Cucumbers

My father in law regularly gives us leftover produce that he receives from relatives and other people when he visits his village. Because you can not let a guest leave empty handed, no matter the circumstances! So all you have is abundance of produce, that's a perfect gift for your guest. The thing is though, my father in law could never finish all that produce he gets. I mentioned the tomatoes he received the other day, that was around 10 kg and enough for around 6 L of tomato sauce. 

This time he was gifted a big amount of cucumbers. Which, to most people, is a bit more of a challenge than tomatoes, because after all- you're not just eating mounds of salad, are you? It's a challenge for me as well, but not in a negative way. Cucumbers have so much potention! It's been years already since discovering that cucumbers are not merely a salad food; you can prepare them in so many ways. Just because a cucumber is only known as a raw food, doesn't mean that's the only way to eat it. Most people might be unaware of this but you can boil and fry cucumbers; not to mention pickling and fermenting to extend their shelf life even more. There's so much to choose from. This is yet again an instance of having to think outside the box if you want to be resourceful. 

Today, I decided to simmer the majority of the cucumbers in a light broth. Boiling plainly without any seasonings is possible too, but that bit of seasonings make a big difference. I chopped the cucumbers in half circles, washed them, then combined them in a pot with some water and my seasonings: vegetable bullion cubes, ground parsley, ground onion, some red pepper flakes, a spoonful of tomato paste, and garlic paste. I let it simmer for about 20 minutes and let it cool down. 

There are still some more cucumbers left, which, after making more salad, I'll probably pickle. It's been very long since I had a properly pickled vegetable so that might be worth a try. 

Tunisian cucumbers look quite wonky 🙃

I had some of the cucumbers for dinner, with rice and seitan (it was leftovers night today...), and I really enjoyed it. I'll probably have some for lunch tomorrow, but with chickpeas instead of seitan. It does a taste a bit like cooked courgette/zucchini, although not exactly the same, but it comes close. 

Anyway, if any of my readers finds cucumbers at a good price... Make sure to at least try cooking it, especially if you like squash. 

Productive kitchen days

Some days are quite productive and on other days... Well, I'm glad if there's dinner on the table on those kind of days. Yesterday I had a quite productive day, and it always make me feel very good. It was especially a productive day in the kitchen. I don't really plan on having a "meal prep day" once every week/fortnight or something but that's essentially what it was, be it a bit spontaneously. 

I noticed that there were a lot of containers with leftovers in the fridge so I organized them in a way in which I could better see what was where (to avoid wasting foods). Some leftovers, we finished that same day- I had some combined leftovers for dinner: pasta with cooked cucumbers and lentils and tomato sauce. Most combined leftovers sound as a strange mix but I must say, it's meals like these that I enjoy the most! I also organized the freezer somewhat. 

And I decided to make seitan. To make seitan, you need quite a lot of flour, and since white flour is being sold finally again after more than a year of shortages, we all kind of forgot about seitan, even though we so enjoyed it when I made it regularly. It's a good meat replacement in my opinion, especially chicken fillet. And since meat has become so expensive lately, I thought it was the right time to make a nice large batch of seitan. It's not complicated to make, but it does take some time, and I wouldn't recommend making it if you need it that same day. So I left it in the fridge to prepare later, probably tomorrow. It will only increase in flavour and texture! Since it was a large batch, I'm probably going to freeze half of it. 

There was another pan of homemade tomato sauce yet again in the fridge (I probably haven't ever made that much tomato sauce in my life as I have recently) that I needed to organize. I froze about half, and the other half I'm planning on using it soon, so I stored in a smaller container to create more space in the fridge. 

Also in the fridge were the peels of a large watermelon, which I wanted to cut up to use the rinds. As I previously cooked up some rinds, I wanted to do something else with these rinds, so they got fermented. (Well, they're technically not fermented yet, but in the process of being fermented.) I have to credit my daughter for helping me with this - she knew I was planning on cutting the rinds so decided to do it for me. Now, I'm left with about half a cup of salty water, which I wouldn't dare to throw out, so it will be used the next time I'm cooking whatever dish that needs both salt and liquid. 

I cooked a large batch of lentils- Wanted to do this for a while ready, as my freezer supply was running out, but everytime I thought about it too late to put the lentils to soak. Ideally, I soak them around 5 hours (but 3 hours minimum), as their cooking time will be significantly less then. Just to compare: soaked lentils take up 5 minutes cooking to become tender, whereas this will take around 45 minutes for uncooked lentils. I'm yet to portion and freeze them, will be doing that today probably. 

Also made today's breakfast in advance. We all craved rghayf, so that's what I made. Rghayf (also known as baghrir) are north African style pancakes with a lot of holes/bubbles in them. They are quite spongy as the batter is yeast based, and brushed with olive oil after each one is done. I prefer to make them the night/day before as they take quite a long time to make, if you include rising time. 

With some leftover watermelon and a few other ingredients, I made a batch of gazpacho (cold soup). I also made a batch of buttermilk for my MIL and then late at night again another batch for ourselves. 

Doesn't seem like a lot perhaps, but of course there were those daily in-between things like cleaning up, serving breakfast/lunch, sweeping floors, doing dishes (I had three batches of dishes yesterday), cleaning the toilet. With all this cooking and prepping, was there any time left to make dinner? Well there probably was but I didn't, as there were so many leftovers. This is again why I love batch cooking, so I can simply heat up a meal on days that I'm busy doing other things. All in all I was pleased with yesterday's accomplishments. I know there are many days on which we can't get it pulled together, but I'm grateful for these better days.