Laurie loaned me a book, An
Everlasting Meal. The author, Tamar
Adler, who cooks at La Panisse in Berkeley, cooks by using what was left from
recent meals and adding new ingredients. She doesn’t waste a thing, always
building on what is at hand.
I’ve cooked that way for
years and I did it again today. I made chicken noodle soup. The soup was based
on two baked chicken thighs, left from a couple of days ago. There was some
good juice, too, and that was the first thing into the pot. I added chopped
carrots, celery, and shallots along with two quarts of water and two teaspoons
of chicken base.. After these ingredients had cooked for a while Dennis chopped
the chicken meat and we added that with a generous pinch of thyme that I dried
last summer.
I have a great advantage in
this style of cooking because there’s a wealth of fresh ingredients waiting
outside to be harvested. Today, having started a love affair with dandelion
greens, I decided that the soup would be improved by the addition of some
greens–dandelions.
In the yard I found plenty
of young green leaves.
Before coming back inside I
stopped by the garden to cut a few sprigs of parsley for an additional green
kick to the soup.
Here at the beginning of
October many vegetables remain to be harvested. Roma tomatoes, for example, are
still producing. A few of them have blossom end rot, but the top parts are
still good. The peppers just won’t quit, either.
Dennis, eager to see how
the sweet potatoes look, dug a couple of hills today. It looks like a bumper crop.
Now, that’s an everlasting meal.
Copyright
2013 by Shirley Domer
