Bok Choy & Green Beans

On my last dumpstering voyage, I noticed a lone package of bok choy in a bag of produce. I'd eaten bok choy a few times, but had never cooked it before, so I got excited to try. It looked pretty sad when I dumpstered it, so I knew I had to cook it in the next 24 hours if I was going to get any use out of it.

Bok choy is a pretty versatile product mostly used in Asian cuisine - you can boil it, steam it, stir fry it, or even deep fry it. I had also dumpstered 5 bags of green beans on the same trip (read: more than humanly possible to eat without choosing to eat them often), so I decided to make a stir fry out of both and kill two birds with one stone. I normally cook green beans a totally different way and am unaccustomed to stir frying, so it seemed like a good choice to learn with.

BOK CHOY & GREEN BEANS

Ingredients:

- 2.5 heads bok choy, washed and separated (I started with 3 heads, but had to sacrifice the brown stalks and wilted leaves)
- 1 bag of green beans (approx. 5 handfuls)
- 2 cloves garlic
- Equivalent size of 2 cloves ginger
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1/4 cup water or rice wine vinegar
- 4 tbsp sesame oil
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- Sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds
- Salt, ginger powder, & garlic powder to taste (powders can also be substituted for fresh ingredients if you don't have them on hand)

So, you can really break the dish down into making just bok choy, just green beans, or mixing the two. It doesn't matter if you start with the bok choy or the green beans.

First, we have the bok choy:

Before you start: separating the bok choy involves cutting off the very bottom, taking off the leaves, but then cutting the white stalk from the leafy part on the bigger leaves, since they have separate cooking times (the leaves are about 1-2 min. less). Leave the last little nugget in the middle intact.

Put some cooking oil (I used olive) in the bottom of a wok or pan, heat at medium.
Throw in minced garlic, and shred your skinned ginger into the pan using a lemon zester or cheese grater.
Wait for the garlic and ginger to sizzle.
Next, add the bok choy and turn vigorously for about 30 seconds until the oily mixture coats it.
Pour in water or vinegar, turn heat to high, and steam for 2 minutes.
Drizzle with soy sauce, sesame oil, sesame seeds, salt, and garlic/ginger powder to taste.

Put this aside.

Using the same oil, turn the heat down to medium-high, add a little more olive oil/sesame oil/soy sauce/salt/sesame seeds to your pan. Throw in your green beans. Cover them to make them cook a bit faster, but not so much that they lose their crunch!

Here are the green beans by themselves:

Now that you have both components, toss them together and serve! This was SO easy and SO delicious. I'm now addicted to bok choy, and hope to dumpster it again soon.

As an afterthought, some sugar could have been used here and there to change up the dish's flavor if I make it again, since the bok choy stalks are a little bitter. However, since green beans are so sweet, I didn't really need it.

The cooking time for this is only about 7-15 min and yields 2 entree-sized portions (maybe 4 side portions).

After making this dish, I was so pleased with the outcome that I texted a friend and told him I had just made some bok choy my bitch. He didn't really understand, but I'll just make the dish for him some other time so he gets it...

Items not donated or dumpstered: toasted sesame seeds, olive oil, sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic, ginger

Failure & Ugliness (Gnocci)

I STILL had yukon gold potatoes left over from January (I promise it's not as gross as it sounds. Potatoes, when kept in the fridge, last super-long). However, their continued presence in my life was beginning to become a nuisance to my fridge space.

Since I'd never made it, I decided to whip up some simple gnocci (a pasta-ish dough thing made of potatoes). There's plenty of videos on the internet describing the process of making it. However, it takes a few tries to figure out the correct potato to flour to egg ratio. Gnocci is awesome because it's made of potatoes, which already last super-long, PLUS you can freeze it for up to 3 months MORE once you've made the dough nugget things.

I ended up pairing my gnocci with a home-made tomato sauce I had canned a while back, adding extra sauteed veggies (onion, tomato, whatever's in the fridge), garlic butter, Worcestershire sauce, & folded in some Parmesan cheese with salt & pepper to taste (leave the Worcestershire out if you want the meal to be vegetarian).

The good news was that the gnocci + sauce combo tasted GREAT! The bad news was that...well, it looked like someone blew chunks in a bowl, and my gnocci resembled stillborn cats more than food.
Thankfully, the gnocci made me fondly remember the first hummus I'd ever made and still the best hummus I've ever eaten. It was a spicy roasted tomato hummus that a friend dubbed heavom (tasting like heaven + looking like vomit).
One of my largest regrets in life is not writing down the exact recipe for that hummus. I can basically approximate it (and probably will for a future entry), but it's never been as good as that first batch *le sigh*

I try to make my food aesthetically pleasing (especially when serving it to others), but when you experiment with making things you've never made before, sometimes you end up with something that doesn't taste or look very good. Still, you try to fix your mistakes and avoid them in future batches of a dish. For example, I now know that hummus needs more tahini to coagulate better and gnocci needs a crapton of flour to keep from sticking to its neighbors (I will hopefully write a post soon to redeem my gross gnocci). Lessons learned.

This brings me to one of the coolest things about having groceries out of the trash: I'm more willing to take risks with the food I make. If I mess a dish up and it's inedible, it won't really matter because half the world thinks food out of dumpsters is inedible anyway and I never paid for the food, so it was just time lost. So, I primarily try to make my food into something I enjoy the taste of. If it looks like mush, so be it!

Items not dumpstered or donated: Olive oil, butter, garlic, salt, pepper, flour, egg

SO MANY POTATOES AND ONIONS

It's really hard to turn down free stuff. We all know it. So, when a dumpster is full of potatoes and onions for the taking, I figured "why not just take most of them? I can get inventive."

1 month later, I still have a full bag of potatoes and at least 20 onions (the good news is that both of these ingredients don't spoil easily).

The lesson learned? When dumpstering, you need to exercise a lot of restraint. Free stuff is free stuff, but overestimating what you'll eat is unfair to other folks who dive your dumpster and ultimately makes you just as wasteful as the stores you're scavenging from.

That said, sometimes you end up with a surplus of a few things. For me, potatoes and onions are my most prevalent dumpster finds. Potatoes can get pretty BLAH after a while, so you have to find ways to spice them up.

In case you needed some inspiration, here's a long list of potato and onion-related dishes and two potato recipes:

- Smashed Potatos (best w/ red potatoes - boil, smash with fork. Stir in butter & salt). Stir in homemade pesto to spice it up.
- Mashed potatoes (best with Yukon Golds. Boil, blend with milk, butter, & salt)
- Roasted potatoes (best with red) Coat bottom of a tin-foil covered pan with olive oil. Cut up potatoes into 1-inch pieces, put in the pan & coat with oil. Cover in salt, pepper, fresh rosemary, and whole garlic cloves (or garlic powder). Bake in the oven at 375 degrees until the potatoes are soft on the inside and crispy on the outside.
- Potato Latkes - perfect combo with homemade applesauce (recipe forthcoming) & sour cream.
- Potato Chips
- Hash browns - diced or shredded (for variety)
- Making soups heartier
- Baked potatoes (w/ sour cream, bacon, chives)
- Potato salad
- Gnocci (seems hard to make but is actually pretty easy - it just takes a little time to get ratios right)
- French fries (you can make them in the oven - you don't need a deep frier)
- Potato skins
- Veggie kabobs

GRUYERE POTATOES

My dad travels a lot for his work. So, he's eaten at a LOT of restaurants. A long time ago, he got into the habit of carrying around a food journal whilst voyaging. If he likes what he eats at a restaurant, he asks for the recipe so he can make it again for himself.

When I went off to college, he started sending me one of these recipes with each letter.

So, this recipe is from somewhere in France and is uber-yummy.

Ingredients:
Potatoes (Yukon golds or equivalently large baking potatoes are best)
3-4 cloves of garlic
Butter (unsalted)
Salt, Pepper, & ground nutmeg
Gruyere Cheese (and any other cheese if you'd like)
1-1.5 cup Beef bouillon or stock (if you don't have it or are vegetarian, you can use water)

Get a pyrex baking dish (or equivalent). Peel enough potatoes to fill half the dish. Carefully slice the potatoes so that they're paper-thin.

Peel and cut your garlic cloves in half and rub the garlic all around the bottom and sides of the baking dish, then take a stick of unsalted butter and coat the bottom and sides of the dish.

Next, put a layer of potatoes, some salt & pepper, ground nutmeg, and pats of butter over all the potatoes, followed by a liberal portion of grated Gruyere cheese. Repeat the layering process until you're out of potatoes, making sure the cheese is the last thing you put in the dish.

Pour boiling beef bouillon over the mixture.

Put the dish in an oven at 400 degrees. The dish will be done when the cheese on top turns golden brown - but don't let the cheese burn. If the potatoes aren't fully cooked, turn the temperature down to 300 until they're soft.

POTATO & ONION SOUP

Ingredients:
4 slices of bacon, diced (optional)
3 onions, chopped
3 tbsp butter
1/2 leek, chopped
6(ish) potatoes, peeled (I used Yukon golds)
Garlic powder, salt, black pepper, & cayenne pepper to taste
Water (approx. 6 cups)
2.5 tbsp flour (or more to thicken)
1 sprig basil

Cook bacon until brownish in a large pot.
Add butter.
Throw in chopped onions & leeks on medium heat until they're soft.
Put in the garlic powder, salt, & pepper.
Add flour slowly, sprinkling in.
Add water slowly, continuing to stir. Bring to a high boil to thicken the soup a bit.
Once it cooks down, add the potatoes and let them soften. Smoosh them with a spoon or potato masher to unleash their starch. This will thicken the soup a little more. At this stage you can add a cup of red wine and/or a few cups of (soy) milk or cheese. Don't use vanilla soy milk, though. It will taste disgusting. You can also throw in some rice, quinoa, pasta, or kale to make it more hearty.
Add one chopped potato at the end while the soup is simmering to add some textural variety.

Makes 2-4 bowls.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Butter, spices, bacon, flour, basil (from my window garden), (soy) milk

Soup Month - French Onion Soup

I still had onions. LOTS of onions. I needed to figure out what food mainly uses onions (this is difficult). One of the only options is French Onion Soup.

Since I'd never made anything like this before, I decided to try the most basic and classic version of the soup from frenchonionsoups.com. There are vegetarian variations on there as well.

FRENCH ONION SOUP



Ingredients:

6 Onions (any variety)
1 box of beefstock (approx. 32 oz.)
3 tbsp butter
Gruyere cheese (as much as you want)
3/4 cup of red wine (optional - I used a Shiraz)
Salt & pepper to taste

Cut up all the onions, then put them in the bottom of a big pot with the butter.
Caramelize the onions. If you've never done it before, put the stove at medium-low heat until the onions are golden brown (but not burned).
Add the beef stock and bring the mixture to a boil.
Add the wine (let the alcohol cook off).
Simmer for 20 min. to let the flavors mix.
Put in an oven-safe container (I used a metal casserole pan).
Slice or shred gruyere cheese on top of the soup's surface.
Broil in the oven for 5ish min. until the cheese melts.
Stir cheese in, then grate more cheese on top.

Makes 2-4 large bowls.

I put toasted naan with the soup in lieu of crusty bread.

I've never remembered liking French Onion Soup when I've ordered it at restaurants (so I have no idea why I made it in the first place), but my version is delicious! It makes me wonder if I should try it again out in the real world...

Items not dumpstered or donated: Beef stock, butter, red wine, spices

Homemade Potato Chips - Pt. I (Microwave)

This round of dumpstering, I made a mistake. I took WAY too many potatoes and onions. I thought I'd be able to give them away to friends and co-workers (which I did), but I was still left with far too many. Taking more than you can use is generally frowned-upon in the dumpstering world because other people may dive in your dumpster.

However, wasting food is also frowned upon, and I've never seen evidence of anyone diving in my preferred dumpster, so I don't feel TOO horrible about it. Plus, this was around Thanksgiving (prime dumpster season), so I didn't even go in the dumpster - just the overflow shopping carts around it. I think it's safe to say that no one went hungry as a result of my potatoes and onions.

Having a surplus of random or hard-to-use foods is a regular occurrence. So, you need to get inventive so that you're not stuck being bored by your meals.

After making a LOT of dishes with potatoes, I needed to figure out something else to do with them to preserve them. After craving chips one day, I decided that I needed to learn how to make them myself.


HOMEMADE POTATO CHIPS
(vegan, gluten-free)

Ingredients

0.5 bags Yukon Gold potatoes (approx. 4 potatoes)
1 tbsp (or less) of olive oil/veggie oil/cooking spray
Sea salt to taste (optional w/ lime juice, cayenne, garlic salt, pepper, sugar, etc.)

Peel potatoes, compost skins.
Thinly slice potatoes (2mm or thinner).
Pour oil/spray on plate.
Coat potatoes with oil (you can do this in a ziploc baggie, too).
Add salt, spices, juice, etc. to make your chips yummy.
Place in microwave until browned 5-9 min. (my microwave took 7-9 min. on average)
Place chips on a separate plate to dry (can put paper towel down to absorb oil).

Some advice:

1) Method - This process is VERY trial-and-error, and takes a lot of time for not a lot of chips. Patience is key. There are other methods of making potato chips (oven-crisped and deep frying are popular), but this was my first try, so I can't speak to other ways of production.

2) Toppings - I tried several toppings on my chips. Lime juice & cilantro turned out VERY sour, vinegar was nice (a little goes a long way), salt & pepper was best, sugar was good (but burns easily), garlic powder was okay, and cayenne pepper was great. Get creative!

3) Oils - Whatever oil you choose will determine how greasy your chips are and WILL effect the taste. Good olive oil was my favorite tasting, but it was hard to make the chips super-crispy. Spray olive oil and regular veggie oil made the chips lighter, but didn't taste as good.

4) Presentation - Your chips are going to look UGLY. They'll taste great, but they'll look ugly, burnt, or inedible. Be brave.

Makes about 1 small ziploc bag of chips. Properly wrapped, they'll last a few months.

Stay tuned for more potato chip experiments soon!

Ingredients not dumpstered or donated: olive oil, spices