. Solution: start putting buttermilk in places it's never been! Try buttermilk next time you make scrambled eggs- they'll be fluffier and taste exactly the same. Or use it instead of milk when you make macaroni & cheese. It's a little tangy and yields a slightly thicker consistency. 

Sometimes it's not the fault of inconvenient packaging that you have too much of an ingredient. This week, I'd found a recipe for some Indian-spiced chicken pitas. It calls for plain yogurt, and since we only have fancy fruity kinds on hand, we picked some up at Braum's last week. I forgot to delete yogurt from the shopping list, so during our weekly trip to Reasor's, another container of yogurt made its way to our fridge. Now we have two yogurts. What's a girl to do? Make macaroni & cheese of course (what can't mac & cheese do)! The packaged stuff (we like Annie's) calls for milk and butter, but it's easily replaced by a 6 oz container of plain yogurt. It tastes awesome and stays super creamy. Yummy.  

Other suggestions for ingredients taking up space:

• Sriracha: this is that bright-red Thai hot sauce you used once in a stir-fry recipe. Instead of letting it lurk in your pantry, use it in deviled eggs! Saves you from sprinkling all that paprika on top; that stuff just makes the eggs look diseased. 
• Rice vinegar: thought this was just for sweet-and-sour sauces or General Tso's chicken? Think again! It's a mild vinegar which you can use to make a vinaigrette. Just add lemon juice, olive oil, dijon mustard, salt, and pepper. 
• Spicy black bean sauce: how thoughtless are the guys at Cook's Illustrated? You have to buy a whole jar of this stuff just to use a tablespoon in that delicious beef stir-fry recipe! What are you going to do with the rest of it? Stick a tablespoon or two in your barbecue sauce or meat rub. It adds an exotic spicy flavor without being overpowering.
• Tapioca: tapioca: it's not just for pudding any more! Use this starch as a thickening agent in gravy and stew. Seriously. It's gluten-free and nearly protein-free, for those of you who care about such things.

What do you guys do with leftover stuff?