Irene Cuisine

Posted @ Aug. 28 2011 05:19PM by Jane Adams - food-dining

Earlier this week I became totally entrenched in the ominous predictions about hurricane Irene. Maybe it was the unexpected earthquake, relentless weather coverage, or my visit to a local establishment Thursday where the regulars were all doom and gloom and had me convinced that the power would be off for days, if not weeks.

In any event, by late Thursday night, I thought I had better beat the run on the grocery stores and had stocked up on dog food, toilet paper, bread, milk (and most importantly beer - namely a case of Stella Artois) as well as a week of groceries and I was ready for the impending seclusion inside my home. Saturday came with little rain, and I went to bed Saturday night and slept through the wind and rain and woke to a shocking revelation - we had power!

Now to my dilemma (yes, I am thankful to have such a dilemma, as opposed to what I might have on my plate if I had been in one of the other hurricane ravaged areas.) But what to do with the groceries and tons of garden vegetables that I had picked in an effort to save them from getting ruined?

Here’s what I did:
- Roasted the Habanero Peppers, (which I had too many of, but in March I thought would be cool to grow), along with some garlic cloves, in the oven, scraped the insides outs, and blitzed them in the food processor with cream cheese to make some rockin’ and killer hot bagel topping!

- Roasted the baby eggplant in the oven, scraped out the gooey insides, put it in the food processor with chick peas, sour cream, lots of lemon juice, a dash of sesame oil, cumin and A LOT of garlic to make a Hummus Baba Ganoush! YUM on brown bag lunch sandwiches! Much better than the store bought stuff too, which is $4 for a small container.

- Cut up all the small, miscellaneous semi-hot peppers, put them in the food processor till finely chopped, added salt and vinegar, and dash of sugar to make a killer homemade sub-like topping for sandwiches.

- Cut up the rest of the vegetables, put them in a pot, added brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, tumeric, black peppercorns, cinnamon, celery salt and a bunch of other stuff that makes an awesome "Chow Chow" which is basically a seasoned vinegary condiment, good on sandwiches or dumped on a block of cream cheese with raspberry jelly to make a savory dip for chips.

- Threw the pickle cucumbers into a brand new (and therefore clean and sterile although an extra wash didn't hurt) bucket I bought at Lowe’s, and added Kosher salt, Dill, garlic, a few grape leaves and pickling spice so that hopefully they will turn into the most awesome garlic Dill Pickles reiminscent of the Second Avenue Deli in New York. 

It’s Sunday night. The first day of school and the work week is looming tomorrow.   I am not looking forward to getting up so early tomorrow and shuffling my kid off to school.   A long day at work is ahead.  At least one comfort is, we will have interesting, and homemade condiments for our bag lunches this week!