Cone Flower Closeup

Yesterday, I talked the culinary talk, but today I walked into the kitchen. After I put away yesterday’s Instacart delivery, I realized that we still had some of the last batch of panko chicken left over, along with some garlic bread and a lonely looking zucchini that needed to be eaten first. I tried to make zucchini chips, but that didn’t really workout. Now, with space available in the refrigerator again, I set about reducing the popup vegetable stand that landed on our kitchen counter.

One annoying thing about Instacart is that it is way too easy to fat finger the quantity of an item and order more than you wanted. It is almost as if this is by design? I’ve done this often enough that I am extra wary now of this feature and review my order before submitting it. Still, I ended up with four pounds of tomatoes, instead of the desired two. A double batch of gazpacho made quick work of most of them though.

I haven’t tackled the maque choux yet that I mentioned, because I found another recipe that I wanted to try first. It appeared on the NYT website, as spicy pork kabobs. Maque choux is French for makeup cabbage, which is interesting in that the only thing that is even close to cabbage in the recipe is a little bit of celery.

There is another shift in the Instacart service. When I first began using it back in March, they were so swamped that I could only scheduled a delivery, days in advance. Now it is the complete opposite. I had scheduled my delivery for mid-afternoon, so there should have been time for me to add the few items that I would need for this new dish, but I discovered that someone was already doing the shopping and they ended up dropping off my groceries at the very beginning of the delivery window. Technically, I could have asked the shopper to still add these extra items, but I figure that their job is hard enough, without the likes of me messing with them. So, I was missing a couple of items, but I decided to wing it anyway. Some old habits are hard to break. For the recipe’s fish sauce, I substituted Worcestershire sauce. For the pork I’ll use beef, which I have tons of and need to use. I made the called for marinade and I’ll broil the kabobs tonight.

Tomorrow I’ll tackle the maque choux. I also have ingredients for another batch of pesto, but that can be frozen. With all this cooking and the subsequent eating, it is amazing that I haven’t put on a quarantine fifteen. The walking must help.