Photo © Alex Carrillo
Don’t food shop for one week.
That was the premise behind Eating Down the Fridge, a seven-day culinary adventure spearheaded by Washington Post food blogger, Kim O’Donnel, from an idea inspired by eGullet co-founder, Steven Shaw.
Even though previous commitments during that early March week prevented me from following it to a tee, I still decided to embark on eating down my fridge–as well as my freezer and pantry–with a hearty commitment. It proved to be an odyssey of minimizing my household food waste while maximizing my understanding of my personal eating and cooking habits.
One of the questions I posed to myself when the week began was which foods would turn out to the tried and true, those that I relied upon the most. I also questioned whether one food would emerge from the pack as my most favorite. I wondered whether by week’s end I would discover the answer to that proverbial question, “If you could only bring one food with you to a deserted island, what would it be?”
I found that, again and again, I turned to my favorite condiments—lemon juice, cashew butter, coconut milk, sea salt, Syrian zahtar—to embellish dishes I was making from bits of this and bites of that. Yet, as the week progressed, I noticed that when I was looking for a foundation food from which I could create a dish—whether for breakfast, lunch, or dinner—I would instinctively turn to my go-to grain, quinoa. By the end of the week, it was this food that I declared to be my culinary coxswain, as it was quinoa that steered me through a week of delicious and nutritious meals.
What is quinoa?
Quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wha) is a grain that’s not a grain. It’s a grain in the sense that it is served like one, used in recipes similar to rice, wheat, or oats. Yet, from a botanical perspective, the quinoa plant is not related to these foods; rather it belongs to the goosefoot (Chenopodium) family and is cousins with spinach, beets, and Swiss chard. While the leaves of the plant can be enjoyed, it is the seed to which most people refer when they say “quinoa.” Read More…
