Charmed Life
I often write in this space about how I’ve cooked something or other because I had something or other in the frig/pantry I needed to use up. Along those lines, I’m pleased to report that this weekend I made a terrific soup out of three cans of beans that had been in the pantry so long they were making me itch; a big can of diced tomatoes that needed to be used because it was taking up valuable real estate (and I had two identical ones already); a bunch of baby carrots that were starting to get soft; a half-bag of orzo; a quarter-link of sausage left from a sausage and bison chili; and, the last minute revelation, a box of powdered leek soup mix that my mother stuck in the cabinet one day while she was babysitting. (She’s fond of off-loading things she needs to use up onto me!) I made 5 quarts of soup in my usual Dutch oven and, alas, as of this writing, there is just one quart left (and even that is probably gone down the gullet of my one-year-old). Luckily, as of a Saturday afternoon impulse buy at Macy’s (it was on sale!), I now have an 8-quart soup pot. So now I can cook not just for one army, but every army in the world.
But that is not my main mission for this post. No, instead I am here to report that my husband, Web programmer extraordinaire Mike Subelsky, took it upon himself to “use up” something that had been lurking in our produce drawer for a few weeks: a big bag of radishes that he’d bought on a impulse buy (“they looked so good!”) at the farmer’s market. I think radishes look great, too, but aside from shaving them onto a salad or eating one or two for a snack, I never know what to do with them.
Now I never need to know because Mike has discovered he has a new hobby: making kimchee! He took that bag of radishes (and another bag he bought because “they looked so good” and because he hadn’t yet seen the first bag in the produce drawer—male pattern refrigerator blindness and all) and concocted three quarts of spicy kimchee, made with said radishes, green onions, garlic, ginger, red pepper flakes, fish sauce and some salt. He put one quart out on the counter to ferment in the air overnight and put the other two in the refrigerator. This morning, he tasted the kimchee and declared it “very spicy and very good.” I sense the start of an addiction!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/18/11 at 12:14 PM
